Things to Do in Orange County

This is about Crystal Cove. Every beach you can go to anytime is one you never go to — that's just how anytime works. So go early, before the lot fills, when it isn't a beach at all: fog on the water, tide pools full at your feet, a row of 1930s cottages time forgot to tear down, the last stretch of Orange County coast that still looks the way the whole thing used to before anyone paved it. You come down for a walk and leave wanting a completely different life. Your people there at that hour are the few who wanted it enough to beat the crowd — not the noon mob who did Crystal Cove, the dawn handful who actually saw it. The cost is one alarm you'll never remember setting. And by afternoon it's a parking war and a wait. Go have the coast to yourself before the day starts. Go.

This is about Little Saigon. The pho near your place is fine — and fine is a waste of an afternoon and an appetite. Because right now, in a Westminster strip mall, is the best bowl in America — star anise, slow-cooked bone, a plate of herbs the size of a bouquet — and everyone in the largest Little Saigon on earth knows exactly which door it's behind. This is where a whole community rebuilt its kitchen after losing everything, and set a chair for whoever's smart enough to drive the extra twenty minutes. Your people there understood close and good aren't the same word, and picked good. Twenty minutes is the entire distance between the fine bowl and the real one. Skip the fine one — you've had a hundred fine ones. Drive out there hungry and eat the one they're all lined up for. Go.

This is about Old Towne Orange. You think there's nothing to do there, which means you've never actually been. Every other city in the county bulldozed its old downtown for a strip mall. Orange kept its — a hundred-year-old traffic circle ringed with antique shops and soda fountains and an afternoon that smells like other people's memories. You don't go there to do a thing. You go to wander a plaza until you're homesick for a decade you never lived through. Your people there are the wanderers and the diggers — the ones who'd rather spend an afternoon somewhere with a hundred years in it than somewhere brand new with nothing. Nothing to do isn't the reason to skip it; it's the whole point of it — the last unhurried square mile in the OC, twenty minutes away. Doors propped, sun on the brick, right now. Go get lost in something old for an afternoon. Go.

This is about the Laguna coves — not the beach you're picturing. You're seeing the packed main sand and the parking and the price, and deciding it's not worth it. The coves are the opposite of all that: pocket beaches hidden behind staircases only the locals seem to find, where the cliffs go amber and the tide pools fill with sky as the sun drops. Painters chased this exact light for a hundred years, and standing in it you finally get why not one of them ever left. Your people there are the ones who know which staircase, who came for the light and not the scene. And it's happening in about an hour — once, tonight, then it's just dark. Another day is how you agree to miss it politely, over and over, until you've missed all of them. Find the staircase, drop down to the cove, watch the cliffs catch fire. You've got just enough time. Go.

This is about a fire ring at Huntington. It sounds like effort, so here's the actual effort: grab a bundle of wood on the way, find an open ring, light it. That's it. The pier's already lit up over the black water, the sand's still warm from the day, and by the second marshmallow the strangers two pits down are your friends. It's the closest the ocean ever comes to a living room. Your people are already out there — the ones who decided a Saturday night was worth a bundle of firewood and the willingness to leave the house. You've put more effort than that into far worse nights. This is the cheapest good night on the whole coast, and it's happening right now, ring after ring down that beach. Grab wood on the way and go light a fire on the sand. Go.

This is about Little Arabia. You're tired, and Brookhurst Street is wide awake — and you don't have to know a thing about it to be taken in. Bakeries pulling trays of warm knafeh out of the oven, hookah smoke curling under string lights, tea glasses refilled by men who've already solved the world twice tonight. It's the first Arab American district this country ever officially named, and it folds a stranger in like you've been coming for years. Your people there tonight are whoever walked in — that's the whole spirit of the place. It doesn't ask you to belong. It just makes room. Tired is a couch feeling, the feeling of a night that already ended. Go somewhere the night's still fully going and watch how fast it lifts off you. The ovens are on right now. Go be somewhere still awake. Go.