You can’t miss the Sunset Beach post office

Katy Brack, a Huntington Beach artist, painted the main mural on the Sunset Beach post office. Her painting depicts a sand path leading toward the beach at Sunset Beach and a sunset-hour view of the Pacific Ocean, with Catalina Island on the horizon. (SCOTT SMELTZER)

Motorists heading to the upcoming 45th annual Sunset Beach Art Festival should spot the post office.

The local landmark at 16885 Pacific Coast Hwy. is a block from the site of the festival, which will happen during the Mother’s Day weekend. Out-of-towners heading into Sunset Beach nowadays can no longer miss the little yellow building; they’ll be able to use a set of murals recently painted on its outer walls as markers.

“I’m so excited,” said Postmaster Corinne Brubaker, the postal worker who was the force behind the mural project. “The community deserves what’s on these walls. The post office is the hub for these people.”

Because there is no postal service around Sunset Beach, its residents rely on individual boxes at the building to collect their mail. And even though the community is now officially part of Huntington Beach, if you mail a letter or package from that facility, the postmark still bears the words “Sunset Beach CA 90742″ in red lettering.

Mike Heinrich, the acting postmaster who is filling in for Brubaker while she has been seconded to another post office, explained that the U.S. Postal Service retains control of a given locality’s name on the postmark.

The mural project began two years ago, after Brubaker had the building restuccoed and repainted yellow. In painting the building, painters covered over a pair of smaller murals that had long decorated its northern and southern outer walls.

–Imran Vittachi, @ImranVittachi, HB Independent

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Did hippies gather in Sunset? This woman wants to know

Sunset Beach resident Pat Thies talks about the calendar that she and her friends make every year that depicts one decade in the city's existence. (SCOTT SMELTZER)

While the contention goes on over Sunset Beach’s recent annexation by Huntington Beach, Pat Thies is busy living in the past.

Just as she does for a few months every year.

Thies, who frequently visited Sunset throughout her life and moved there a decade ago, created a calendar in 2004 to celebrate the seaside community’s 100th anniversary. The calendar, which residents used the following year, provided a pictorial history of Sunset, with “then” and “now” photos showing sites around town alongside their past incarnations.

The following year, Thies focused on a specific decade, using surviving photos to show Sunset in the 1900s. Since then, she’s gone through the decades in order — meaning that the neighborhood’s 2013 calendar, which she’s assembling now, may evoke memories of the moon landing, flower power and JFK in the 1960s.

“I’ll have to find out if there were actual hippies or not [in Sunset Beach],” Thies said. “I’ve been told they played a lot of volleyball. They did a lot of partying. Whether they were actual hippies, I don’t know.”

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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Annual parking passes to go up in cost for state parks, beaches

For some, living near the beach in Orange County is a priceless luxury.

But actually going to the beach — by car, anyway — is about to get a little pricier.

The state Department of Parks and Recreation announced this month that annual vehicle passes at state parks will increase from $125 to $195. Among the locations affected are six in Orange County: Crystal Cove State Park and Bolsa Chica, Huntington, Corona del Mar, San Clemente and Doheny state beaches.

The department announced April 12 that it would raise the price of several annual passes, including for vehicle use, on May 1. The cost for single-day use and camping fees will remain the same in most areas, although some regional superintendents may adjust fees for specific parks, spokesman Roy Stearns said.

The department cut $11 million from its budget last year and expects an identical cut this year, and the higher charges are meant to curb some of that loss.

Stearns said he hopes the increased fees will bring in between $1 million and $1.5 million in added revenue. The state was set to close 70 parks in July, although donors and partners have come through with funding to keep 16 of them open.

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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A tough ride into Sunset

Stacy Londo can see the annexation of Sunset Beach through two sets of eyes.

One is that of a concerned resident who wants to preserve the pace of life in her tranquil seaside neighborhood.

The other is a child’s.

Londo, who has lived in Sunset for 13 years, shares some of her neighbors’ wariness about the area’s August annexation by Huntington Beach. Like them, she worries that the long-unincorporated strip of Orange County will lose its offbeat vibe, and that the city may implement parking meters and other changes.

When she takes her 3-year-old son to the community playground by the beach, though, Londo can’t deny that annexation has brought a few welcome changes. In this case, they’re material ones: After Huntington took over Sunset, its Public Works Department removed the corroded equipment and put in new swings, a slide and more.

“At the end of the day, we’re excited to get it upgraded,” Londo said on a recent Monday as her son raced around the sand.

It has now been eight months since an Orange County Superior Court judge officially placed Sunset under Huntington’s control. In the two years before the decision, some in Sunset bitterly fought the move and even attempted to turn the neighborhood into its own city. An appeal of the annexation is winding its way through court.

