Summer Stories -- July 4 parking woes challenge West Newport

As the mobs of humanity descend on West Newport Beach for the Fourth

of July this week, the area’s residents have two basic choices in parking

their cars.

Once the revelers pour into the streets, it’s too late.

“We’ll go out in the morning before they blockade the street or just

stay in,” said Margie Dorney, the chairwoman of the neighborhood’s Fourth

of July committee. “You just park in your garage and you don’t go

anywhere.”

Newport Beach police will begin closing off the neighborhoods on the

beachfront side of East Coast Highway between noon and 3 p.m. Thursday.

But crowds usually begin filling up the numbered streets running across

Seashore Drive much earlier.

Some residents in an enclave once dubbed “The War Zone,” because of

the raucous activity on the Fourth of July, wake up to find their cars

stuck as partyers jam the streets. Those who still want to leave, Dorney

said, have been known to take a cab or just leg it out of an area known

for its wild activity.

Surprisingly, Dorney said some residents do leave their cars parked on

the street, despite vandalism and other off-the-hook behavior in past

years.

Residents have also been accustomed to an increase in the number of

outsider cars parked on their streets. A popular nearby lot has been the

Hoag Hospital auxiliary lot near Sunset Ridge. But visitors have also

been known to carpool into the area or ride in on bicycles.

But it hasn’t reached the point where it’s like trying to spot a

parking space at the Irvine Spectrum on a weekend evening.

“It takes patience, but it’s not so bad that you can’t find a place to

park,” Dorney said.

In addition to scouting out the best parking locations, locals also

have a good working knowledge of alternate exit routes out of the area.

Using Superior Avenue or Newport Boulevard is basically out of the

question, said Alan Silcock, the president of the West Newport Beach

Assn.

If he wants to reach the Costa Mesa Freeway from his Balboa Coves

home, he heads up Orange or Irvine avenues.

“Traffic is solid [on the arterial streets],” Silcock said. “You’ve

got to leave town using side streets.”