Readers’Picks

Best Surf Spot

Asilomar Beach

Sunset Drive, Pacific Grove

Back in 1973, Allan “Bank” Wright published Surfing California, a book that described all of California’s popular surf breaks from Tijuana Sloughs to Crescent City. Even though publishing the book today would probably result in a prolonged hospital stay for the author courtesy of angry locals, the book still contains an accurate description of some of California’s best surf breaks. Wright includes two large pictures of sizeable waves feathering back from offshore winds at Asilomar Beach. In the text, Wright describes consistent peaks on a half-mile of sandy beach and enthuses that “winter has the juice!” After all these years, Monterey County Weekly readers agree that Wright is still right: Asilomar Beach has the juice. [ST]

 

Best Local Female Athlete (TIE)

Maria Perez

Alexis Waddel

This year, three-time all-league shooting guard Maria Perez finished third in the MBL scoring (256 with 11.6 per game); second in rebounds (171 with 7.8 per game), and third in assists (45 with two per game). In other words, the 5’8” Monterey High School senior was on fire. Despite the Toreadors’ recent first round loss in Division III of the CCS playoffs, Perez was recently named to the Gilroy Mustang Classic All-Tournament Team.

Alexis Waddel is a top-ranked triathlete with her sights on the 2004 Olympics. Influenced by her parents, who were both triathletes, she ran her first triathlon event at the age of nine. Last summer, she won the women’s race at the Veracruz ITU International Triathlon in Mexico to qualify her for the Olympic trials this year. The Olympic trials will be held on the island of Oahu April 18 and in Bellingham, Wa., sometime in June. Go Waddel! [RM]

 

Best Local Male Athlete

Jose Celaya

Straight out of Salinas, Jose Celaya is the county’s premier pugilist. As the World Boxing Organization’s No. 1 contender, the immensely talented welterweight is currently 21-1 with 10 knockouts and poised for The Big Time. Having parted ways with his previous management in January, Celaya now trains with mentor/advisor and boxing legend “Sugar” Shane Mosley.

Celaya is next scheduled to headline a May 15 card at the San Jose State University Events Center. So how far could Celaya go? Mosley, who knows a thing or two about the sweet science, says Jose is one of the top world-class fighters out there right now, and firmly believes he’ll be a world champion. [RM]

 

Best Sex Symbol

Clint Eastwood

For the love of God, dear readers, can’t you find someone else, preferably under the age of 60, whom you consider a sex symbol? Sure, Clint is a super-talented filmmaker, one of the all-time great American actors, and a former mayor who moonlights as a developer. But how is it that year after year, the Weekly’s readers choose him as the sexiest local? We’ve got plenty of beautiful, sexy people here in Monterey County—surfer boys and girls, hottie bartenders, hell, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston even own a home in Carmel. Aren’t they sex symbolish enough for your collective liking? (Note to Brad and Jen: if you’re reading this, we here at the Weekly think you’re both the apex of sexiness. Yup, we’d do either of you. Or both.) Face it, once you hit 63, things start to sag a bit, even if you are Clint Eastwood himself. C’mon, readers! There’s gotta be someone else out here who lifts your skirts. Please? [JL]

 

Best Place to Bike

Monterey Recreation Trail

Better than a triple grande cinnamon nonfat no-whip mocha: riding a bike to work on the Monterey Recreation Trail is the best way to wake up in the morning. Passing by some of the best points of interest on the Peninsula, including Lovers Point Park, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Cannery Row, the Wharf, the underrated Municipal Wharf and miles of coastline, it is hard to get to work on time with so much to see. In addition, quirky trailside eateries like the Cannery Row Delicatessen and the Trailside Café provide other delays for morning commuters. If you have an inflexible boss, you might want to save the Rec Trail for your next day off. [ST]

 

Best Hangout For Little Kids

Dennis The Menace Park

Del Monte and El Estero, Monterey

Hands down, Dennis the Menace boasts the best playground in Monterey County. Aside from the usual equipment, like the swings, the boring—err, we mean, traditional—slide and monkey bars, it’s got a glut of really cool features. Like a lion’s-mouth water fountain, a real-life Southern Pacific Locomotive (No. 1285) for the young ’uns’ climbing enjoyment, a labyrinth made of shrubbery that leads to a ripping corkscrew slide, and a twin steel-faced slide, perfect for racing side by side, not to mention a grassy lawn around the lake, a skate park and paddleboat rentals. It’s fun for big kids, too, especially those inclined to hog the play equipment, because, hey, you’re bigger than everyone else here. [JL]

 

Best Place for A First Date

Nepenthe

Highway 1, Big Sur, 29 miles south of Carmel 667-2345

This is a little bit of advice if you are headed all the way to Nepenthe for a first date: Do not just drive straight there. It has nothing to do with Nepenthe, which is a very cool place and boasts one of the most scenic outdoor decks short of Heaven. It’s not just a restaurant, it’s like an eagle’s nest, an aerie. The reason for not just getting in the car, picking up a sixer and your date, driving down there and then just getting out of the car, is that everything tastes better when you are hungry and thirsty. So, if you are going to be near Nepenthe and it happens, just happens to be a first date, work up a sweat first somewhere in Big Sur. Go for a walk, a hike or a run. Go to the beach. Go to Andrew Molera Park and wander around. Do something involving physical exertion, something active that gets the juices flowing, then go to Nepenthe and relax with a tall drink and a plate of the savory snacks. Being mutually bleary and ravished will make the senses come alive and give you something fresh to talk about as you gape at the Pacific and wonder about this person sitting across from you. [AS]

