Kitsch, Sprawl, and Promise at the Top of California
Written: Oct 29 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Remoteness. Setting.
Cons: Uncertain Identity.
The Bottom Line: Look past the sprawl to what makes a place unique, and then tell the locals how much you admire it. Your words may help save what you admire.
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Crescent City |
Crescent City, the northernmost city on the California Coast and the headquarters of Redwood National Park, has all the makings of magnificence. No city, not even San Francisco, offers a more dramatic experience of arrival. From the south, you plunge through a dark tunnel of redwoods to burst suddenly onto a precipice, with the Pacific a long plunge down to your left. The small city glimmers far below, wrapped snugly around a harbor in its eponymous crescent shape. This is one of those moments when you can imagine yourself arriving in, say, J. R. R. Tolkein’s Rivendell, a community that couldn’t help but be happy, so glorious are its surroundings.
Arrive in the city, then, and the bleakness of American sprawl is even more depressing than usual. It’s not just the ubiquitous chain stores, or the ruins of the old downtown that those stores have destroyed. It’s that Crescent City, like many cities in the 50s and 60s, turned its back on the waterfront. Only recently have some bayfront lands been reclaimed for people who want to stroll along this magnificent stretch of the Pacific, or to enjoy a park that doesn’t look like any cookie-cutter park in nameless suburbia.
When I wrote the core of this opinion, in 1997, I had just settled in at the Bay View Inn, located out on the highway east of town. My little balcony looked out over a corrugated tin building and through assorted compositions in barbed wire to a grand expanse of gray murk, which could have been anything from an off-season wetland to a major Superfund site. Beyond the gray murk I could make out the bay, the sandbar, and a bit of the open sea.
The olfactory mixture was as diverse as the sights. I smelled salt spray, diesel fumes, and the familiar fish-and-seaweed odors, leavened by the distant aroma of fresh tar. In one moment these smells would be mixed, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in dissonance, while in the next moment one of the smells burst forth in an exuberant solo. The various sounds also took turns, weaving in and out of each other as I gazed at across the tin-and-murk. I heard seagulls, trucks, sea lions, televisions, the very distant lapping of waves, and the revving of ancient cars.
Suddenly, a brutal, deafening rattle shattered my reverie. Peering around the corner of my balcony, I saw the parking lot of Undersea World, a totally landlocked tourist attraction right next to the hotel. A shabby compound with a sickly-green tower, Undersea World was plastered with signs promising to expose the visitor to the mysteries of the depths, without, of course, making any contact with the real Pacific.
The brutal rattling was the sound of a hollow plastic 12-foot sea lion on inadequate casters being dragged across the broken asphalt by four sweating middle-aged men. At least, I thought it was a sea lion; it could have been a very large seal, since it was, to put it mildly, an abstract representation, with an incongruous humanoid smile suggesting Picasso or Disney on a bad day.
An identical plastic sealion-or-maybe-seal was already in place on one side of the entrance to Undersea World. This new one appeared destined for the other side, so that they would frame the entrance symmetrically like lions on old European bridges. Clearly, it was a major event. The men, while sweating profusely, still had a ceremonial air about their work. A few steps behind the four men were four women with cameras – their wives, I suppose. Once they finally got their beast in position, framing the driveway with its fellow plastic sea-lionoid, the women cheered and began wildly snapping pictures. They probed their masterpiece from all possible angles, and of course, they photographed the four men proudly sweating in front of their handiwork.
It was hilarious, but …
Could I have described this scene with more, well, generosity? Why make fun of uneducated people doing their best to keep going in a beautiful place with no economy? By what overfed urban aesthetic do I subject these sincere folks to even the gentlest of ridicule?
Like any nature writer, I can only reply by pointing to nearby redwoods and the magnificent harbor, and say that my urban aesthetic is an inadequate but honest effort to speak for the mute aesthetic of nature. This is the aesthetic that is beginning to create open parks that embrace the redwoods and the sea, rather than quasi-military compounds like Undersea World that shut it off, the better to simulate it. This is the aesthetic that is beginning to create livable communities in small pockets in asphalt-ravaged America.
Gradually, Crescent City is rediscovering where it is, and realizing that there’s more to be gained by embracing its own special place than by becoming just another constellation of Wal-Marts and Burger Kings. For all its splendor, the extreme remoteness of Crescent City makes it a poor and struggling town. If you go there, please spend some money in a non-chain store or restaurant. Compliment the locals on the well-designed shoreline park near the Redwood National Park Headquarters. Above all, express your admiration for the natural magnificence that surrounds Crescent City on all sides. Perhaps they will pave a bit less of it as a result.
NOTE: This review was first posted in 2001, but was shelved uselessly under "General Itineraries." I'm happy to repost it now that the topic has been added as a "Destination."
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Jun - Aug
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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