The neighborhood
What the ground here actually does to a move
Lantern Village is the old heart of the city, laid out in the late 1920s and named for the ship lanterns: Blue, Amber, Ruby, Violet, Golden, Green, Copper, Silver. The lots step downhill toward the water, so the housing stock is cottages, duplexes, townhomes and split-level hillside homes with short driveways, exterior stairs and street parking that fills up by mid-morning. Del Prado and Pacific Coast Highway run parallel through the middle of it, and Golden Lantern drops from PCH straight down into Dana Point Harbor, which means the shortest route on the map is often the worst one for a loaded truck between May and September.
North of that, Monarch Beach is almost entirely private: Monarch Bay, Ritz Pointe, Antigua, Marquesa, Montego and the Villas each sit behind their own gate, several of them staffed around the clock, reached from Crown Valley Parkway or PCH. South, in Capistrano Beach, you get bluff-top single-story homes above the highway and a private beachfront lane at Beach Road with its own gate house. In between sit the 1970s and 1980s condo complexes near Doheny and the harbor, where subterranean parking, elevators and association move-in windows decide the whole schedule. Every one of those requires a phone call before the truck rolls, not after it arrives.
30th StreetUniversity AveRay StreetMorley FieldBalboa Park