Beach

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- So long, 7-Up. Get lost, Mountain Dew. And don't even think about trying to buy that contraband Pepsi here.This is Coca-Cola country.After having frozen police officers' salaries the past six years and cut back street sweepings from twice to once a month, Huntington Beach leaders are taking the unusual step of essentially offering their city as a billboard to Coca-Cola to balance their budget. The City Council has agreed to make Coke the official drink of this seaside resort.

OCEAN CITY -- The first sure signs of summer began cropping up in Maryland's seaside resort this week -- palm trees.Just in time for the arrival this weekend of a couple hundred thousand vacationers primed for the traditional opening of the beach season, landscapers have been plopping the trees beside bars, restaurants and hotels."

Never mind El Nino. It's summertime and that means on thing: head to the beach.Lounging in a chair, dig your toes into the sand and listen to the waves. For a little while at least, problems seem small and manageable: which magazine to read next, how much sunscreen to apply, what to wear later?The sun-and-surf life has its own style. You reveal a bit more - and relax about it. Tube tops are back. Halters don't seem as if they're only for the young.Perhaps you wouldn't dare wear a bikini at home.

Grab the sand toys, masks and fins. It's time to hit the beach. With more than 40 to choose from on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, each with plenty of white sand, secluded coves and some of the best snorkeling anywhere, the only question-of-the-morning is which beach?Do we opt for Trunk Bay with its friendly National Park ranger lifeguards and just-offshore underwater snorkeling trail marked by white buoys and underwater signs identifying the different kinds of coral and fish? Do we head to Cinnamon Bay Beach, home to the popular campground and the longest, widest beach on the island?

OCEAN CITY -- The chunky young man portraying Jesus was just beginning to rise from the dead when the faithful gathered for the play on the beach began to applaud him. Before he could fully return to life, though, a wavering red dot appeared on his groin area, flitted like a lightning bug and then landed on his forehead.Suddenly, instead of reverence in the midst of "Jesus on the Beach Week," there was a titter and a few giggles. A kid armed with a laser pointer had struck again.Nobody, it seems, not even a man portraying Jesus, is being spared the wrath of the newest fad on the beach, the bullet-sized, red-dot-throwing laser pens that may have become as common on the Eastern Shore as sunburn.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton blocked an American Airline pilots strike this morning ...There's another way to tell this story.Once upon a time -- last October, to be exact -- Patricia Dodd's fairy-tale begins with an invitation: Want to go to a tropical island?How exciting. Marilyn Beach has invited Dodd and another friend, Barbara Jones, to enjoy a vacation at Beach's timeshare property in the Dominican Republic. The three friends will have the week of their lives.Dodd declines. It sounds expensive; work is demanding; this probably isn't the best time.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Maryland midfielder Keith Beach was trying to drill his shot, but he was perfectly content to watch his game-winner trickle into the net.Beach scored in the 68th minute and Jason Cropley added an insurance goal 10 minutes later to give the fourth-ranked Terps a 2-0 nonconference win over host George Mason yesterday.Goalkeeper Andy Kirk was called on for only two saves, but both were crucial as the Terps (8-1-1) won their third straight in beating GMU (7-4-1) for the first time in six tries (1-4-1)

In the past, Jeff McFadden could stand on a pier at Hatton Memorial Beach off Sullivan Cove and admire the abundance of wildlife and vegetation, but vines and trash have overrun the Severna Park beach."

MY HUSBAND and I have vacationed every year of our married life at exactly the same spot on the Atlantic Ocean.I have tried to persuade him to visit a new section of beach -- something farther north or farther south -- but each year he repeats that he is not a "changer," the unspoken codicil being that this trait bodes well for me as his wife.He has also pointed out, quite accurately, that 10 or 12 hours in an overstuffed station wagon with the battling pre-adolescents we travel with would be no one's idea of vacation.

"Run, run, run. Get off the beach. Get off the beach." These frenzied thoughts flashed through the mind of Pvt. Allen R. Matthews, who was in the first wave of Marines to land on Iwo Jima on the morning of Feb. 19, 1945. ". . . They are sighting in on the beach and they'll get you as sure as hell. . . . Get off the beach and run."But to Private Matthews' surprise, he couldn't run. His legs sank into brown volcanic ash up to his calves. It was as loose as sugar. Men were staggering and falling all around him, and "the beach sand spouted up like black water from a geyser.

DUNEDIN, Fla. -Caladesi beach is a secret getaway in Florida, an undiscovered gem. That's what I wanted to tell you, but honestly, I can't. Why? The secret's out. Way out. Since Caladesi Island State Park beach near Tampa/St. Petersburg was named the best beach in the United States last year, the hordes have descended. "The first month, oh, man, it was insane," says park ranger Carl Calhoun, who hasn't seen anything like it in 25 years of working on the island. "It used to be slightly remote.

