Peek inside Balboa Island homes on Sunday’s holiday tour
Attention, Orange County residents: For a few hours Sunday, you’ll get a chance to peek into the homes of fellow residents, enjoy their holiday decorations up close and trade observations on their efforts with scores of other people.
The twist is you’ll be doing all this in person, not on Facebook.
Susan Mills, co-chair of the 18th Annual Balboa Island Holiday Home Walking Tour and a longtime island resident, is proud of her neighborhood’s status as a community where people venture out of their houses and get to know one another. A Realtor with Keller Williams by day, Mills will help oversee the proceedings as seven Balboa residents open their homes for docent-led tours.
In nearly two decades, the annual tour, presented by the Balboa Island Improvement Assn., has spotlighted more than 220 homes. Some residents pile on the decorations, while others simply give visitors a glimpse into homes whose construction date is fast approaching the century mark.
Along with the tours of the seven homes, the event will mark the public grand opening of the Balboa Island Museum’s new annex, a cottage at 331 Marine Ave. that functions as a mini cultural museum.
With a week set to go before the tour, Mills spoke about the event’s history — and her own history — on Balboa Island. The following are excerpts from the conversation:
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There are going to be seven homes on the Holiday Home Walking Tour this year. How does somebody get to be one of the featured homes?
We’re always looking for volunteers. Over the years, it’s become a little more difficult to get homes. People have become a little more reluctant. So we’re already — we have some people lined up for next year who couldn’t do it this year. So anybody, all they’d have to do is contact anybody on the association — myself, Jeff, anybody that is listed in our newsletter — and we are always happy to invite people to be on the home tour.
Do you have any limit for how many homes there can be per year?
You know what? No. We had a possibility of eight and decided that was too many, and seven was about it. People are walking. This year, nicely, they’re concentrated. They tend to be in one area of the big island and then one area on the little island, but if you get more than that, it’s really hard for everybody to see them in the time period.
Is there a particular kind of home that works best for the tour?
You know, I think people enjoy seeing both the newer homes that are being built — you know, that have just been built and all the glitz and glamor of those — but I think, truly, a lot of them come to see the character of Balboa Island that’s been around. And this year, especially, I would say, four or five of the seven are really the original cottage-style Balboa Island homes and what people have done with them. Some people have renovated them inside, and some people have updated them but kept the character the same, and so, I think, people enjoy both. You can go see new model homes anywhere. It’s nice to see what people do with them, but they really like seeing what people did in the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s.
You mentioned the Balboa Island character a couple of times there. How would you define that character?
It’s almost like its own little town community. Many people have lived here or have had ties here almost all their lives — generations, whether it was family homes that they came to in the summer and now they live here as full-time residents or people like me. And when I went to UCI, there was no housing other than campus housing, so everybody lived on the island or the peninsula. And so the familiarity, the way you knew people all over, you go back to it, and I feel it’s the same way now — the sense of community. I know people on all sorts of streets. Everybody’s open. Everybody’s kind of equal here. And there are people that are very wealthy. There are people that aren’t wealthy at all, and you would never know it by the way they dress, the way they look. Everybody’s kind of equal. it’s just a sense that everybody has an appreciation for this small-town feel.
That does surprise me that there are people who aren’t very wealthy who live on Balboa Island.
Aren’t or are?
Aren’t.
There’s a lot of rentals. We have a combination. But I’ll find, even working on things with the association, a lot of people that rent here get involved with the association, that aren’t homeowners, because they like the sense of community. They like the feel. They like the fact that we have the parade. They like the fact that we have pancake breakfasts, that we do a neighborhood watch. This isn’t a garage community, like many places. People are out. You know, they take pride in their gardens, our little 2-by-25 gardens that we have and everything. But it’s really nice.
“Garage community” is a good word. I grew up in the suburbs too, and it’s an interesting thing — when I was growing up, I always knew the people who lived in the houses on either side of me. Two houses down, I had no idea.
They pull in their garages.
They pull in their garages. There we go. So I guess you have a different vibe here in Balboa.
Yeah, here a lot of the garages are full because our houses — I call them dollhouses — and we use them to store things. But you know, people are out. In Southern California, the weather’s great. This is like — it’s always nice here. Even on a rainy day, even on a blustery day, people are out. They’re walking around. You see people from little tykes to people in their 90s walking, and it’s religious. They do it all the time, and you see familiar faces and everybody is happy. They’re happy to be out. You don’t live on Balboa Island unless you want to be with people. It’s too close otherwise.
Let’s talk a little about the walking tour. What do people usually do with their homes for the tour? Do any of them kind of go all-out and do outlandish decorations?
It all depends on the people. Most people, they’re volunteering to do it, decorate their homes, a lot of people on the island. The island is known for its decorations, the lights. People come down here and walk around during the holiday period just to see all the lights on the bayfront and on the streets. But they all decorate for the holidays. Some go all-out more than others. Some are really good at just augmenting what they have to show the character.
If You Go
What: 18th Annual Balboa Island Holiday Home Walking Tour
Where: Various locations around the island, including the Balboa Island Museum, 331 Marine Ave., Newport Beach
When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $25
Information: (949) 673-5523 or https://www.mybiia.com