It’s about equidistant from north Orange County and San Diego (though technically it’s in Orange County, but at the very southern tip.) It’s a quaint, nice surf town, but the difference is that it seems like its own “county”, if you will. It doesn’t feel like either anything that’s part of Orange County nor north San Diego county. It feels a bit like a smaller Santa Barbara thrown down south.

(Granted, it helps that one of my favorite rock acts, Fu Manchu, hail from here.)