Surf City’s Main Drag : Beach Boulevard Changes Character as It Becomes the Major Thoroughfare of Huntington Beach

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  An almost imperceptible change takes place along Beach Boulevard as it stretches south past the San Diego Freeway.

From muffler shops, K mart stores and U-Haul lots, the scenery changes to professional buildings, lobster restaurants and a humongous sporting goods store covering nearly a city block. The landscape seems subtly more upscale here; the streets more hospitable and the shops more inviting.

And well they should, for this is Beach Boulevard’s closest equivalent to Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile--in this case 1 1/2 miles of leisure and retail establishments housing everything from Orange County’s oldest enclosed shopping mall to a neighborhood sports bar made famous by the recent capture there of a notorious accused murderer.

It is also the place where Highway 39 slides into Huntington Beach, the city most closely associated with Beach Boulevard’s 20-mile trek to the sea and where the road’s journey finally ends at the sand.

“It’s the main drag of Huntington Beach today,” said Jerry Person, former chairman of the city’s Historic Resources Board and an amateur historian. “Beach Boulevard brought people into the city to either visit or invest in property. It gave access to the beach itself and, from then on, people loved what they saw and began buying.”

Back in the 1940s and ‘50s this section of the road was called Huntington Beach Boulevard, a moniker that was later shortened to give the entire street its current name. And as the city evolved into a highly popular beach destination, the growth helped turn Beach Boulevard into a major thoroughfare.

“I came down Beach Boulevard so many times with my parents that I got pretty bored with it,” recalls Rick Rowe, 48, a professor of history at Golden West College who grew up in Pasadena but spent summers with his family at the beach. “I remember seeing signs in 1955 advertising homes for veterans at $13,999 with $1 down. Then you’d hit the beach and see the Spanish-tiled restrooms and know that you’d arrived.”

Travelers along the boulevard today, though unlikely to see such signs, will probably see enough else to stave off boredom. Miles of expansive sidewalks are lined with the creations of California commerce. And one of the first to be encountered by the southbound traveler is the Huntington Beach Mall--formerly Huntington Center--located on the west side of the street just south of the freeway.

This was the earliest enclosed mall in Orange County. Built in 1966, it came at the beginning of a revolution in retail marketing that eventually changed the face of Southern California and profoundly affected the way people spend their leisure and shopping time.

Today the mall, consisting of 940,000 square feet and 106 retail spaces, stands as a sort of monument to how things were. In an age when shopping malls have become elaborate architectural mazes of glass, water and space, this one retains the simplicity and modesty of its original design. Having undergone only one major modification in its history, the mall features the same three department stores--J.C. Penney’s, Montgomery Ward and the Broadway--with which it opened 27 years ago. A Mervyn’s was added in 1986, along with an upstairs food court under skylights.

And mall owners recently announced a multimillion-dollar face lift to be completed by November that will provide new skylights and energy-efficient lighting.

Yet the mall retains a neighborhood atmosphere that has attracted a loyal cadre of regulars.

“It reminds me of the malls I grew up with,” said Jean Traband, 21, who describes the shopping center as one of the regular “hangouts” to which she brings her four-month-old daughter, Kathy, at least four times a week. “I like the feel of it; I used to go to malls like this with my mom when I was little.”

Said Helen Allen, 89, who lives nearby and has been shopping here for 23 years: “It’s smaller than other malls. I’ve been coming here so long that everything’s familiar.”

A little more than a mile down the road from the mall, people enjoy the feeling of familiarity at a different type of establishment.

Patrons of the Centerfield Sports Bar & Grill near Holland Street like to think of the place as the Cheers of Beach Boulevard. Like its fictional television counterpart, the bar serves thirst-quenching drinks, features pool tables and offers customers an opportunity to watch sporting events on television.

“We get our share of the ‘Norms,’ ” says general manager Stoney Mayock, referring to the affable unemployed accountant, who warmed bar stools with his buddy Cliff, the postal worker, on the award-winning television series. “It a place where everybody knows your name.”

Recently, however, the Centerfield attracted a one-time postal worker of a different ilk whose name and face proved to be too well-known for his own good. He was Mark Richard Hilbun, the man accused of killing two people and wounding five others in a two-day rampage that began at the Dana Point post office. Hilbun’s brief stop at the Centerfield, where police captured him on May 8, put the bar briefly in the national media spotlight and has since turned it into a minor tourist attraction.

“It was unwanted attention,” Mayock acknowledged, “but it worked out well for us.”

An alert customer noticed the fugitive Hilbun drinking at the bar and raised an alarm. For three weeks afterward, Mayock said, business was up about 10%. And nearly three months later, according to Centerfield employees, at least five new customers per week are still asking where Hilbun sat and what he drank.

“People are curious,” said Kelly McCullough, director of marketing. “They want to drink the same thing he did.” (It was a vodka cocktail.)

Contrary to published reports, employees insist, the bar never sold special drinks called “postal shooters” or hawked T-shirts bearing the slogan “We Serve Killer Drinks.” They do, however, intend to commemorate the historic collaring with a collection of newspaper clippings to be permanently affixed to a wall, McCullough said. And, she said, if Hilbun is convicted, the bar will treat area postal workers to a special banquet at which the government’s $25,000 reward for Hilbun’s capture will be distributed to its rightful claimants--the customer and the bartender who called police.

“It’s unfortunate what happened before Hilbun came here,” McCullough said, “but the aftermath was positive” for the bar.

It’s just another example of life along Beach Boulevard, a street on which just about anything can happen. Take, for example, the peculiar location of a couple of fast-food restaurants. A Burger King is situated on one side of the street; diagonally across from it is a Jack-In-The-Box. And the tiny cross street between them? None other than MacDonald.

“It’s embarrassing when people call for directions,” admits Gail Haddad, the manager at Jack-In-The-Box. “We just tell them we’re between Edinger and Heil.”