Arnold G. York
It’s been 20 years and time sure does fly
It was 20 years ago when Karen and I bought the The Malibu Times from Reeves and Reta Templeman. It was November of 1987. Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Bill Clinton was just the youngish governor of Arkansas that hardly anyone had ever heard of. And Malibu was just an outpost in the corner of Los Angeles County. There was no Malibu High School. The county of Los Angeles was just beginning to think about building a large sewer in Malibu. And cityhood was still several years away, although cityhood action was beginning to percolate.
Reeves Templeman, an experienced journalist and editor, had started the newspaper in 1946 and run it with his first wife Eileen before she passed away, and then with Reta, his second wife, who was a wonderful character, who dressed up as a Leprechaun at Christmastime, with tights and a tiara that lit up.
I must admit they sold the newspaper to us with some trepidation. They were conservative Republicans, we were liberal Democrats. They celebrated Christmas, we celebrated Hanukkah. They were older, we were considerably younger (although over the years we’ve apparently caught up!). They were experienced newspaper people, and we were absolutely green.
Although we were avid newspaper readers, neither Karen nor I had ever worked on a newspaper in high school, college or graduate school. So this was a maiden voyage for us. So Reeves and Reta bit their lips, sold us the newspaper and agreed to stay on for awhile to teach us the business, which they did. In the process, much to the surprise of all of us, we became fast friends despite the fact that our politics never changed much. Most of all, we did do something that mattered a great deal to Reeves. We took his baby, The Malibu Times, and we cared for it, and loved it and we still do to this day.
Meanwhile, Malibu didn’t stand still. Lots of things have happened in the last 20 years.
Twenty years ago you could still buy a house landside for $600,000 to $700,000. Oceanfront was higher, and people were paying $2 million or so for choice homes on the beach.
Then the county proposed to sewer Malibu and we locals could see much greater development on the horizon, so the cityhood movement gained momentum (actually caught fire). And in 1991, the voters-after turning down cityhood in past elections-had a change of heart. They made Malibu a city with its own local City Council and we all lived happily ever after. Right? Well, not quite, but more about that later.
While all around us communities have exploded in size, the population of Malibu has stayed about the same. But at the same time, it’s changed.
Twenty years ago there were school teachers, firemen and engineers living in Malibu, but over the years many have left. They’ve sold their homes, taken their money and ridden off into the sunset. And the new Malibuites have paid a lot more for their homes, and also have a lot more money to spend. But besides their money, they’ve brought another wonderful thing. They’ve brought their children, which were sorely needed. For a number of years, we were getting older and the school population was shrinking. Point Dume Elementary School was closed and turned it into a community center because there weren’t enough kids to fill the seats. It was beginning to look like Malibu would turn into a town for the geriatrics.
Then one morning a youngish wife with an MBA from Harvard and a high-powered career woke up and said, “Oh my god. My biological clock is ticking.” And the baby boom began, and once again Malibu changed. We reopened the closed school and fought for and built a high school. And you can still go to Malibu Country Mart and watch your kids, or grandkids as the case may be, playing in the big sand pile as I did 32 years ago when we first arrived in Malibu. Of course, today, you’re probably sipping a decaf latte (there were no Starbucks in Malibu in 1987, difficult as that is to believe) and that old guy with the two-year-old is probably not the kid’s grandfather, which is why in Malibu you never ask anyone if that’s their grandchild.
Time moved on and-after endless battling, threatening , suing and negotiating-Bluffs Park became the permanent home for ball fields and ultimately the city cut a deal for Bluffs Park and bought it from the state.
The state bought and renovated the Malibu Pier, which was of course accompanied by endless battling, threatening, suing and negotiating and, in time (is development time, which you should understand is sort of a slow motion version of real time), we have a pier and one of these years Ruby’s is going to move into the old Alice’s Restaurant and actually start operating. Jerry Perenchio sold the Chili Cook-Off site to the city and in time it will become Legacy Park, our own central park.
The tale of the past 20 years would be incomplete without a brief digress into our disasters, not political disasters, but nature’s little handiwork. We all live on a little coastal shelf subject to fire, flood, ocean storms, earthquakes and, generally speaking, pretty much all of the great check-off list of plagues with the possible exception of locust and the killing of the first born males. To live in Malibu is to understand that Paradise comes with a price, and we are fragile little creatures compared to nature when it roars. Nevertheless, here we are and here we stay, despite the fact that more and more of the mom and pop stores are being priced out, and the morning traffic is heavier and seems equally as busy going in both directions. We all know now that periodically we will burn and flood and storm, and even more predictably the City Council will be blamed for it and accused of not anticipating the tidal wave or whatever. But life will still go on.
Because this truly is Paradise, and no matter how bad it gets, you wake up a day later and the ocean is blue and the sky is bright, and the waves slap gently against the shore. And you say to yourself, the next 20 is going to be every bit as good as the last 20—if a bit more pricey.