OCEAN CITY - For the first time in its 50-year history, the Castle in the Sand Hotel in Ocean City is rolling back its rates. This summer, rooms will cost the same as in 2006, saving guests about $20 a night. "We just recognize that it's a tough time for everybody," general manager Carol Dickel said in an interview at the hotel with its trademark crenelated tower. Dickel says she has never been more "apprehensive" in her 14 years on the staff. Bookings for the summer have been decent but are softer than last year, and 2008 was hardly a banner season for the hotel - or for the town's vital hospitality sector.

BREWSTER YALE BEACH, 83 Traced his ancestry to Associated Press founder The Rev. Brewster Yale Beach, who presented proof that the Associated Press originated two years earlier than the date previously accepted by historians and the news cooperative itself, died in his sleep Tuesday in a nursing home in Staatsburg in upstate New York, said his wife, Sandra. Mr. Beach was an Episcopal priest and psychotherapist who traced his ancestry to the founder of the AP. His great-great-grandfather, Moses Yale Beach, was the second owner-publisher of the New York Sun, whose innovative idea for an alliance of New York newspapers sharing Mexican War dispatches in 1846 led to the creation of the news service.

You love the beach. You hate the drive: two and a half hours - assuming you don't get caught in weekend traffic - of cornfields and chicken farms, soybeans and cemeteries, bait shops and outlet malls. Whether you are zigzagging your way to the beaches of Delaware via Route 404 or following the sweeping arc of U.S. 50 to Ocean City, you find yourself numbed by the sameness of it all, cursing the time it takes and wishing you were there. It is for you, harried beach traveler, that we present this handy Clip 'n' Save Q & A, a digest of some of the quirks, curiosities, landmarks and lore that exist along the road to the beach.

SAN DIEGO -- The beachcombers lie belly-down on the sand, enjoying the cool breeze and calm waters of a small beach in La Jolla, a rocky outcropping here flush with mansions and money. But these lollygags have not left in more than a decade. At least 100 and sometimes upward of 200 sprawl out, taking over the sand and water. It is generally agreed that the intruders - being harbor seals and all - are cute and that they do not seem to be going anywhere. But their antics - including some of the females giving birth right there on the sand - are driving some people crazy.

Seventy Julys ago, two international diplomats lent a bit of exotic flavor to the community of Bay Ridge. In 1936, The Sun reported, an Egyptian and a Soviet diplomat stayed just a few beach blocks away from each other, frequently entertaining other ambassadors from Washington who joined them for a swim or tennis set. Yet their styles were a striking contrast. As The Sun noted, "Bay Ridge residents observed, at one extreme, the gregarious Egyptian Mohamed Amine Youssef, moving around the beach in his blue-striped `summer pajamas,' chatting with everyone, knowing all the children by their first names.

DURBAN, South Africa // He strode onto the elevator at the oceanfront hotel with his recalcitrant preteen son in tow, and it was obvious that Dad thought his young charge needed a severe attitude adjustment, even if the two of them were dressed for the beach. That's hardly a novel scene anywhere in the world, especially when family vacation nerves have reached the fraying point. But the father didn't haul out a variation of "I'm going to turn this car right around." Instead, the man - who seemed to be of South African Indian descent - lectured him that if everyone in the country had had such a nonchalant, don't-care sensibility, they would still be living under the heavy hand of racial apartheid.

IT IS A FREQUENTLY REPORTED statistic in the study of how Americans spend their leisure time. (Yes, people actually have jobs where they study people who are not working.) That is, American workers have fewer vacation days -- only about 14 -- than their counterparts in other industrialized nations, but they don't use them all. According to a recent report in Time magazine, the average American will fail to use about four vacation days. That adds up to about 574 million days a year, Time reported.

To: Keith Richards From: A Concerned Fan Subject: Suggested Beach Activities Whoops is right. You gave us a scare with your tree-climbing stunt in Fiji. Who knows what inspired you - a 62-year-old former heroin addict who some claim died years ago (leaving only your skeleton to walk the earth) - to scale, then fall, from a coconut tree after reportedly enjoying both vodka and rum. You suffered a mild concussion and underwent an operation to drain blood from your head, and that's almost never a fun beach activity.

Barefoot at last, I delight in the freedom of walking in the cool sand in search of the perfect spot to drop anchor -- my anchor being an oversized tote bag filled with the necessities for a day lazing on a glorious stretch of beach on Block Island, R.I. The beach is peppered with passengers from the first ferry of the day to arrive from New London, Conn. -- my fellow shipmates who came directly to the beach. I, however, first stop briefly at the petting zoo to admire a camel from afar and pet a docile donkey.