Would you pay $50 million to live in Irvine, CA?

I grew up in Orange County and I can remember when Irvine was nothing but orange groves. It makes me deeply sad to see Irvine now. It's all city.

As kids we used to tell tales in the dark of "Old Lady Irvine" and scare the wits out of each other. We suggested that we could see her face in the dark. We would usually run out of the room screaming.

Not everyone can have a view of the ocean!

I feel like an 'I like blue' would be appropriate for this thread and house.

I'm not from the area, but I don't think of Irvine as a prestigious address. One of the Lagunas maybe? Newport Beach seems ritzy to me but I don't picture it having those hilltop (fire trap) kinds of addresses.

Lindsay Davenport, ex-tennis player, who is from Orange County, has homes in Irvine AND Laguna Beach -- interesting variation on city house-country/beach house given how close they are to each other. She has the money to do it and maybe it makes sense given the traffic, but it still surprises me, especially considering she and her husband have a crib in Hawaii too.

Newport Beach itself is pretty flat, but has hills around it. Basically any house in California that is adjacent to open woodland or brush land is at risk for wildfire, so this house is no exception. I hope they built it as fireproof as possible, which means concrete construction.

During the 36 years I lived in San Diego, there were 2 times that wildfire threatened our house; though we never had to evacuate, it was still scary.

In 1993 there was a devastating fire in the hills overlooking Laguna Beach, which destroyed or damaged 400 homes. And just a few days ago, another fire destroyed 20 very expensive homes on a ridge in Laguna Niguel, which is not far from Irvine.

Only there would they take an old base with hundreds of acres and try to make it into a park, and completely fuck it up.