NEWPORT BEACH — For decades, when surfers broke their boards, they would lay them to rest in one of the city's metal beach Dumpsters with fins protruding like a tombstone — a symbol of their hard-charging ways and the ocean's ultimate force.
Come Monday, surfers will have one less way to show off just how gnarly they are.
Newport Beach plans to replace its beach bins with new covered plastic containers. A private company will provide and empty them, and city officials say they'll save money in the long run.
While officials are happy with the contractor's performance during a pilot program, some residents are jarred by the change in the visual landscape and worry that lazy beach visitors won't lift their lids.
"The program has been well received, and the contractor, Rainbow Disposal, is doing a great job," Mark Harmon, Newport's director of operations, wrote in an e-mail.
Newport has been testing the new receptacles between the Newport Pier and the Santa Ana River Jetties since January, and earlier this month it announced that the pilot program was successful and that the other beaches would get the bins April 4.