The OC Buzz — Issue #10

~4 min read

☀️ Good Morning, OC

Good morning. This is the week summer starts packing its bags — and somehow that means both buttered corn and Halloween. Stay with us. ☕

This week in OC: the La Habra Corn Festival is back this weekend for its 77th year — a tradition first held in 1947, when it started as a neighborhood gathering with square dancing, bingo, and buttered corn. Nearly eight decades later it’s still run by the same Lions Club, and it’s still free.

In today’s Buzz:

• Halloween Time takes over Disneyland starting Friday (in August, on purpose)

• Skimboarding’s world championship hits Aliso Beach

• Two classic end-of-summer street parties: Sea Country and the Corn Festival

• Costa Mesa gets the spotlight — Goat Hill, the anti-mall, and a goggle factory

• The $150M listing that quietly became an $85M listing

• A free Jumanji night under the oaks for the kids

— Kevin

🔥 The Big Thing

Halloween starts Friday. Yes, in August. Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort officially kicks off Friday, Aug 21 and runs through Oct 31 — the third consecutive year Disney has launched spooky season in the August off-season. The Haunted Mansion gets its Nightmare Before Christmas overlay, Cars Land’s Haul-O-Ween haunts actually fired up a few days early (Monday the 17th), and Oogie Boogie Bash — the after-hours ticketed party that sells out every year — began its select-night run Aug 18, with more party nights than ever this time around. Several of them are already gone, including — no surprise — Halloween night itself.

Whatever you think about pumpkins in 90-degree beach weather, here’s the local read: the parks spend their quietest season dressed for their most popular one. That’s the cheat code.

Here’s what to know:

• What: Halloween Time at Disneyland Resort (both parks) + Oogie Boogie Bash (Disney California Adventure, select nights)

• When: Fri, Aug 21 – Oct 31 · Cars Land haunts already running (since Aug 17) · Oogie Boogie Bash select nights from Aug 18

• Where: Disneyland Resort, Anaheim

• Cost: included with park admission · Oogie Boogie Bash is a separate ticket — several nights already sold out, so don’t sit on it

More: disneyland.com 

Forward this to the friend whose Halloween decorations never actually came down.

📅 Around Town — This Weekend

Things worth leaving the house for (Fri Aug 21 – Sun Aug 23):

🏄 The Vic — Sat–Sun Aug 22–23 (Aliso Beach, Laguna Beach). Skimboarding’s world championship, and the longest-running, most prestigious skim contest on earth — run by Laguna’s own Victoria Skimboards. The world’s best pros an arm’s length away, free to watch from the sand. → thevic.victoriaskimboards.com 

🎡 Sea Country Festival — Fri–Sun Aug 21–23 (Laguna Niguel). The city’s three-day end-of-summer party at El Lazo off Crown Valley: carnival rides, live music, food, free admission. → cityoflagunaniguel.org 

🌽 La Habra Corn Festival — Fri–Sun Aug 21–23 (El Centro-Lions Park, La Habra). Free entry, free parking, rides, live music, and one of SoCal’s oldest summer parades Saturday morning. 77 years and counting. → lhcornfestival.org 

🚗 Dana Point Classic Car Show — Sun Aug 23, 10am–3pm (Lantern District). Vintage metal lining the streets above the harbor — pairs well with breakfast on Del Prado. → danapointcarshow.com 

🎌 Anime Impulse OC — Sat–Sun Aug 22–23, from 12pm (Anaheim Convention Center). Artist alley, vendor halls, cosplay — the big summer anime gathering, and your explanation for the costumes on the 57. (Tickets/$) → visitanaheim.org 

🎶 Chicano Heritage Festival — Sun Aug 23, 3–7pm (Centennial Park, Santa Ana). The city’s fifth annual: live performances (Baby Bash headlines), a car cruise and show, food, and a kids zone. Free. → santa-ana.gov 

(Double-check times before you go — events move.)

👨‍👩‍👧 OC With Kids

Free movie under the oaks: Jumanji (1995) — Friday Aug 21, Irvine Regional Park. OC Parks’ Sunset Cinema series, totally free including parking. Event starts at 6pm, movie at sunset — bring blankets and low chairs. It’s the original Robin Williams one, the kids haven’t seen it, and that’s the point. Next week’s finale: Top Gun at Salt Creek Beach, Aug 28. → ocparks.com 

Corn Festival, kid mode. Free entry, carnival rides, and a Saturday-morning parade that’s exactly the right length for a 5-year-old’s attention span. → lhcornfestival.org 

Sea Country’s ride zone (Laguna Niguel, Fri–Sun). Free to walk in — you only pay for the rides and games the kids actually pick. My kind of pricing model. → cityoflagunaniguel.org 

Evergreen backups: the Great Park Carousel in Irvine, Crystal Cove tide pools (free), and Centennial Farm in Costa Mesa — free, and no Fair ticket needed now that the Fair’s over.

