Next time you’re waiting to take the Balboa Island Ferry from the peninsula side, turn around and smile.
Your face will launch a thousand ships – or, at least, might be viewed by one of the thousand people who click daily on talesofbalboa.com.
“Just for kicks,” longtime resident Jim Fournier, 78, said he attached a camera atop the Balboa Boat Rentals hut in 1999. “I guess I had money to throw away.”
Ever since, the camera, and its newer replacement, have been streaming live video – with archived images available on Fournier’s website for 24 hours.
“Tourists come down here,” he said, “and wave at family back home.”
The video camera and website are but two of Fournier’s many “just for kicks” hobbies.
He also enjoys taking photos of his beloved Balboa Peninsula, which he self-published in “As I See It.” He carves rather impressive figurines from blocks of wood. He paints landscapes. And, he is an ordained minister who performed the marriages of his daughter and granddaughter.
Most of all, Fournier immerses himself in his surroundings. “Balboa has such a colorful history for such a little spot,” he said.
Fournier loves to hold forth about the quirky folks and places who helped make the peninsula what it is today. Over the past two decades, he has compiled two books – both titled “Tales of Balboa” – which continue to sell at the Balboa Pharmacy.
“He is an icon,” said Michel Pourmussa, owner of the Balboa Inn. “Jim knows everything about Balboa – what’s going on, who’s who and who’s where. He’s like an old-time sailor commanding his ship.”
As a teen, Fournier moved to San Bernardino from Chicago with his mother and two siblings. “She’d gone through a divorce and wanted a new start,” he said.
The pleasure of wearing shorts in winter cemented his approval of the relocation.
Fournier would marry, buy a house in Pomona, raise two kids and travel the world as a photography equipment salesman.
Like his mother before him, he sought fresh beginnings after splitting with his spouse in 1978.
“I’d never even heard of Balboa before,” Fournier said. “I just drove to the end of the world, and this is where I wound up.”
He settled down in a small, beachy apartment complex on Balboa Boulevard. Fournier, now the property’s manager, shares his cozy pad with 9-year-old cat Maggie.
“If you drink the water,” he said, “you don’t leave.”
Fournier gloats that his peninsula has not been despoiled with franchise eateries. “The only chains are Ruby’s and BJ’s, and they both started here.”
The peninsula, a Newport Beach enclave home to 4,225, is so much more interesting than Balboa Island, Fournier competitively claimed.
“It’s like two different countries,” he said. “We’re on the other side of the tracks, but we’re cooler.”
Besides, Fournier pointed out, Balboa Peninsula has the Fun Zone with rides that include a charming Ferris wheel. “It’s like living in Disneyland,” he said.
Among his favorite stories about the peninsula are the antics of the Sculling and Punting Society, “founded by rich old bored people in 1945,” Fournier said.
The drinking buddies plotted such shenanigans as “The Boat to Las Vegas” in 1954, when they rode inside a cabin cruiser aboard a flat bed truck. Nine years later came “The Train to Catalina,” a Pullman car carried by a barge.
Upon his arrival in town, Fournier occasionally joined in the tomfoolery. In 1995, shortly before the fraternity petered out, he helped “hijack” the ferry, take it north a couple of miles and put it up for sale at an insulting $75.
“Jim is definitely one of Balboa’s characters,” said Balboa Boat Rentals manager Charlie Villaloboz, who green-lighted Fournier’s camera placement at the business. “He is industrious, busy and very involved in the community. He’s just a lot of fun.”
