The Corona del Mar Local's August: Why Dahlia Avenue Is Quietly Running the Village This Month

Ask a visitor what to do in Corona del Mar in August and they will point at the sand. Ask someone who has lived here through five summers and the answer moves inland by exactly one block.

The claim of this post is small and specific. For the four weeks between now and Labor Day, the social calendar of the village is not being set by the restaurants on East Coast Highway or by the crowd at Big Corona. It is being set by a 2.2-acre garden at 2647 East Coast Highway, and everything else is scheduling itself around it.

The Watch Dogs on Dahlia

The main entrance to Sherman Library & Gardens has moved to the Dahlia Avenue corner while the grounds are being reimagined, and if you have not been through the gate since spring, you have missed the reason to. The annual Summer Art Installation this year features larger-than-life sculptures by mixed-media artist Elizabeth Laul Healey, who hails from Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar and has fabricated more than 250 of these pieces; Sherman has six of her most popular on display.

Healey's art has been shown across the United States and Mexico and collected in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. She calls this collection "Watch Dogs" because each piece contains at least one timepiece, her signature mark, and the life-sized (or larger) dogs are built from glass, mosaic tiles, and found objects over a foam and metal base.

Two numbers matter here for planning purposes. The exhibit runs through September 7 and is free with regular garden admission. A $5 garden entrance fee applies per guest, even if you are only there to eat at the restaurant. That is the entire cost of the ticket for what has become, for practical purposes, the neighborhood's outdoor museum this summer.

Two Dates to Circle Before Labor Day

Sherman is not just hosting the show. It is running a parallel calendar of ticketed nights on top of it, and two of them fall inside the month.

Friday, August 7, 5 to 7 p.m. — Yappy Hour. These are after-hours ticketed events where patrons bring their leashed dogs into the gardens for a drink and conversation while touring the art exhibition; water stations, complimentary waste bags, and dog treats are stationed throughout. If you own a dog in this village, this is the low-stakes version of a neighborhood mixer, and it exists exactly once more this summer.

Saturday, August 15, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. — Petals & Pistons Car Show. The garden opens early for a show that pairs mechanical craftsmanship with the horticulture, with food and beverages available for purchase. A car show inside a botanical garden is an unusual pairing, and it is the sort of thing that will not translate onto Instagram; you have to be there while the light is still low on the pavers.

The Two Nights That Are Not at Sherman

Two more evenings this month are worth putting on the calendar, and both sit within a mile of the gate.

Thursday, August 20, 6 p.m. — the Friends of Farmhouse 10th Anniversary Dinner at 2301 San Joaquin Hills Road. Farmhouse at Rogers Gardens has spent a decade as one of the more quietly booked reservations in this pocket of the county, and a tenth-anniversary dinner is the sort of hyperlocal ticket that tends to fill through word of mouth before it reaches wider notice.

Sunday, August 23 — Candlelight: Tribute to Queen and The Beatles at 5:30 p.m., and Candlelight: Coldplay vs. Imagine Dragons at 8:15 p.m., both at The Resort at Pelican Hill. Two shows in one night at the same venue is unusual programming for CdM proper. If you have been putting off trying a Candlelight, back-to-back options in your own zip code is the excuse.

Restaurant Row, Read Sideways

The East Coast Highway restaurant map has not changed dramatically, but the way it should be read in August has. The exhibit at Sherman closes at 4 p.m. most days, which puts an early-evening bottleneck on the four or five obvious tables between MacArthur and Poppy. A quick reset of the row:

The read for August: if you are pairing dinner with the Watch Dogs, book Bandera or Foretti's for the 5:30 slot and walk down after. If you are doing Yappy Hour on the 7th, SideDoor's fireplace room is a five-minute drive and a natural landing. If you are doing the car show on the 15th, you already have breakfast handled inside the gates.

The Morning Move: 872 Poppy Avenue

If any of the above sounds like too much programming, there is a quieter answer three blocks south of the Sherman gate. The traditional Buck Gully Trail trailhead sits at 872 Poppy Avenue and is the only end of the trail that offers parking. The reserve is a 300-acre natural habitat connecting Corona del Mar and Newport Coast.

There are no bathrooms at the trailhead or on the trail, but the City of Newport Beach directs visitors to the restrooms at the nearby OASIS Senior Center. Mountain bikes share the trail but are permitted only one direction, uphill, so they never come up behind you at speed. The trail runs a 5.1-mile out-and-back with roughly 500 feet of elevation gain, which reads as a shaded creek walk in the morning and a sun-exposed slog by noon. Locals go before 8. In August, that is not optional.

A Note on the Christmas Walk

While you are looking at the fall calendar, one item is worth pre-loading. The 47th Annual Corona del Mar Christmas Walk returns Saturday, December 6, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., a decades-old community event that fills the village with thousands for the day. Parking on the Walk requires a plan. If you own here and have not sorted it before, ask a neighbor who has done it five years running.

What I Would Tell a Neighbor

The thesis of this post, restated for anyone skimming: the center of gravity in the village this August is not on the sand. It is inside a garden that most residents drive past twice a day without stopping. There are six sculptures in it that will be gone on September 7, a car show on the fifteenth that will not repeat in this format, and two Friday-night events on the calendar that read like private neighborhood functions until you learn they are not.

Restaurants will still be here in October. The Watch Dogs will not.

If you are thinking further ahead than dinner reservations, and you want to talk through what a home on the Poppy side of the village or up on the Cameo bluffs actually looks like in this cycle, Zach Mickelson knows the streets and the numbers behind them. Book an Appointment when the exhibit closes and you are ready to move on to the bigger conversation.