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Roadside Fish Joint Offers the Flavor of Beachside Lore

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Before the suburbs’ steady march to the sea, Southern California’s beach was an outlaw zone. No strip malls, no Starbucks, not a Wolfgang Puck Cafe in sight.

Commerce was the local surf shop. Culture came in the guise of dozens of wood-frame burger shacks, paint blistered, colors fading.

That old-time beach scene lives on at Neptune’s Net. Perched on Pacific Coast Highway on the Ventura-Los Angeles county line across from a surf spot made famous by a Beach Boys ballad, the legendary seafood joint has played host to locals and luminaries alike.

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Distance from the city--it’s about a 30-minute drive to Oxnard--has been a buffer to gentrification.

On a recent Sunday, scores of shiny motorcycles shimmered in the sun. Bikers lounged on the steps, drinking beer and checking out new arrivals.

A line for fresh seafood wound around the lobster tank. Across the restaurant, employees took orders for fried clams and shrimp and oysters, and sold sodas and beer.

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“Typical Sunday,” said businesswoman Michelle Lee, who bought the restaurant in 1991. “Those bikers? A lot of them are doctors and lawyers and businessmen. They come here to relax. People like it here because it doesn’t change.”

Neptune’s Net is what it always was, a glorified shack set in a dirt parking lot. These days, it sports the yellow-and-blue paint job bestowed by the most recent film crew that shot there. Suntanned surfers frequent the rambling porch from sunrise to sunset. Savvy diners line up for the fresh and fried seafood. Bikers share the wooden picnic tables with tourists and local residents. Film and TV stars stop by, anonymous in the crowd.

Service is simple. Fresh seafood, including live crab and lobster, is sold at the far end of the restaurant. You choose your meal, a cook weighs it, you pay, then collect the steamed food at the pickup window a few minutes later.

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Fried seafood--plus burgers, onion rings and the like--are sold at a counter in the main room of the restaurant.

On a summer weekend afternoon, the tables are always full. Strangers share the long, wooden picnic tables and pass the napkins, catsup and hot sauce. Overflow diners head for extra tables on a rise in the parking lot, or brave traffic and dash across to the beach.

“This is the California people dream about,” said a 44-year-old Malibu resident who gave her name as Skye Blue. “No hassles, no hype, just the waves and the sand and lots of good company.”

In the past, restaurant staffers say the good company has included Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, who filmed “Point Break” across the street. The former Mrs. Larry Fortensky--Liz Taylor to the rest of us--joined her ex in eating a burger. Michelle Pfeiffer rode in on a Harley and had steamed shrimp and a beer.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger is a regular,” said manager Arlene Solis, who has worked at the restaurant for 10 years. “Anthony Edwards from ‘ER’ was here last week--now there’s a sweet guy.”

Cher, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, NBA coach Pat Riley, Drew Barrymore, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, Cheech Marin, Heather Locklear, Gene Hackman, Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand have soaked in the Net’s atmosphere.

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“One time, this guy asked me if I liked the group U2,” Solis said. “I told him no, and when he left, someone asked me, ‘Don’t you know who that was? That was [U2 lead singer] Bono.’ ”

Dolly Seay, the former owner of Neptune’s Net, understands the lure of this bend in the coastal highway. She and her late husband, Paul, bought the restaurant in 1974 and ran it for more than 17 years.

“It was definitely another era--being at the beach was like being in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “People drove in from the cities, they camped out, there were huge bonfires at night. You came to the beach to escape.”

Jacob Eastman built the place in the early 1950s and called it Jake’s Diner, Seay said. Until the early 1980s, when California’s real estate boom transformed the coast, the beaches were a world apart.

It was no accident that the Seays employed a group of burly cooks who could double for bouncers when needed. Paul Seay kept a gun in the office. One year, the restaurant was robbed a dozen times. Still, Dolly Seay remembers the good times.

“Oh, we had a lot of fun. They shot the Tom Cruise film ‘Losin’ It’ here, and there’s a scene with a food fight,” she said. “They shot that in the restaurant, and for two years after, I was cleaning up the mess.”

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Locals had their day, as well. When a Pepperdine University student stripped naked during dinner, the cooks reported to Seay.

“You know what to do--throw him in the crab tank,” she remembers telling her co-workers.

The cooks surrounded the boy, and he looked up and said, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“They tossed him in,” Seay recalled. “I’ll tell you, he came out of there in a flash.”

These days, crab tank dunkings are a thing of the past. But the parade of beach lovers continues.

“I’ve been coming here all of my life,” said a dreadlocked surfer who goes by the name Scotty Dread. “It’s a good social setting, you see a lot of people.”

Russian tourist Nick Shatz discovered the restaurant early in his Southern California vacation. On his second visit, he and four friends shared a six-pack of beer and plates heaped with lobster and shrimp.

“This is what you come to California for, yes?” he asked, sipping a beer and gazing at the surf.

Yes, said Tim East of Thousand Oaks.

“The main thing is, people come here because everything is cool. I’ve been surfing all over the world, and this is the place I come back to,” the 27-year-old said.

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