San Clemente: The City of San Clemente spans fifteen square miles of coastline and scenic foothills. As of 2005, the city population was 65,900. Located six miles (10 km) south of San Juan Capistrano at the southern tip of the county, it is roughly equidistant from San Diego and Los Angeles. There are several signs that San Clemente will remain a quiet village, no matter how fast or how many new homes are built on the hills around it.
People still stop to chat as they stroll down Avenida Del Mar, the city's shopping showcase. The same people take the same spots on the 33 acres of beach that border the southernmost tip of Orange County. And while newer, larger communities are served by area malls and shopping centers, San Clemente's local merchants still manage to serve a large part of the community.
It is the kind of lifestyle that developer Ole Hanson envisioned when he founded the city in 1929. Hanson dreamed of building a "Spanish Village by the Sea" when he purchased 2,000 acres of then-Rancho Santa Margarita for just over $1 million in 1926.
Hanson built white, stucco homes with re-tiled roofs, then a swimming club and downtown shopping area to match. He, his family and the men who plowed through acres of brush to make way for development gave city streets charming, Spanish monikers to fit the feel of the city.
And as the city drew thousands to its beaches every year, it won converts who moved their families into the white stucco, red roofed homes as well as the new developments.
One of those converts was then President Richard Nixon, who bought Casa Pacifica, one of the city's well-known Spanish mansions, in 1969.
The city won instant fame as the "Home of the Western White House" and the president became a local celebrity at area golf courses and restaurants.
Even after Nixon was forced to resign during the Watergate scandal in 1974, many San Clemente residents continued to think highly of the former president.
San Clemente catches swells all year long. Going from South to North, they include Trestles (technically just south of the city line), North Gate (heavily localized), State Park, Lost Winds, Riviera, The Hole, Beach House, T-Street, The Pier, Linda Lane, 204, North Beach, and Poche.
San Clemente is also the surfing media capital of the world as well as a premier surfing destination. It is home to Surfing Magazine, The Surfer's Journal, and Long board Magazine, with Surfer Magazine just up the freeway in San Juan Capistrano.
The city has a large concentration of surfboard shapers and manufacturers including Lost Surfboards, Stewart Surfboards and Cole Surfboards. Additionally, many world renowned surfers were raised in San Clemente or took up long-term residence in town, including Shane Beschen, Mike Parsons (originally from Laguna Beach), and many others.
San Clemente High School has won 6 out of 7 most recent NSSA national surfing titles. One title was won by Capistrano Connections Academy.
San Clemente is the setting of the MTV reality show, Life of Ryan. It was also the setting of the 2005 film Brick. The town was chosen because it was particularly close to the director Rian Johnson who lived there and went to San Clemente High School, which was the school depicted in the film. Many of the locations in the film are still identical to the real ones, with the exception of the Pin's house which was flattened a week after exterior shooting; the interior was constructed in a local warehouse. The phone booths that were used all through the film are mostly props that were placed on location.
