Welcome to Malibu. Here is some vital information to make your visit more meaningful. You may enter Malibu via Dume-Kanan Road or Malibu Canyon Road or Pacific Coast Highway, all at your own peril. If you take Dume-Kanan Road, please put it back. In Malibu, like in America, you drive on the right side of the road, unless Nick Nolte is motoring that day, in which case you stay home.
Malibu is famous for its professional celebrities and its amateur politicians. The best place to study our politics is at Lily’s Caf early in the morning. (The breakfast burrito will anchor a small yacht.) The best place to study celebrities is in our local courtroom any time of day or night. Since recession hit the entertainment industry, top film executives are holding their power lunches at Neptune’s Net instead of Granita. (Order the crabcake platter, beautifully presented on a white paper plate.) Wherever you eat, treat your waiter with respect. Tomorrow he may be a star, or a defendant, or both.
Malibu is famous for glamorous weddings. These are all very secret. To locate one, watch for a gaggle of helicopters circling a property at high noon. This will be a large private estate with the front lawn ending in the ocean and the back lawn in Calabasas. Or it might be at the Gray Whale restaurant on Westward Beach where a prospective bride and groom recently found themselves at cross porpoises. There was a whale of a scene before the vows were finally sealed and the couple waved good-bye.
Malibu is famous for its ocean. Every so often you may catch a glimpse of it between seaside mansions. There is some confusion as to whose ocean it is. Does it belong to those who live on the beach, or to everybody-even Charlie Sixpack from Cucamonga. On a hot summer weekend, Charlie Sixpack wins. I’m personally “oceanophobic.” The ocean, like those bikini-clad babes, is a “look but don’t touch” proposition for me. I have lived within sight and sound of the ocean for 43 years. I haven’t been in it for 45 years. The same goes for bikinis.
Malibu is famous for its mountains. The city of Malibu is only about a mile wide, but 27 miles long, squeezed between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains like a frankfurter in a hungry dog’s mouth. When the dog bites, we have a landslide and “where the mountains meet the sea” is more than a slogan. It’s a disaster. Our mountains are flammable. I have vacated my home four times in 44 years because of fire. Zuma Beach looks like the boarding line for Noah’s ark when locals escape there with their pets to avoid brush fires. The careless toss of a match or cigarette will get you more years in Malibu than shooting an account executive. Come see us soon but leave your “barby” at home.
Bill Dowey