Hansen: Funny things tourists say

Like the swallows return to Capistrano — wait, scratch that. Like the famous Brooks Street Surfing Classic — no, guess we can’t say that either. Oh, forget it: The tourists are coming.

Like clockwork, they are coming — all 6 million of them.

Believe it or not, that’s how many visitors come to Laguna every year, according to Judy Bijlani, president and chief executive of the Laguna Beach Visitors & Conference Bureau.

Judy knows. We can call her Judy because Laguna is a friendly place, which is what the tourists notice.

“They say, ‘One thing I noticed about Laguna is everybody is so friendly,’ Judy said. “And we actually do get that quite a bit, which is wonderful.”

The Visitors Center, 381 Forest Ave., is one of those nice, air-conditioned retreats that shares space with Sotheby’s. The front desk concierges are always friendly and helpful and won’t be happy unless you leave with dozens of whale watching fliers, restaurant recommendations and regional maps.

And information about the shooting locations of MTV’s “Laguna Beach,” of course, which we will come to in a minute.

When asked about some funny stories from visitors, Judy had to stop and think.

“It’s sort of like when you try to remember a joke and repeat it to someone else, everyone kind of draws a blank,” she said.

And then she told a story.

“I think one of the funniest things that happened was a visitor came in and wanted to know when the sun was going to come out,” Judy said, pausing for effect. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s due out probably this afternoon. Sometimes in the morning we will get a small marine layer, but it will dissipate.’

“And they said, ‘Well, no. We need to know the exact time when the sun’s going to come out because we’re trying to plan our day around it.’”

Judy paused again. And you have to know Judy. She is a bundle of energy and a nonstop talker, so for her to pause is a big deal.

“So I tried again to say, ‘Well, it’s going to be this afternoon probably or late morning.’

“And they just really wanted a time. So I walked outside and looked up and I came back in and said, ‘I think it’s going to be at 11:45.’ And they were perfectly happy and they left.”

Judy laughed. The other thing you have to know about Judy is she will not embarrass the visitors, for fear of biting the hand that feeds her. So for her to tell that story was a big deal.

“I don’t want to make visitors look silly in the newspaper, but when people are on vacation, the mindset changes. It really does.”

It’s not surprising that Laguna tourists are a little giddy, dumbstruck and prone to stopping their cars in the middle of Coast Highway, pointing and gawking at nothing in particular.

But some visitors are on a mission. They know what they want, so stand out of their way.

They are teenagers.

It’s not the parents in charge of the vacation anymore; it’s the kids — ever since “the show.”

“We will have mothers and fathers who kind of have that deer-in-the-headlights look, and they’ll say, ‘Well, we’re here and we don’t know anything about Laguna Beach or what there is to do. Our teenage son or daughter told us we had to come here based on watching MTV reruns or that type of thing.’”

And so Judy is ready. She has the MTV flier, which indicates the places in Laguna where the 2004-06 “reality” show was filmed.

“We get a lot of that from the younger teens coming in,” she said.

The most popular request is to find out where Stephen and Kristin had their first date. OMG. (The answer is Pomodoro restaurant, now Alessá.)

“That little TV show still does drive people to Laguna Beach,” Judy said. “The kids have seen it on television, so of course they want to know all the places the actors ate. They want to see the high school, all those kinds of things. We have a self-tour, basically, for all the things that were in the show.”

They also have a special page on the Visitors Center website that lists the details of the locations.

So what are other questions from visitors? Lots of standard ones: Where is the restroom? Good restaurants, places to stay, directions, etc.

She was puzzled why people were asking for the address to Main Beach, until she realized that GPS and location-based tagging was becoming popular. Ever the promoter, she would give them the address to the Visitors Center instead, feeling it was close enough.

“Another big question we get is, ‘When is low tide?’” she said. “The tidepools in Laguna Beach are just a huge draw. They are some of the finest on the California coast, so people will come in and just want to experience the tidepools at low tide, so we always have a tide chart handy.”

Judy says the international crowd is increasing over years past, another sign that the economy is picking up. Laguna’s bread and butter, however, is the domestic tourist, specifically from Southern California.

“We get a higher percentage of visitors from within California, sort of doing the home tourism, if you will,” she said. “The biggest percentage of visitors comes from within about a 100-mile radius of us.”

But the international crowd is still big, with people coming in from all over the world. A quick look at the guestbook reveals visitors from Isle of Man, Monaco, Bombay, Thailand, Nepal, Iceland and dozens of other countries.

There are the usual comments like “wonderful city … loved it here … so special … I love you, Stephen Colletti!”

O.K., I may have embellished that last one.

But with Coastal Living magazine recently ranking Laguna Beach the sixth “happiest seaside town” in America, what’s not to love?

Now if the sun would only come out at 11:45 every day.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at [email protected].