Mailbag: Thanks for the Fun Zone column

Wow! The Daily Pilot hit it out of the park.

Patrice Apodaca’s Nov. 12 column, “Protesters did it right at Balboa,” was indeed inspiring. The young lady who put this function together is a unique and great individual. Thank you. I concur with these young activists.

I was 3 months old when my dad moved our very large family from Garden Grove to Costa Mesa, and he became a famous farmer on the Westside.

I have wonderful memories of the Fun Zone. Between my junior and senior year at Newport Harbor High School, I was a live-in nanny on Bay Island and often took my little munchkin in her stroller to the Fun Zone. At one time I worked behind the counter in the restaurant on the right side of the ferry on the Balboa Peninsula. My sister and I loved dancing at the Rendezvous Ballroom on Saturday night!

I’m grateful that I grew up in Costa Mesa and was able to partake in all that was available and awesome in the mid-1950s.

Rachel Perez-Hamilton

Costa Mesa

* Preserve the Fun Zone as is

I implore the powers that be to preserve the ambience and pure enjoyment of the Fun Zone. How sad to lose that small area that has been outdoor fun for young and old alike.

I am so saddened by the look of the modern, sterile, cold building in the midst of our Fun Zone, taking up space where they merry-go-round or carousel used to be. Is this venture paid for by tax-free donations? It is so out of place in this setting. What can our City Council and Planning Commission do about this?

Remember the lovely and historical Bank of America building in the same area? Gone forever because money got its way. My children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have enjoyed the merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, bumper cars and pitch balls since the 1950s, and so have so many others.

The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum can have the ExplorOcean inside a building anywhere. There is only one Fun Zone!

Eleanor Ramsay

Newport Beach

* Trash cans are fine

In Wednesday’s Mailbag, Newport Beach resident Joan McCauley takes a swipe at the “brownish-green” color of Costa Mesa’s trash cans (“Leave trash service alone”). I rather like the color of our trash containers.

That said, as long as they are picked up efficiently and on schedule, they could be painted zebra stripes for all I care.

Now, regarding McCauley’s suggestion that Newport Beach and Costa Mesa merge and become, as she writes, “one great gray-khaki city,” if that meant a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers in our combined fair city, then I am totally onboard!

Jeff Diercksmeier

Costa Mesa