🆕 New & Notable

Raising the bar. Highball and Naisho Omakase opened together this spring on Bristol Street in Costa Mesa — a Japanese-style cocktail bar up front and a hidden omakase counter behind it. Spotlight-city tie-in, and more proof Costa Mesa’s food scene keeps punching above its strip-mall exterior. → orangecoast.com 

Dumpling domino. Din Tai Fung is officially an Orange County regular: the Irvine Spectrum location opened over the winter, and the Brea Mall location soft-opened Aug 7 (reservations only, limited capacity) ahead of an Aug 31 grand opening. Act smug accordingly. → dtf.com 

Plates with a view. Piatti is now open on Ocean Avenue in Laguna Beach — coastal Italian with wood-fired pizzas and grilled branzino, a few minutes’ walk from Main Beach. → laguna.piatti.com 

🍽️ Eat / Drink

Hola Adios — Costa Mesa. Spotlight-city pick, new-guard division: craft coffee shop by day, cozy retro diner by night — one room, two personalities, open 7am to 9pm. If the omakase counters are where Costa Mesa shows off, this is where it hangs out. → holaadioscoffeeshop.com 

📍 Today in… Costa Mesa

(beachhead spotlight — round two)

Costa Mesa had the spotlight early in our run, so this time we’re skipping South Coast Plaza’s marquee and heading for the stuff locals actually claim:

• The coolest block in the city used to make night-vision goggles. The LAB “Anti-Mall” on Bristol opened in 1993 inside a converted military goggle factory — LAB stands for “Little American Business,” and it was built as the deliberate opposite of the mall down the street. → thelab.com 

• It has a sister across the street. The CAMP is the eco-minded twin — outdoorsy shops and restaurants around a leafy courtyard — and together they anchor the SOBECA district (South Bristol Entertainment, Culture & Art). → travelcostamesa.com 

• Costa Mesa’s old nickname is “Goat Hill.” Before it was the City of the Arts, it was farmland known for its goat herds. The Costa Mesa Historical Society literally titled its city history “From Goat Hill to City of the Arts” — and Goat Hill Tavern still wears the name proudly on Newport Blvd.

• The anti-mall and America’s biggest mall share a city. The delicious part: South Coast Plaza — regularly cited as the highest-grossing shopping center in the country — is about three minutes up Bristol. Costa Mesa contains both ends of the retail universe.

• And the goggle factory is also this week’s Remember When — the full story’s below.

Next issue: continuing round two down the corridor — Seal Beach.

🏡 Home of the Week

Market pulse (week of Aug 10, 2026): OC’s active inventory ticked up again to 5,178 listings — another 2026 high — with average days-on-market at 60 and 1,918 pendings. The strange part: those numbers are a near-perfect copy of this exact week last year. Same market, one difference — rates are sitting near 6.79%, higher than a year ago. Concessions are still the story of the summer. → ocrealestateinc.com 

🌐 The OC Internet

Instagram post

⏪ Remember When…

(angle this week: Then & Now)

In a past life, the low industrial building at 2930 Bristol was a military night-vision goggle factory — one of the anonymous light-industrial boxes that filled mid-century Costa Mesa. In 1993, instead of scraping it, a developer named Shaheen Sadeghi kept the bones — sawtooth roof, concrete, exposed steel — and turned it into The LAB, the self-declared “Anti-Mall,” built for the surf-skate-punk kids who’d never set foot in South Coast Plaza.

The name stands for “Little American Business,” and the bet was radical at the time: no anchors, no chains, just small local shops, a courtyard, and somewhere to just be. It worked — the LAB got international press, spawned its sister property The CAMP across the street, and gave the whole district its name (SOBECA). The factory that used to help people see in the dark became the place a generation of OC kids went to be seen.

Now you: what’s a building in YOUR city that used to be something completely different? Hit reply — best memory gets featured next week.

👋 That’s the Buzz

That’s the week. Eat some buttered corn, watch somebody’s kid launch off a skimboard at Aliso, and if you end up at the Haunted Mansion in August heat — no judgment. That’s the local move.

Three tiny favors:

1. Hit reply with a building in your city that used to be something completely different — I’m collecting them for Remember When.

2. Refer 2 friends with your link below and I’ll send you the OC Insider’s Guide (free). It’s genuinely good.

3. Forward this to the friend who owns more Halloween decorations than furniture.

See you next week.

— Kevin

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