Leisure

With rooms starting at $450 a night, this city's newest hotel is keeping company with some grand dames of San Diego County: Four Seasons Resort Aviara, Hotel del Coronado and the US Grant. But the only thing strait-laced about the Ivy Hotel is the leather-covered, corseted columns in the lobby.

ARTIST Wilda Northrop is perfectly happy hanging out in her beautiful Victorian home in Pacific Grove with her husband and her dogs and her cats and her painting and her TV and her spectacular ocean view. Home suits her so well, in fact, that she's rarely tempted to leave. But she did want to see a sumo wrestling exhibition in Honolulu last month. (Northrop is wild about sumo wrestling.

It may not be the eggnog, the endless holiday music or even the pounds of sugar cookies that are making you ill. It may be the same thing that seems to set you back when you finally head for a weekend of winter sports or jet off for a week on the beach: You're off work. Ad Vingerhoets, an associate professor of clinical health psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, calls it "leisure sickness."

The bright yellow and gray fishing lines perform slowmotion shimmies in midair before whipping out onto a shallow pond in front of the clubhouse of the Long Beach Casting Club. It's early evening, and overhead stadium lights illuminate half a dozen middle-aged and elderly anglers practicing fly casts. The light gives the dancing lines a magical glow.

AS the white stretch limo glides down the street, three blond \o7gringas \f7poke their heads out the sun roof and start yelling come-ons at anyone within earshot. Nearby, a pair of hookers waits next to a pay phone, laughing hysterically over who knows what. A guy in Raider Nation regalia struts past D'Volada coffee shop, where the cappuccinos are as strong as a double shot of tequila. Across the street, hip-hop blasts from one of those bars popular with San Diego frat boys.

Peter Hubert keeps a mirror on his desk so he can see people walking up behind him, even if he can't hear them. Headphones clamped on, MP3 player plugged in, the 28-year-old draftsman has fashioned a virtual office using invisible walls of sound. Listening to heavy-metal rock doesn't distract him from the precise computer-based drawings he creates for Bigelow Homes in Aurora, Ill. To the contrary, "it puts my head somewhere else so I can concentrate on what I'm doing," he said.

On the sandy proving grounds of Santa Monica beach, Steve Goldfield, 60, looks down the makeshift court at his opponent -- 52-year-old contractor Dan Casey. Casey hitches up his pants and plants his bare feet. Waves crash in the distance and sea gulls trace lazy arcs overhead, squawking as they go. Goldfield steps up to a piece of volleyball tape marking the baseline and tosses a ball over his head to serve. But this is no volleyball match.

IT'S another weekend night, and Jennica Hampson, Megan McGrath and a crew of twentysomethings have braved the throngs to make their way into a hip restaurant-bar. Rock 'n' roll memorabilia hangs everywhere, and celebrities' signatures are scrawled on the walls. The manager, dressed in hipster black with dark shirt and beanie, is recommending a Jagermeister concoction called My Own Worst Enemy -- named after a hit song co-written by one of the place's owners, Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff.

Re "More low-cost marina rentals sought," Feb. 26 More low-cost housing in Marina del Rey is a worthy cause, but unfortunately it is not the principle issue of what is happening in the marina. The marina was built with the aim of providing a leisure and recreation facility for L.A. County residents. The county is treating it as a cash-cow housing tract, hocking off every parcel of land piecemeal to developers without any consideration given to recreation at all. The county Board of Supervisors appears to be hellbent on destroying the recreational aspects of Marina del Rey the way the city destroyed Abbot Kinney's Venice in the 1920s, ripping out the canals and replacing them with a maze of slummy streets.