Carmel

Faced with the most pressing issue in town--whether there should be home mail delivery--City Council members decided to do nothing for now, leaving Carmel's homes untainted by numbered addresses. Home mail delivery in Carmel would require numbering the houses, an idea strongly opposed by many in this distinctive coastal town of about 3,200, where Clint Eastwood was once mayor.

In Carmel-by-the-Sea, Joe Steinfeld has become an unwitting Public Enemy No. 1. He's a gray-haired newcomer who gets the Bronx cheer at town meetings, has his face pictured in caricatured newspaper cartoons, his name trumpeted in angry letters to the editor. And all because the 71-year-old retired antiques dealer has dared to suggest a subtle change that has many longtime residents of this wealthy Central Coast enclave reeling: home mail delivery.

Carmel Partners LLC said Friday it has purchased the upscale Vista del Lago apartment complex in Costa Mesa for more than $55 million, the highest overall price paid this year for an Orange County multifamily complex. The purchase from Prudential Real Estate Investors marks the San Francisco real estate company's entry into the Southern California market.

At 7 a.m. Wednesday in the filtered sunshine on the 18th green at Pebble Beach, it was the moment to officially say goodbye to Payne Stewart for the last time. About 2,000 ticket-holders turned out for the 30-minute ceremony honoring the memory of Stewart, the defending U.S. Open champion whose tragic death along with five others in a private plane crash Oct. 25 shocked the world of professional golf. Trey Holland, president of the U.S. Golf Assn., opened the brief ceremony.

I'm often asked what a travel writer does to get away. This stumps me because I find it hard to go anywhere without writing a story, which tends to turn vacations into work. In November, though, I found my weekend escape in the Carmel Valley. It's a finger of land that runs deep into the Santa Lucia Mountains from the coast, about 325 miles north of L.A., but is visited by a fraction of the crowd in touristy Carmel.

John Church stands on his two acres high above Carmel Valley and scans the honeysuckle and chaparral, past thick oaks and handsome vineyards, to green golf courses and hills browned to a late-summer velvet. Once, the ruddy gas station owner relished sunsets from this land. "Like neon," he says. "Fabulous." When he dreamed about the home he would someday build, his heart would soar. But now a visit to the hilltop leaves his stomach tied in knots.

Sure, the neighborhood looks calm enough at first glance: the rocky coast, the green hills, the gnarled cypresses, the happy couples murmuring in Italian, German and French, all those cute little storefronts. It's been more than a decade now since Clint Eastwood finished his two-year term as mayor, and it's quite easy to shuffle from bedroom to beach to boutique to bistro to beach to bedroom again, viewing this little corner of Earth as the very model of affluence and placidity.

They agree on pretty much one thing out here along the Russian River, a stunning but snake-bit stretch of Sonoma County nestled between the wine country and the sea. No one in this resort region wants the world to think of their hometown the way it looks on the news most winters--drowning under raging flood waters, buried beneath landslides, piled high with storm debris. After that, however, all bets are off. Particularly now.

The Others, both Significant and Insignificant, sure grow restless in their retirements as muses, companions, colleagues, bedmates and wives. In the last few years, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth have suffered at vengeful keyboards and, most recently, the memory of the New Yorker's Mr. Shawn is suffering at the smarmy hands of Lillian Ross.