"Glad I finally got to do it."
That's Dien Le, a Thousand Oaks resident who told a local news crew he'd lived in Ventura County for fifty years before making it to the Port of Hueneme's Banana Festival for the first time. The festival's 13th annual run, held Saturday, September 26, took place while Hurricane Polo had delayed the container ships that normally crowd the docks during the event's boat and bus tours. Tour guide Aaron Valance still had plenty to work with, telling riders the port moves five billion bananas a year, enough that "it goes around the earth 13 times." Fewer ships, same banana math, same free admission and free parking the festival has run on for over a decade.
That last detail matters more than it sounds like it should. While one branch of city government was waiving beach parking fees for a Saturday, another had spent the weeks before deciding whether to raise them for good.
The City Just Committed To Five More Years Of Free Programming
Start with what the city has already locked in, because it's more than most towns this size manage to schedule at once.
In April, the city council approved a Special Use Permit for a "2026-2030 Movies in the Park" series, one screening a month from June through September, every year, starting shortly after sunset and wrapping by around 10 p.m. That's not a one-summer trial. It's a five-year commitment to free outdoor movies, already on the books through the end of the decade.
In May, the council signed off on a similar multi-year deal for the Port Hueneme Police Department and its Police Explorers: two annual car show fundraisers at Hueneme Beach Park, one on the second Sunday in June and another on a Sunday in October, running from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Parking Lots B and C along Oceanview Drive. That permit also covers a five-year stretch, which means this isn't a single fundraiser but a fixture the department can now plan around for half a decade.
Then there's the one that just wrapped and the one still ahead. The Banana Festival brought roughly 130 classic and vintage vehicles to West Surfside Drive and South Market Street for a car show of its own, plus a DJ and small stage at Wharf Plaza, 563 E. Surfside Drive. And on Wednesday, October 21, the city holds its 5th Annual Spook-Tacular at Walter B. Moranda Park, from 5 to 8 p.m., with music, a pumpkin patch, carnival games, and face painting. Fifth annual means this one has already proven itself worth repeating four years running.
None of this costs a resident anything to attend. All of it happens on a calendar the city keeps extending rather than trimming.
Meanwhile, The Council Is Weighing Whether Parking Should Cost More
Here's the part of the story that doesn't show up in festival recaps. On September 8, the city council took up a proposal, filed as Coastal Development Permit CDP-2026-1, to update the beach parking fee schedule at Hueneme Beach Park and along the designated paid stretches of Surfside Drive. As of this writing, no revised fee schedule has been posted to the city's site, so what the council actually decided that night isn't yet public record in a form residents can point to. What is public and unchanged for now: parking runs $2 an hour or $8 for an all-day pass, with annual permits at $50 for residents and $100 for non-residents, plus a 50 percent discount on additional passes for a second household vehicle.
That's the rate a Port Hueneme resident has paid to park at their own beach for years. Whether it stays that way is now an open question the city has put in motion but hasn't yet closed out publicly.
What makes the timing notable is the other permit the council approved the same summer, the one for the Banana Festival. That permit didn't just authorize the vintage car show and the Wharf Plaza stage. It also included a temporary waiver of beach parking fees for Lots A, B, C, and E, plus the on-street spots along Surfside Drive and Oceanview Drive, for the full festival weekend. So the same city weighing whether to charge residents more to park at their beach spent the prior weekend deciding it made more sense to charge nothing at all, for one day, so more people would show up.
That's not a contradiction so much as two different budget conversations happening at once. Festival waivers are one-day trade-offs the city makes because a packed festival is worth more in foot traffic and goodwill than a day of parking meter revenue. A permanent fee increase is a different calculation, one about what the beach costs to maintain on the 350-plus days a year there isn't a festival happening on it.
One 50-Acre Park Is Doing Almost All The Work
Look at where nearly everything above actually happens. The Banana Festival's car show and stage sit on Surfside Drive and at the Wharf Plaza. The Police Explorers' car show runs twice a year in Hueneme Beach Park's own lots. Movies in the Park, once its host site is confirmed, will likely land somewhere close by given the city's pattern of stacking programming at its waterfront rather than spreading it across smaller neighborhood parks. Only the Spook-Tacular breaks the pattern, moving inland to Moranda Park instead.
That concentration is worth sitting with. Most Ventura County beach towns spread their civic calendar across a handful of parks and community centers. Port Hueneme runs a meaningful share of its free public life through one 50-acre stretch of sand, lawn, and parking lot. Which means the parking fee conversation isn't really about one beach among several options. It's about the one piece of public land that doubles as the city's events venue, its fishing pier access point, and its primary stretch of ocean frontage all at once. A rate change there touches festival attendance, everyday beachgoers, and anyone parking for a Tuesday afternoon walk on the promenade, all in the same fee schedule.
What's Actually On The Calendar From Here
| Event | When | Where | Cost To Attend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banana Festival (13th Annual) | Held September 26, 2026 | Port of Hueneme, Wharf Plaza and West Surfside Drive | Free |
| Spook-Tacular (5th Annual) | Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 5 to 8 p.m. | Walter B. Moranda Park | Free |
| Beach Car Show fundraiser | Second Sunday in June, and one Sunday in October, annually through the five-year permit | Hueneme Beach Park, Lots B and C | Free to attend |
| Movies in the Park | One screening monthly, June through September, each year through 2030 | City park, site to be confirmed | Free |
The pattern holds across all four rows. None of it requires a ticket. All of it requires a parking spot, at whatever the posted rate happens to be by the time each event rolls around.
The Beach Isn't Getting Smaller, But The Bill Might Be Changing
None of this points to a beach town in decline or a fee hike that's already a done deal. It points to a city actively investing in its own calendar, locking in five-year commitments for movies and car shows while it works through what those same spaces should cost to park at day to day. Residents who've watched the Banana Festival grow into a genuine regional draw, one that pulled a fifty-year county resident from Thousand Oaks to finally show up, are watching a parallel process play out over parking meters rather than headline acts.
The city's own legal notices page is the place to track where the September 8 proposal lands, since that's where any adopted fee schedule will eventually get posted alongside the next round of hearings. Worth a bookmark if you park at that beach more than a couple times a month.
If you've got questions about what's actually changing in Port Hueneme, not just at the beach but around town, Robin Plain has been working this stretch of Ventura County long enough to know which civic proposals turn into real changes and which ones quietly stall out. A call costs nothing either.
