The OC Buzz — Issue #5

☀️ Good Morning, OC

Good morning. Deep summer now — the marine layer burns off by ten, the Fair lights up Costa Mesa Friday night, and the whole county smells faintly of funnel cake and sunscreen. Coffee up. ☕

This week in OC: the OC Fair opens Friday, a tradition that traces back to 1890, when the very first Orange County fair was little more than a horse race and a handful of exhibits in Santa Ana. That’s 136 years later, and it’s still the same core idea: livestock barns, deep-fried everything, and a Ferris wheel over the fairgrounds.

The entrance to Orange County Fair in 1920. Credit: Photo courtesy of OC Fair & Event Center

In today’s Buzz:

• The OC Fair opens Friday — 23 days of deep-fried summer

• Laguna’s “Big 3” art festivals are all running at once

• A 432-square-foot Laguna cabin just listed for $18.8 million

• Laguna Beach takes the spotlight

• Plus a Chicago hot dog legend, free concerts, and the old Greeter of Laguna Canyon Road

— Kevin

🔥 The Big Thing

The OC Fair is back — 23 days of deep-fried summer, starting Friday. The 2026 OC Fair (“Your Adventure Awaits”) opens Friday, July 17 and runs through Sunday, August 16 at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.

You know the drill: carnival rides, concerts on the Pacific Amphitheatre and Hangar stages, prize-winning pies and pigs, and food that has no business being on a stick but absolutely is.

Opening weekend is the move — go before the crowds peak in August, and grab presale before Thursday, because general admission jumps once the gates open.

More: ocfair.com

Forward this to the friend who plans their whole July around a deep-fried Oreo.

📅 Around Town — This Weekend

Things worth leaving the house for (Fri July 17 – Sun July 19):

🎡 OC Fair— Opening weekend (Costa Mesa). The county’s marquee summer event kicks off Friday and runs all the way through mid-August. Lead with it, and lock in presale before July 16.

🎨 Laguna's "Big 3" art festivals — all weekend (Laguna Beach). All three summer art shows run at once: the Sawdust Art Festival (168 local artists, glass-blowing demos, free daily art classes), the Festival of Arts / Pageant of the Masters, and Laguna Art-A-Fair. Pro tip: the Passport to the Arts gets you one-time free admission to all three.

🎸 OC Parks Summer Concerts — Thu July 16, 5–8pm, Irvine Regional Park. Free Queen Nation tribute show — free parking, food trucks, bring a low chair.

🥂 Summer Tide Dinner — Fri July 17, 6:30pm, Surf & Sand Resort (Laguna Beach). An oceanfront Champagne-and-oysters reception followed by a three-course seafood dinner on the Pacific Terrace. Date-night material, and it’s not cheap. (Tickets/$$)

🏄 Coming up (save the date): the Lexus US Open of Surfing returns to Huntington Beach July 25–Aug 2 — free, south of the HB Pier. Not this weekend, but block the calendar.

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

👨‍👩‍👧 OC With Kids

I’ve got three, so the calculus is simple this week: the Fair, on a weekday, before it gets insane.

OC Fair for the under-10s. Kids 5 and under are free, 6–12 are $9, and a Wednesday or Thursday opening-week visit beats the weekend chaos. Do the livestock barns, one round of rides, split a funnel cake, leave before the meltdown.

Free Friday movies keep rolling. OC Parks’ Sunset Cinema runs free Friday-night films all summer — free parking, food trucks on site — across Craig, Mason, Yorba, Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Salt Creek Beach. Blanket, snacks, zero dollars.

Movies on the sand. Newport Dunes Movies on the Beach plays free family films Friday and Saturday evenings all summer — toes in the sand, screen on the water.

Standing summer plays: Crystal Cove tide pools (free), the Laguna coves, and Cinemark’s $1.75 Summer Movie Clubhouse on Wednesday mornings.

🆕 New & Notable

Windy City, Meet PCH — Jim’s Original lands in Orange. The legendary Chicago hot dog stand — 87 years old, and this is its first-ever location outside Chicago — quietly opened at 214 N Tustin St in Orange this summer, and it’s already drawing the kind of lines you’d expect. Polish sausages, Italian beef, the works.

