California Coast 06: Balboa Fun Zone

Image Commentary

Set against a spectacular mid-winter sunset, the Balboa Penninsular in Newport Beach California, boasts a colorful history of revelry dating back to the late nineteenth century. Here we see the "Fun Zone", an area of rides, arcades and shops selling ice cream, candied apples and trinket souvenirs that has been at the heart of Newport's identity for a hundred years or so. The prominent building to the left is the Balboa Pavillion, where for ninety years or so there have been many dances, beauty pageants, charity balls and private parties. It is impossible to know just how many romances have begun - and ended - here. The centerpiece of the image is a small ferris-wheel whose bright whirling motion is balanced in a sort of dynamic tension with the dark and still silhouette of an egret on the end of the dock to the left of center.

Newport Bay is a wetland lagoon that now hosts thousands of small pleasure craft and some of the finest water-front homes in the entire western US. Balboa Peninsula in technical terms is described as a "spit": a long thin strip of sand-bank that separates a bay from open ocean. In this case the peninsular rarely reaches more than a few feet above sea level and only scores of yards wide. The lagoon developed at the end of the last ice age when melting ice-water raised sea level flooding many coastal river valleys such as this one. Thetechnical term for the is a "ria".