But even as some Sunset residents fight the new taxes they pay every month, many find themselves in a position similar to Londo’s — finding the changes to the neighborhood minimal and, in some cases, welcome.

– Michael Miller, @MichaelMillerHB, Huntington Beach Independent

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O.C.’s ‘hidden minority’ celebrates Prop. 8 ruling

Same-sex couple Agustin Gonzalez, far left, and Roman Beltran, second from left, attend a rally hosted by the Orange County Equality Coalition and the Gay Neighbors, Families, and Friends of Santa Ana. The rally celebrated a federal court's ruling that could be a step toward overturning Proposition 8. It was held at Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana. (KEVIN CHANG, Daily Pilot / February 7, 2012)

Supporters of same-sex marriage called Tuesday’s federal court ruling negating Proposition 8 a step in the right direction while opponents argued that the will of California voters should stand.

“It is incredible, marvelous,” Newport Beach Dr. Jorge Rodriguez said of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to overturn the proposition on constitutional grounds. “I’m really reminded of that Martin Luther King quote that I love: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”

Rodriguez, a Laguna Beach resident who works at Orange Coast Medical Group, said that as a doctor he sees health problems, including depression, in patients who do not feel validated.

As someone “who’s in the people business,” he said he has noticed that “the wellness of society influences the wellness of the individual.”

– Lauren Williams, @lawilliams30, Daily Pilot

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Council OKs lifting ban on selling fireworks

The Huntington Beach City Council voted Tuesday to lift the ban on the usage and sale of safe-and-sane fireworks during the Fourth of July holiday for a trial period of two years, despite pleas from dozens of residents who flooded the City Council Chambers in opposition.

The vote also came despite the opinions of the police and fire chiefs, who both strongly opposed lifting the ban.

The council approved the ordinance with a 5-2 vote, with Councilwoman Connie Boardman and Councilman Joe Shaw dissenting.

“I’m going to work as hard as I can … to repeal it,” Boardman said.

Mayor Don Hansen introduced the proposal as his first item on the list as mayor and said he wanted Huntington Beach residents to enjoy the tradition of fireworks just like neighboring cities that allow it.

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Howard Jarvis Assn. supports Sunset Beach independence

A political watchdog group has joined forces with the Citizen’s Assn. of Sunset Beach in its appeal of a recent court decision regarding the community’s annexation to Huntington Beach.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which formed in 1978 to defend taxpayers’ rights, plans to prepare the briefs and oral arguments for the association’s appeal of Orange County Superior Court Judge Frederick P. Horn’s August decision to allow Huntington to annex the neighboring seaside community.

Association President Jack Markovitz said his group planned to file its appeal as soon as Horn issued a signed final judgment on the case. He expected the judgment within the coming days.

The Jarvis group’s founders, Howard and Estelle Jarvis, aided the passage of Proposition 13, which limits property taxes, in 1978, and the group supported Proposition 218, which grants residents the right to vote on new taxes, in 1996.

Proposition 218 became a point of contention during the court case over Sunset Beach, as the association claimed that it was unconstitutional to annex the neighborhood without letting residents vote on whether they would pay the same taxes as the rest of Huntington. The city argued that the taxes did not count as new because they were already in place before the annexation.

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Coast Guard calls off search for bodyboarder

Big waves near the Los Angeles-Orange County line could have claimed a bodyboarder. The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday called off a search for Jowayne Bindford, 24, of Long Beach. He went missing off Surfside, a gated enclave between Seal Beach and Sunset Beach.

Bindford, according to an alert from the Coast Guard, was last spotted on his board 200 yards offshore at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

A Coast Guard helicopter dispatched from Los Angeles and a response boat from Long Beach spent nine hours scouring Seal Beach, Sunset Beach and Huntington Beach. Bindford’s family kept vigil along the coast, according to the Orange County Register.

The Coast Guard said it would resume the search if new information about Bindford became available.

Eight- to 10-foot waves rolled into Huntington Beach and some sets reached 12 feet, said Dan Kaiahua, a Huntington Beach city lifeguard, who also warned of riptides.

The high tide prevented beachgoers from watching the surf from many spots and made access difficult for surfers in some spots, he said.

Another factor also kept crowds and the number of surfers to a minimum: school started this week in Huntington Beach.

– Lauren Williams contributed to this article.

Sunset now annexed, official says

Sunset Beach is now officially part of Huntington Beach, a spokesman for a county commission said Monday.

Benjamin Legbandt, a policy analyst for the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, said his group had filed paperwork with the county earlier in the day. The state will have to approve the paperwork as well, but Legbandt called that an administrative formality and said the annexation can be considered complete.

“We’ll probably send the notification to the affected agencies tomorrow,” he said.

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Sunset now annexed, official says