by Garrison Frost

Not that people who live in the cities around Manhattan Beach need more reasons to hate the town and its people, but the tony beach community nonetheless seems intent on producing new ones on a regular basis. Oddly enough, the latest doozy comes in the form of a marketing message designed to appeal to the very same people it insults.

"Downtown Manhattan Beach: Just West of Ordinary."

That's what the banner says, and you can't miss it driving into downtown Manhattan Beach because it hangs right across Manhattan Beach Boulevard. The banner is part of a campaign by the downtown merchants association, which includes a website with the same message. And it's a good thing they hung the banner so high. If it weren't out of reach, visitors from nearby cities would certainly succumb to the impulse to stop their cars in the middle of the street and pull it down with their own hands.

Really, what were these people thinking? Why didn't they just hang a banner that said, "Just west of lame"? The effect would have been the same. Or maybe they should have just said, "You suck, now come buy our crap."

To truly understand the insult, of course, one must view this asinine marketing campaign in context. Manhattan Beach, after all, is the city that collectively blames others – those who live "east of extraordinary," presumably – for just about all of its problems. Indeed, it is these "ordinary" people who commit all the crime, drive down the test scores, crowd the local parks, cause traffic jams, speed down residential streets, take all the volleyball courts, ruin the surfing and generally make the town slightly less ideal for all the elites who have paid so much to live there.

Forget the fact that so many of those who live just east of Manhattan Beach are former residents who were priced out of their neighborhoods by predatory real estate agents. And forget that so many of these ordinary people are ones, like this author, who grew up in the city and attended school there, but happily left after the community became so cold, self-regarding and parochial that they just couldn't stand it anymore.

But more of that later. For now let's stay focused on the wisdom of an ad campaign that insults the very people to whom it wishes to appeal.

Defenders of this campaign might protest that it doesn't specifically target neighboring South Bay communities such as Torrance, Redondo Beach and Hawthorne. But given that this campaign is on banners, that argument doesn't fly. The only people likely to see the banners – and who we must consider its target audience – will be people who visit the downtown by car, bicycle or foot. And given that the bulk of these people live in or around Manhattan Beach, the campaign's message can only be interpreted locally and literally. And in case there's any confusion about this, the writers of this offending jingle have taken extra trouble to add the word "just" at the beginning of their tag. It's not "East of Ordinary." No, it is "Just East of Ordinary." If you are from Redondo Beach or Torrance, you know this sign is about you, and your first reaction (other than to look for someone to give the finger to) is to make up your mind not to spend a single dime in downtown Manhattan Beach.

So why pick a slogan that accomplishes the exact opposite of its stated intention? If you are familiar with Manhattan Beach's tendency toward self-infatuation, the answer is easy. Walking down the street, you can almost hear residents repeating "Quality of life, quality of life, quality of life ..." and "Small town atmosphere, small town atmosphere, small town atmosphere ..." These folks repeat this stuff so often that it seems they're desperate to believe it themselves. During election season, candidates in the city fight among themselves not to identify solutions to community needs, but rather to one-up each other on plans to preserve the city's "small town atmosphere" and "quality of life." Public officials are loath to discuss anything that might cast an unfavorable light on the city. Local newspapers are constantly pressured by the hundreds of real estate agents working the city to not print bad news. This is a city obsessed with talking about its property values and its school system and its views and its beaches. The downtown ad campaign might seem to be about attracting people to shop there, but really it is yet another example of the town stroking itself.

A few years ago, the county embarked on an ambitious project to replace beach sand that had eroded from the Redondo Beach shoreline with sand dredged from the Marina del Rey channel. The project involved digging up sand in Marina del Rey and shipping it by barge south to Redondo Beach. The entire project was scheduled to take a month or two. About a week into the project, a Manhattan Beach parent called the county to complain that the barge was making a lot of noise, so much that it was disturbing her children. Based on this complaint, the county sent its barges further out to sea, and the project took longer to complete. This story illustrates that at some point living in Manhattan Beach changed from being something one does – to being something one does to everyone else. Just recently, the school board went back on a handshake agreement made years ago with families of Redondo Beach that allowed students from the north end of the city to attend much closer Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach rather than travel much further to Redondo Union High School (perhaps those Redondo kids were too "ordinary.") Even before that the city created different rules for non-residents who wished to use the city's parks. Bold signs in just about every neighborhood warn off anyone who doesn't live there, and endless "No Left Turn" signs keep the riffraff from peeling off the main drag. They even hold their Fourth of July fireworks show in December so no one from outside the city will know about it. It certainly wasn't a Torrance resident who coined the phrase, "There's no life east of Sepulveda." Rarely does one encounter a whole community whose self-image depends so heavily on marginalizing its neighbors.

Manhattan Beach's downtown is a nice little commercial district, but it's far from extraordinary. Within a block of the offending banner, visitors will find a Starbucks, a Peet's, a Coffee Bean and a Noah's. Anchoring a major intersection a little further down the street is a giant Skechers store. There are a lot of nice little shops, but turnover is pretty rapid, and restaurants – trendy pasta and fish joints for the most part – come and go at about the same rate. A giant commercial development is going in on the main drag. Parking for the luxury SUVs is rare and expensive, and most of the people driving them reflect the populations near complete white homogeneity. The area is neither hip nor trendy. Precious little of note ever happens there. You can count the number of stories one reads in the Los Angeles Times each year about Manhattan Beach on one hand. And even fewer about downtown Manhattan Beach.

Extraordinary places don't need marketing campaigns, and they certainly don't need to insult neighboring communities in order to stand out.

(April 2, 2005)

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