He did not even look up from the gas tank as he pointed across the street, where almost a dozen other tourists were waiting to be photographed beside a restaurant owned in part by Mr. Eastwood.

''We get that question about 92 times a day,'' the attendant said to his next customer. ''He's never there, but, you know, people always hope.''

Sharp-eyed tourists can sometimes spot Mr. Eastwood driving around town in a modest little foreign car covered with dust and pine needles or walking, wearing casual clothes and running shoes, near his stone house a block from the sea.

Along with other members of the City Council, who were elected with him in April 1986 in a rout of the prior administration, Mr. Eastwood overturned an ordinance that had restricted sales of fast-food, including ice cream cones.

Ice cream cones became a cause celebre in the campaign. The ordinance was evidence, Mr. Eastwood contended, that the previous administration was too hard on business. Now visitors can lawfully stroll down Carmel's main street, Ocean Avenue, with ice cream cone in hand.

Some of Mr. Eastwood critics contend he has gone too far in making concessions to developers and tourist-oriented businesses and that he has ignored a 1929 city law that declares, ''Carmel is essentially, predominantly and primarily a residential city in which business and commerce have been, are now, and are proposed to be in the future subordinated to its residential character.''

But he even placated some of these residents when he spent several million dollars of his own money to purchase and keep open a beloved old restaurant and inn, the Mission Ranch, at the edge of the city that was threatened by the bulldozers of a condominium developer.