On seductive Highway 1 is the old single-arch Bixby Creek Bridge
Since the sixties, Clint Eastwood (San Francisco, 1930) has been an institution in big sur . Womanizer, hustler, successful actor, filmmaker, businessman, in 1986 he decided to introduce himself candidate for mayor of Carmel . Politics did not interest him in the least, but the city planning commission, in charge of respecting the typical design and construction of the area, had denied him permission to erect a commercial building next to the Hog's Breath Inn , of which he was a co-owner.
Too much glass and cement, they censored. To him, Dirty Harry . One afternoon over beers with his friends, he threw his full support behind whoever was running as the opponent of then-mayor Charlotte Townsend, a venerable sixty-something former librarian who had been in office for some time. "Why don't you introduce yourself?", they challenged him . She leaned on the bar, finished the drink, looked into space and in the voice of Constantino Romero thought: "Why not?". What she was clear about was that she couldn't lose. Him, Dirty Harry.
He hired the electoral adviser of ronald reagen , took expensive pre-election polls, embarked on a stressful campaign, he had tea in the houses of neighbors of the town who have seen the redwoods of California grow , he distributed jelly beans, he invested a fortune to access a position with a salary of $ 200 per month. The February 3, 1986 Los Angeles Herald-Examiner headlined: ‘Who Wants Dirty Harry for Mayor?’ (Who Wants Dirty Harry for Mayor?). For a while, skirt fuss and the .44 Magnum took a backseat to the movie star's life, busy as Clint was with Mrs. Townsend and the municipal elections.
Clint Eastwood won, of course. And the first thing he did was dismiss the members of the Planning Commission . The second, appoint a Commission with trusted people. In the media, Carmel was renamed 'Clintville' . But Clint Eastwood is not Dirty Harry: paradoxically, not even Eastwood's handpicked new Planning Commission approved the building he wanted to build.
Post Ranch Inn Restaurant
Carmel is a quiet, well-intentioned, boring seaside village . A snobbish point, with laws that have prohibited the sale of ice cream because it stains the sidewalks. When you walk through its streets you get the feeling that it has been ruled by a venerable sixty-something ex-librarian for decades. The building was finally built, but well into the nineties, when the actor was not the mayor. **It's called the 'Eastwood Building' (no kidding)**. It contrasts with the rest of the buildings on San Carlos Avenue due to its striking wooden façade.
I had coffee on the inner courtyard of the **Hog's Breath Inn** overlooking the Eastwood Building. The filmmaker is still the owner but no longer runs the hotel (He has a fancier property in Point Lobos, the **Mission Ranch Hotel**). The bar retains however a near-scale photo of Dirty Harry with his huge .44 Magnum pointed at you in the foreground.
The Nepenthe restaurant, opened in 1949 in front of 80 km of coastline
Big Sur is a 150 km stretch of coastline between San Simeon –where is the castle of the press tycoon William Randolph Hearst that inspired Orson Welles to set your tape 'Citizen Kane '– and carmel . Since Sequoia National Park There are two ways to get here. Both exceed three hours. One is to the north, parallel to Fresno , on a functional highway, with service stations and fast food restaurant chains that make you feel like you live in a loop that repeats itself over and over again, with the only consolation being running into a classic diner that will satisfy your hunger for american symbols. One of them is Ryan's Place , in The bathrooms , with its pancakes at breakfast, its hamburgers at dinner, the blonde and smiling waitresses, the swivel stools at the bar and the reserved ones of escay next to the windows.
The alternative route is to continue west Course to Cambria and drive along the coast to Carmel on the beautiful Highway 1 , with its cliffs and beaches and forests of wild perfumes. We doubt. in cholam , on the CA-41 S road that leads to the sea from the interior, James Dean was killed in a fatal accident with his brand new Porsche Spyder , which a friend had baptized little bastard.
This report was published in issue 49 of the magazine Condé Nast Traveler.
An old car parked next to Big Sur's most popular beach, Pfeiffer Beach