Where do Orange County's corporate, judicial, trust-fund celebrities like to gather? Gulfstream, near Fashion Island in Newport Beach. Here, you can order a dozen oysters for $26 (double the price of certain inland restaurants), sip on $16 glasses of white wine and whale-watch. Of course, by whales, we respectfully mean heavyweights—you know, power brokers, fellas driving black Hummers and looking for admirers, usually female. If you're lucky, like Orange County Register columnist Mickadeit, the big boys might even allow you to overhear their impressive tales of power and profit and wallow in secondhand stogy smoke.