 

Best Place to Hold an Intelligent Conversation

Morgan’s Coffee and Tea

498 Washington St, Monterey 373-5601

Morgan’s, which you also named Best Coffeehouse, is under new ownership. But the place is home to the same crowd (and workers) as ever. And that’s good. Sitting outside sipping a latte or one of the lovely variety of teas Morgan’s offers, one is surrounded by high-school Goths, middle-aged neo-hipsters, guitar-playing hippies, partying DLI linguists, and college students working on laptops. It’s easy to strike up a conversation, and the variety of perspectives offered may expand one’s horizons, or at least give one a reason to come back. If there’s nobody to talk to, one can dip into the supply of books inside and have something to converse about next time. The personalized quotes, still lovingly maintained on the whiteboard just inside the door, also spark conversation, with their left-leaning, Bush-hating slant. Morgan’s is a place where people come to be who they are, and that makes for some fascinating chatter. [KF]

 

Best Example of Government Waste

Fort Ord

There is a lot to like about Fort Ord today. If you know where to go, there are miles of secluded trails ideal for running, biking and hiking. In the most remote parts, you may be lucky enough to come across a bobcat, or a huge deer or a couple of feisty wild turkeys. It’s sort of a mysterious place, too, with huge fenced-off sections you can’t go, rows and rows of ghost-town barracks, watchtowers no one is watching from anymore. There’s a university there now and that’s good, too. But there are large-scale plans to develop Fort Ord—some already in motion—that have nearly nothing to do with pressing local needs for, you guessed it, affordable housing.

Local politicians bristle at the notion that it’s free land, claiming that it’s so expensive to clear. They claim they’re not giving away all that expensive public land, they’re not enriching out-of-town developers. They say they’re helping their communities by bringing in a demographic with “disposable income.” Well, this area already has plenty of people like that. Where is the political will to actually do the right thing at Fort Ord and use public land for the public? [AS]

 

Best Golf Hole

18th At Pebble

Pebble Beach Golf Course

It’s not the toughest closing hole in golf, not even close. The 18th at Pebble Beach began its career as a simple 325-yard par four, then became a par five in 1922. Throughout the decades, changes such as trees maturing, others dying, new ones planted or replanted, varying tee boxes and erosion-fighting adjustments, have all contributed to the continually evolving sculpture of the hole. There have been few riveting finishes at this normally three-approach-shot green; actually, the par three 17th has more often been the setting for great golf drama. But poll every golfer on earth, regardless of their skill level, and ask them what’s the one golf hole they would play if it were to be their last…there’s only one answer. [RN]

Editors’Picks

Best Place To Chill Out

The Outer Bay Exhibit at The Monterey Bay Aquarium

886 Cannery Row, Monterey 648-4888

Looking through one of the largest windows on the planet (54 feet long and 15 feet tall) into the tallest aquarium exhibit in the world is the closest one can get to diving without being wet. And in some ways it’s even better—we can’t take our 16-month-old son underwater. Populated with sea turtles, soupfin and hammerhead sharks, sunfish and barracuda, and, best of all, schools of bluefin and yellow-tail tuna, the gi-normous deep blue tank casts a soothing cobalt glow and chills me out within seconds.

The tuna are amazing, possibly the most magnificent fish in the sea. They’re huge and powerful and, in open water, fast as horses. When I’ve had enough of the pelagic aquarium, I switch to the jellyfish rooms. The lighting and music are perfect for an extended undersea trance. The dreamlike jellyfish drift like beautiful clouds, their ghostly machinery grinding away in their transparent heads. Your heart rate slows, the world falls away and you relax. [RM]

 

Best Golf Hole Nobody Gets To Play

16th At Cypress Point

As you meander along scenic 17 Mile Drive through the never-never land of Pebble Beach, there comes that point where the road leaves the shoreline and dips inland, past a quaint, clubby building on the right, a stretch of greenest green grass on the left and a hairpin right turn through trees that look like they came from the enchanted forest. An inconspicuous driveway marked “Members Only” greets you on the right hand side. Behind that cluster of trees, unaffordable housing and projected dreams of envy lies the sweetest golf hole nobody gets to play. It’s a long, long par three across another of the magnificent natural coves created by this majestic meeting of land and sea, a forced carry through wind and raging surf onto a green that juts out into the Pacific—at least that’s what we’ve been told. [RN]

 

Best Place To Take Flight (With Feet Firmly Planted)

