The OC vs. the 909

OC Weekly

September 26, 2003, Friday

 

ARE THOSE TEARS FROM THE SHOW OR THE SMOG? To further drag out Riverside's whining over its trailer-trash depiction on The O.C., a billboard-company owner there has erected a sign along the 91 Freeway to promote the city in direct response to Fox's teen soaper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports on Sept. 17. For those who missed the early episodes on Channel 11, after an ultrarich Newport Beach wife complained about the background of a troubled Chino teen, the boy's public defender/ surrogate father let her friends know that she's originally from Riverside. Big whoop. Well, Riversiders were so livid their mayor looked into filing a lawsuit--for a line of a dialogue on a soap opera! The boosteriffic billboard states, "The Best Little City in the World" below a photograph of the Mission Inn's roof.

 

The joke's on Riverside: Mission Inn owner and generous GOP sugar daddy Duane Roberts moved from Riverside to Laguna Beach in 1996, and his administrative offices relocated to Newport Beach shortly thereafter.