This picture looks lovely, but I cropped out the homeless camp to the right as I shot it on my iPhone around 8:30am on a Monday morning. Yes, about 20+/- human souls call this dirty beach home. It's not beautiful, gulls feeding on the trash strewn inlet where it looked like a water treatment facility might be opening into this stream. The parking lot behind me was cratered concrete and also a mess. The town has the obligatory Dollar General, 7/11 and an inventory of auto repair shops and closed industrial facilities. There's natural beauty here, you just need to be creative to crop out the human impact.
This is California, a state which prides itself on strict environmental standards. I drove on into LA and saw miles of homeless tent cities. Worse than my last visit via train thru LA in July 2021 and January 2021.
No answers, just questions.