It was a simpler time, back in 2004.
Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, former United States president (and actor) Ronald Reagan passed away, and the devastating earthquake and tsunami killed hundreds of thousands in Indonesia. So, not all good, but not bad either. Comme ci, comme ça.
One spectacular thing that did happen in 2004, however, was the launch of Laguna Beach: The Real OC, a first-of-its-kind reality show on MTV, which followed around a rich group of high school students living in the affluent Southern California town of Laguna Beach. They surfed, they partied, they cheated on significant others…it was a huge hit.
To be honest, there wasn’t much surfing in the show. Just cutaway clips. It was more about the drama, and there was plenty of that to go around.
And now, 20 years later, the cast of Laguna Beach has reunited to look back on the good (and not so good) times they spent in their earlier years, exclusively showing on Roku.
Having grown up in Laguna Beach, myself, I remember when MTV came to town and started rolling cameras. One of the stars Kristin Kavallari (now married to footballer Jay Cutler) was a senior when I was a freshman at Laguna Beach High School. There was fierce backlash in the town, with parents holding signs outside schools that read “Keep MTV out of our town!” and “Laguna Beach is NOT made for TV.”
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Well, in fact, it was. The show was wildly famous.
But the show was primarily centered around Stephen Colleti, a handsome yet arguably substanceless, hero who was caught in a love triangle between the two female leads, Cavallari and Lauren Conrad. The drama ensued.
During the show, however, Colleti worked at the local surf shop, Laguna Surf & Sport, a quaint local shop offering all your surfing needs, and still going strong today since 1982. And in the clip above, on the heels of the reunion, he returned to his old stomping grounds, even taking a call from a customer and haplessly attempting to help.
Anyway, a nice trip down memory lane.
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This story was originally published by Surfer on Apr 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Surfer as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
