MTV’s “Laguna Beach” Spawns Reality Show Tourism

The Southern California town of Laguna Beach has always attracted its share of tourists, but it’s getting plenty more now, thanks to the MTV reality show Laguna Beach. The interest is so great, in fact, that the Laguna Beach Visitors & Conference Bureau has issued a guide to the show’s key spots (not available online).

I lived in Orange County - excuse me, “The O.C.”—for a year while working as a reporter there, well before the show began. I visited Laguna often and loved it. So I was curious about the impact of the show on the small town.

After hunting around unsuccessfully on the Web for a good article about it - I found an L.A. Times story that touches on MTV-related tourism - I decided to put my OC reporter hat back on for old time’s sake and dial up a couple of shops on the bureau’s list.

Pomodoro Italian restaurant manager Olmo Carmona told me the show’s characters have eaten in the restaurant twice, which was more than enough to put the restaurant on the fans’ radar.

“We get phone calls from people who ask, ‘Is this the Pomodoro from the TV show?’” he said. “It has really boosted business considerably. It seems that any family passing through town who has kids in high school stops by.”

Carmona expected to see a decline in business at the end of summer, but it hasn’t happened this year.

“I think that’s because of the show,” he said.

Michelle Ngo, who runs Beautiful Nails, where the characters have had manicures, was equally delighted.

“The last two months we’ve seen people come in from Boston, Minnesota, Hawaii, Texas,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of teenagers from the L.A. area. They take pictures and get their nails done.”

I can understand the businesses response. Not all residents are as enthusiastic.

One 24-year-old told the L.A. Times: ““We are a community that has stood for solid, meaningful principles ... art, culture, the environment, quality of life, education. By contrast, MTV glorifies violence, drug abuse, the objectification of women as sexual objects, alcohol abuse, superficiality and a raft of other negative issues.”

It’s a raft that has brought a boatload of new visitors to Laguna Beach.

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