To whomever penned the cartoon on page A4 (signed FP) of the Aug. 9 Malibu Times:
I don’t know who you think the savage rich are in Malibu, but many, many of its residents arrived here by “normal” means. My grandparents, for instance, came in the ’50s, escaping smog so thick in Alta Dena that you couldn’t eat a meal outside after 11 a.m. In fact, one knows that even the very wealthy, like David Geffen, started “small” and began his professional life as a mail boy—or the various Police, U2s and Coldplays, who all entered the creative domain as absolutely Ordinary Joes.
There are Malibu phone apps now, directing people to “secret” beach accesses and advising where the public owners of the coast can sit “up to the breakwalls”—a quote I heard—which means literally under one’s house! The app designers even had a launch party advertised via Facebook to whomever wanted to arrive, featuring a shade-tent and beer right in front of the sneered-at “stars’ homes” on Carbon Beach.
I have a public beach access one condo building away from my place, which has its own strip of dry sand for sunning and swimming. Yet, all summer long, I’ve had strangers using my beach stairs, using my hose (in a drought) to rinse off multitudinous sandy kids and dogs, leaving their towels, their drinks cans (with straws), leaving their plastic bags full of dog poo, leaving their tennis-ball-throwing dog appliances, and talking loudly under my bedroom window whilst ignoring their barking pooch. Whole families are accompanied by barking, enjoying the shade directly under my porch. Couples with stocked coolers throw down beach towels above the tide line and settle in for an afternoon’s tanning. And the pièce de résistance: a shrieking, short-shorted and foul-mouthed dame, being photographed doggy-style for hours, backwards to the high surf and dangerous waves, i.e. in “pleasure,” under my house up to the breakwall.
You see what I’m getting at? You don’t have to emote about “Blankety-Blank Peasants” to wish for some “NIMBY” peace.
Beate Nilsen