See also: 4th of July Weekend Checkpoints, DUI Patrols Start Tonight.

You prepare for 4th of July by stocking up on cases of the cheapest brew you can find and breaking out your beer guzzler helmet. We can find you in a beach parking lot chasing bikinis while holding sparklers.

You're a douche, albeit a low-rent one. The question is, which beach town has more of you on the 4th of July — Hermosa Beach in L.A.'s South Bay, or Newport Beach in Orange County?

You would think that Hermosa would have an advantage here, being the 4th of July's party capital for the bigger area — L.A. County.

And Newport Beach, a conservative, moneyed town, is not exactly a welcoming place for the Southland's beer-swigging trailer trash.* (The city recently abandoned an attempt to remove its iconic beach fire rings, a proposal seen by some as an affront to less-moneyed, darker-skinned outsiders).

And yet the winner of this contest, if you are to judge these places by the number of alcohol related arrests on the 4th is, by far, Newport!

Yep. Looking at a City News Service account of the day's drunken happenings, Newport Beach reported about 100 arrests for public intoxication or disorderly conduct by 5 a.m. today.

A clear victor.

Hermosa, our lower-rent Newport, had to bring in a portable jail after its own lockup reportedly filled up yesterday. But still, the city saw only — only — 31 mostly drinking-related arrests by 3 a.m. today.

When it comes to partying, L.A. has been humbled by our neighbors to the south.

*[Added at 2:27 p.m.]: OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano begs to differ when it comes to the class discrepancies between Hermosa and Newport, noting that most of the alcoholic madness happens in a much-less gilded portion of the latter city:

… All the arrests that happened in Zooport most likely took place on the Balboa Peninsula, which is filled with rehab homes, summer rentals filled by Arizona St. University dropouts, and porn stars. Balboa makes Hermosa seem as tony as, well, Newport.

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