With everyone having access to a camcorder inside their cellphones, personal videos shot today won't really seem all that amazing to future generations of screen-starers when they're feeling nostalgic for ye olden days of 2013.
But for those of us who are currently above ground, we can still be fascinated by stuff like old, grainy, black-and-white home movie footage of Dana Point, Mission San Juan Capistrano, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, back before there were huge hotel resorts, cars or crowds.
The Mission footage starts around the 7:55 mark.
Take this 10-minute video clip, put together by San Clemente High School teacher Duncan Wilson in 2006 and recently uploaded to the YouTube page of the San Clemente-based Surfing Heritage Foundation. Shot by Wilson's grandparents, much of the footage features Wilson's mother and uncle cavorting in the surf around Dana Point. But it's fascinating from the historical angle, filed under "things that aren't here anymore" -- like Princess Point, which would be carved out in order to build Dana Point Harbor, and the general wide open spaces of the south Orange County seaside. Yes, children, there was a time when Starbucks did not exist ...
Duncan provides the narration. Warning: Bad things are done to a rattlesnake near the beginning ...
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