Elkhorn Slough

Moss Landing

It doesn’t take a birder to appreciate Elkhorn Slough as one of the premier birdwatching sites in the western US. Nope, anyone with two fairly decent eyes will get this picture. More than 340 species visit or stay here, year round, including many rare and endangered species—the Brown Pelican, Snowy Plover and Peregrine Falcon, to name a few. The slough even holds the district title of “Globally Important Bird Area,” because it’s a key stopover for hundreds of thousands of migrating birds. Each year, thousands of birdwatchers from across the country come to Elkhorn Slough to check out the sea ducks, loons, grebes and gulls, in hopes of logging a rare bird sighting. We’re lucky because it’s our own backyard. Instead of flying by (in a car) why not slow down and spread your wings, so to speak. [JL]

 

Best Place to Steal a Kiss

Andrew Molera State Park

Highway 1, Big Sur 667-2315

Finding a small private place in which to create an outdoor love-fest without an audience can be a bit tough if you don’t know where to go. Look no further then Andrew Molera State Park. The park is not only home to some of the most beautiful wetlands and campsites, it also harbors one of the best places to secure some rare romantic privacy. Once you hike down to the beach in Molera you can look to the left and see a vast coastline peppered with secret beaches. All it takes is a quick jump over some of the rocks dividing them, a low tide, and some romantic inspiration eloquently provided by Mother Nature—and voila. [AB]

 

Best Place To Get your car creamed

Lighthouse Avenue, Downtown Pacific Grove

All right, I know Pacific Grove was originally designed as a Methodist Retreat, which explains its puritanically segmented grid, but I promise you the Devil had something to do with downtown. It’s a little slice of vehicular hell. The problem, of course, lies in the island of trees and parking spots that bisects the two opposing lanes of traffic. It obscures the presence of other cars trying to turn, cross or pull out. In fact, I think it gives drivers an excuse to be oblivious.

Crossing Lighthouse on 14th through 18th is like playing Frogger. You have to poke your nose out into the first lane and then either charge to the middle and deal with the dirty looks, make a full-throttled, heart-in-your-stomach charge all the way across, or just sit there and wait for an eternity. And crossing it by foot? Let’s just say you’d have an easier time parting the Red Sea. [RM]

 

Best Reason to Go Back to School

Professor David Clemens

Monterey Peninsula College

With a gutted budget and shrunken selection of classes, California public schools’ fiscal desperation sometimes makes it easier to feel like a client than a student. This is why David Clemens’ task is so important. In spite of tough financial circumstances, Monterey Peninsula College offers a range of Clemens’ English classes, which introduce the student to film, literature, and critical thinking concepts otherwise unavailable outside of a major four-year university. His reading list—a mixture of science-fiction, canonical literature, and dense postmodern theory a la Baudrillard —is like nothing else at MPC, and a refreshing change in the homogenous context of transfer requirement courses.

He belongs at Berkeley but—as a missionary bringing light to an unfriendly province—we need him here. [MB]

Readers Poll Winners

Best Place For A First Date

Nepenthe

Highway 1, Big Sur 667-2345

 

Best Place For Intelligent Conversation

Morgan’s Coffee & Tea

498 Washington St, Monterey 373-5601

 

Best Place For Mindless Chatter

Lallapalooza

474 Alvarado St, Monterey 645-9036

 

Best Architectural Treasure

Carmel Mission

3080 Rio Rd, Carmel 624-6846

 

Best Beach

Carmel City Beach

Carmel

 

Best Surf Spot

Asilomar State Beach

Pacific Grove

 

Best Golf Hole

Pebble Beach Golf Links 18th Hole

17 Mile Dr, Pebble Beach

 

Best Place To Watch The Sunset

Asilomar State Beach

Pacific Grove

 

Best Park For A Picnic

Lovers Point

Ocean View Avenue, Pacific Grove

 

Best Hiking Trail

Garland Ranch Regional Park

70 W. Carmel Valley Rd, Carmel Valley

 

Best Place To Bike

Rec Trail

Pacific Grove To Marina

 

Best Hangout For Little Kids

Dennis The Menace Park

Lake El Estero, Monterey

 

Best Hangout For Teens

Del Monte Center

Munras Avenue, Monterey

 

Best Hangout For Seniors

Sally Griffin Senior Center

700 Jewell Ave, Pacific Grove 375-4454

 

Best Volunteer Organization

Meals On Wheels

700 Jewell Ave, Pacific Grove 375-4454

and 229 Pajaro Dr, Salinas 758-6325

 

Best Place To Get Married

Lovers Point

Ocean View Avenue, Pacific Grove

 

Best Local Website

theksbwchannel.com

 

Best Radio Station

KPIG, 107.5FM

 

Best Radio DJ

Barry Brown, KWAV 97FM

 

Best TV News

KSBW (Action News 8)

 

Best TV Anchor

Dan Green, KSBW

(Action News 8)

 

Best Local Male Athlete

Jose Celaya

 

Best Local female Athlete (Tie)

Alexis Waddell

Maria Perez

 

Best Use Of Local Tax Dollars

Schools

 

Best Example Of Government Waste

Fort Ord

 

Best Local Politician

Sam Farr

 

Best Power Broker

Leon Panetta

 

Best Local Sex Symbol

Clint Eastwood

 

Best Local Do-gooder

Morley Brown

 

Best Local Event

First Night Monterey