Dough-mestic Arrivals — Levain Bakery is coming to Fashion Island. The NYC cult bakery behind those half-pound, gooey-in-the-middle chocolate chip cookies has signed a Newport Beach location, but there’s no opening date yet — put it on your radar, not your calendar.

🍽️ Eat / Drink

Driftwood Kitchen — Laguna Beach. Since we’re spotlighting Laguna, eat where the view does half the work: floor-to-ceiling ocean, coastal-California plates, and one of the better weekend brunches on the water in OC. Ask for a patio table at golden hour.

619 Sleepy Hollow Ln — reservations recommended on weekends.

📍 Today in… Laguna Beach

(beachhead spotlight #5)

Laguna gets the spotlight — the art colony that never stopped being one:

• Main Beach is the heart of it. The boardwalk, the volleyball courts, the tide pools at the north end, and Heisler Park’s bluff trail right above — all walkable from the village. No pier, no problem.

• It’s Festival Season. All summer, three art shows run at once (Sawdust, Festival of Arts / Pageant of the Masters, and Art-A-Fair) — the thing Laguna is known for worldwide. Grab the Passport to the Arts to hit all three.

• The coves are the secret. Beyond Main Beach: Thousand Steps, Victoria Beach (with its storybook tower), and Crystal Cove tide pools to the north. Locals-know-where-to-park energy.

• Evergreen move: a margarita at sunset on the Las Brisas terrace (the old Victor Hugo Inn — see Remember When), then a walk down to Main Beach for the last of the light.

Next issue: Dana Point.

🏡 Home of the Week

A 432-square-foot cabin in Laguna Beach is on the market for $18.8 million. (Credit: Ryan Kidder Studio)

Market pulse (June 2026): OC’s median sold price landed at ~$1.24M countywide — and here’s the tell: the average home sold for exactly 100% of asking. Not 105%, not 110% like the 2021–22 frenzy — dead-on list. Inventory’s up to 4,551 active listings, the most since last September, so buyers finally have a little room to negotiate. Still pricey, still moving, just calmer.

The wild one: a 432-square-foot cabin in Laguna Beach is listed for $18.8 million. That’s not a typo. Zero bedrooms, one bathroom, a shoebox with an ocean view — which pencils out to about $43,519 per square foot, one of the highest price-per-foot tags in the country. What you’re really buying is the dirt: it’s a rare buildable lot on one of Laguna’s most coveted streets, and the “cabin” is basically a placeholder. Peak Laguna.

More: ktla.com

🌐 The OC Internet

Instagram post

⏪ Remember When…

”The Greeter,” the Pottery Shack, and old Laguna.

If you grew up going to Laguna, you remember a few things that are half-gone now. Eiler Larsen — “the Greeter” — the wild-bearded Danish man who stood on Coast Highway for decades waving at every single car that passed, arms up, grinning. He became so beloved the city basically adopted him as its mascot (there’s still a statue at the old Pottery Shack corner). And the Pottery Shack itself — 66 years of cheap, gorgeous seconds and thirds of ceramics at Coast Highway and Brooks, from 1936 until it closed in 2002 and became the Old Pottery Place. Same with the Victor Hugo Inn, the ‘40s celebrity haunt where Bette Davis filmed the famous cigarette scene in Now, Voyager — it’s Las Brisas today.

Now it’s your turn: what’s YOUR Laguna memory? The Greeter waving you into town? Sawdust Festival as a kid? A cove nobody posts anymore? Hit reply with your favorite OC memory — best one gets featured next week.

👋 That’s the Buzz

That’s the week. Get to the Fair before it gets crowded, and if you’ve never done the Laguna festivals, this is the weekend.

Two tiny favors:

1. Hit reply with your favorite Laguna (or any OC) memory — I’m collecting them for Remember When.

2. Forward this to the friend who’s already planning which OC Fair food-on-a-stick they’re eating first.

See you next week.

— Kevin

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