Avila Beach, CA for those of you who aren’t local to my area, is a little beach town that my family called our home away from home for like a 1000 summers.
Avila Beach/ˈævɪlə/ is an unincorporated community in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States,[4] located on San Luis Obispo Bay[5] about 160 miles (257 km) northwest of Los Angeles, and about 200 miles (320 km) south of San Francisco. The population was 1,627 at the 2010 census. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Avila Beach as a census-designated place (CDP).[2] The census definition of the area may not precisely correspond to local understanding of the area with the same name. - Wikipedia
My grandparents started going out there before I was born. I started going a long after I was born and by the time I was 7 or 8 I was able to roam around and just enjoy the place. Before anyone panics, this was many many many years ago, when kids didn’t have cell phones and most parents told you to come home when the street lights came on. You could see the entire beach front in Avila from the hotel we stayed at, which was a motel / apartment building.
(back in the day VS now)
We would load into the car at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, I’d climb in the back with my books and crayons and half way to the beach we’d stop in Cueyama at this place called The Buckhorn and have lunch. It is now half diner half honkey tonk, but the food hasn’t changed much if you ever get out that way. Big fried and cheese are all big staples on the menu. After a Shirley Temple and a pee break it was off to the beach.
The motel rooms in the Surfside had big fridges and some had stoves so we didn’t eat out for every meal. The second stop before getting the Surfside was Safeway up on Five Cities drive in Pismo Beach. (It’s now California Fresh Market.) This is where we’d load up on instant coffee for the room, juice, milk, tuna and other sandwich staples, cereal, doughnuts, fruit and usually some paper back books and sodas.
The Surfside only had stairs, most of the interior was decorated in browns and golds with paintings of the ocean. The bedspreads were clean even though the walk ways leading to the rooms creaked and seems like they were super dangerous and creeky. The rooftop at the time was just a big flat roof with a couple of lounge chairs on it. Most people didn’t even use it. Now it’s a huge lounge / coffee / bbq/ hang out area.
My grandparents would get a room on the front. My grandma would park herself on the balcony with her never ending cup of coffee and her Benson and Hedges 100’s and her books and watch over me and any of my cousins who came a long. My grandpa would get up early and go down to the pier to fish all day.
I would get my bathing suit and shorts and a little plastic tote bag, usually something from the Sanrio stand at the department store my grandma worked at with my towel and my bucket and shovel and be given five dollars to get snacks or whatever and sent on my way to play and the instruction to come home when I got too hot or tired.
The street facing the ocean and pier was lined with little shops and of course the Avila Beach Market where you could get comic books and candy and then there was the snack bar with fried burritos and fries. A little further down were a couple of bars. I was too young to go inside but I made up elaborate stories in my head about Barbara by The Sea, which is why the mermaid is part of the Mr Ricks logo today.
(the original sign)
I thought this sign was the most glamorous thing I had ever seen. I took the sign and mixed it in with every Hollywood movie I had ever seen where there is a big band and a singer and imagined that was what was inside, behind the blue sparkly curtain that hung in the window.
(No really this is what I thought it looked like inside… I would later find out I was really really wrong.)
As a kid though, the beach was where it was. Something as adults that we forget about is kids can make friends at the drop of a hat. You find another kid that has something you want to play with, be it a bigger pail and shovel or a cool ass boogie board and you just straight up ask. Boom, you’re best friends for the whole damn day. It was ideal to find a kid also staying at your same motel so your adults could meet and you could make plans to play instead of just wandering out on the beach and picking out a new friend every day but if you didn’t, no worries, the local kids were out there every day too, if you knew where to look.
We didn’t spend every day on the beach. One day out of the week was dedicated to driving up the coast to Morro Bay to see the big ass rock there and buy taffy. We’d head into Pismo Beach for dinner at least one night for fish and chips and we’d go to San Luis Obispo sometimes to look at the shops.
After a week of sun, sand and souvenirs, we’d pile back into the car and head back to Bakersfield and drop our film off at K-Mart to wait for it to be developed and wait for the next trip the next year, until handling a week at the beach with grandkids under 10 became a little too much for them. The last year we went, my grandparents went back by themselves to rest for a week.
When they got back my grandma told me it wasn’t nearly as much fun without us.
I thought that was the end of my Avila Beach adventures but it wasn’t… not by a long shot….
Part 2 coming soon….
I remember so much of what you are writing here. One year, Grampa and I went fishing on the pier and I accidentally caught a tiny octopus. I should have thrown it back but instead I had this grand fantasy of taking it home, putting it in a tank and having it for a pet. Grampa filled the bath tub up with water and we put it in. It lasted a couple of days.
Way before you were born the family somehow used to take the trailer (I'm guessing there were more accommodations somehow) to the dunes. For grunion hunting. I was little. And I was dying to go see them. And I tried and I tried to stay awake. But I fell asleep. And the next morning (or maybe even that night/early morning) I remember everyone sort of high on the experience.
As I got older I remember starting to believe that grunions don't even exist. Like "snipe hunting" I thought a grunion run was really about people running around on the beach at low tide and early morning, just for fun.
This year I took Maisie for a grunion run. We didn't see any, so it's possible they ARE just like Snipe. Except, there IS such a thing as Snipe and I've seen You Tube videos of grunions. EXCEPT, I've seen You Tube videos of Bigfoot too. Who can really know? I guess the grunions and Bigfoot.