NEWS
By Sarah Peters | May 1, 2012
The bungee-style trampoline amusement ride at the Balboa Fun Zone must find a new home at the start of the summer season, the ride's co-owner said Tuesday. RocknBounce co-owner Richard Baranoski, who operates the trampoline with his wife, said that he was notified Friday that the month-to-month lease held by the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum would not be renewed beyond June 24. "I understand that the museum is doing their thing, and they're making changes," Baranoski said.
NEWS
By Sarah Peters | March 16, 2012
ExplorOcean, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum's ambitious interactive exhibit, could be completed in as little as five years, the organization's president said this week. President Rita Redaelli Stenlund led a presentation hosted by Speak Up Newport at the Newport Yacht Club on Wednesday night as part of the museum's efforts for the 34,000-square-foot attraction next to the Balboa Fun Zone. "Once we moved here, we not only felt a commitment to the mission of the museum, but we also realized the responsibility we have to the community for residing in this spot," Stenlund said of museum, which bought property on the Balboa Peninsula in 2006.
NEWS
By Sarah Peters | February 15, 2012
The sale of the Balboa Fun Zone carousel, which was expected to land the iconic ponies in the Westminster area by spring , has fallen through, the owner said. Buyers informed Fun Zone Rides owner Patrick Moore that the purchase of the carousel, which had been listed for $149,999 on eBay back in August, would no longer be possible following the collapse of a redevelopment project that was to be the ride's new home. Redevelopment projects statewide have fallen apart after Sacramento decided to keep funding in state coffers.
ENTERTAINMENT
By John Depko and Susanne Perez | February 2, 2012
Sometimes the title of a movie tells you all you need to know about it. "Man on a Ledge"is in that category. Sam Worthington stars and spends most of his screen time as a mysterious man standing outside the 21st floor of a New York hotel, threatening to jump. Elizabeth Banks is the pretty blond detective who tries to talk him out of his suicide mission. The story starts as a police procedural familiar to viewers of TV cop shows. But it quickly enters the realm of a far-fetched caper flick.
NEWS
By Amy Senk, Corona del Mar Today | January 26, 2012
NEWPORT BEACH — The City Council on Tuesday decided that a proposed ordinance to formally adopt the state's new Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map was too puzzling and needed more public input. "Right now, even with this discussion, I'm still a little confused," Mayor Nancy Gardner said after a presentation about the maps at the council study session. About 5,000 Newport Beach homes fall within the state's Very High Fire Hazard Severity Map Zone, which includes homes along Buck Gully and Morning Canyon and stretches from Orchid down to Crystal Cove, with most of Newport Coast also is included.
NEWS
By Jim Carnett | January 9, 2012
Following a transpacific flight of breathtaking dimensions — we took off on a Thursday and landed on a Saturday — and a day and a half of driving up Australia's Highway 1, we arrived for dinner at a little pub. My dad and I were traveling together to celebrate his retirement. The pub was in Queensland's beautiful subtropical coastal city of Mackay. On our plates, two huge oversized fried eggs greeted us, along with a heaping slab of ham, a plump, oily sausage, and two strips of greasy bacon.
NEWS
November 21, 2011
Wow! The Daily Pilot hit it out of the park. Patrice Apodaca's Nov. 12 column, "Protesters did it right at Balboa," was indeed inspiring. The young lady who put this function together is a unique and great individual. Thank you. I concur with these young activists. I was 3 months old when my dad moved our very large family from Garden Grove to Costa Mesa, and he became a famous farmer on the Westside. I have wonderful memories of the Fun Zone. Between my junior and senior year at Newport Harbor High School, I was a live-in nanny on Bay Island and often took my little munchkin in her stroller to the Fun Zone.
NEWS
November 16, 2011
When the discussions about the replacement of the Balboa Fun Zone with ExplorOcean first appeared in the Daily Pilot, my wife and I followed it with interest, but I didn't feel compelled to write until I read the Sunday editorial, "Museum should pay homage to old Fun Zone. " My wife, Shirley, and I designed the renovated Fun Zone while living in a garage-over apartment on Sapphire Avenue on Balboa Island in the early 1980s. We took the ferry across to site meetings. It was a magical time for us. In designing the Fun Zone, history and context were key design elements.
NEWS
November 15, 2011
Would you like to have your favorite childhood place taken away from you and made into a museum? If you answered no, then you know how we and many other people feel about the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum exhibit that is proposed for a portion of the Balboa Fun Zone. The $40-million exhibit will take the place of the Balboa Candy Store and many other buildings with extraordinary history. The people behind ExplorOcean claim they will recreate everything that they destroy, but they cannot bring back memories.
NEWS
November 12, 2011
We understand and respect preservationists' desire to restore a key section of the Balboa Fun Zone to the grandeur of its heyday. We too miss the Scary and Dark Ride, the bumper cars, the merry-go-round and other amusements on the site where the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum plans to build its ambitious ExplorOcean exhibit. And we applaud the Corona del Mar High School students who took their opinions to the Fun Zone a week ago to protest the museum's expansion plans. We'd like to see more young people involved in civic activism.