To read Steve Lopez in the LA Times, or to listen to this gal who just developed an iPhone app to direct the public to the Malibu beaches, you might well think that the citizens of Malibu spend all their time camouflaging the beach accesses. They’ve created a boogieman whose motto is “keep ’em out.”
Now I’ve lived in Malibu a long time, since 1976, and have long ago accepted the fact that for three months a year people come out to visit the beaches and canyons of Malibu. There are roughly 13 weekends in that long summer and we do what most of Malibu does, either stay home on those weekends, or get the hell out of town. When our friends come to visit we give them all the same advice—come early and leave early, or come late and stay late.
The problem with beach access is not that there aren’t enough ways to get to the beach. No, the problem is much more mundane and that is, where do you park your damn car? The sad but real truth is that on any nice weekend every single available parking spot in Malibu is filled. And after the late comers have battled for an hour and a half to get here they are left parking on hillsides, or half across someone’s driveway, or up on lawns or where ever. If you don’t believe me, go down to Zuma Beach on any summer weekend and watch the Sheriff’s cars and Malibu Towing just hovering like birds of prey picking off the stragglers. It’s not their fault, it’s just their job, but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel and is probably a wonderful source of revenue to someone. Between the parking tickets and the towing and storage charges, it probably runs into the hundreds per car.
Now once that poor visitor has arrived in Malibu, and they’ve been lucky enough to find a parking place, or have paid the skyrocketing cost of parking, the next hurdle typically is to get across the Pacific Coast Highway, since most of the parking for the already existing public accesses is on the land side of PCH. If you are 19 years old and all you have is your towel, your sunglasses and your girlfriend, it’s not that big of a deal. But if you’ve come to the beach with mom and dad, and all the kids, and towels and toys and food and grandma, getting across PCH is not so easy.
When I was a child I can remember our family headed to the beach in Coney Island or Far Rockaway, with more equipment than an African safari, so that we practically needed bearers to carry the umbrellas and folding chairs and beach toys, and the multitude of pots of food my grandmother insisted on. Now we didn’t have a PCH to cross but the major problem was still the same, where do you park the car? I have vivid and traumatic childhood memories of dropping off grandma, mom, my sister and cousins, while my father and I drove around looking for a parking spot, with my father constantly muttering and occasionally cursing if some got to an open spot before him. Well, you finally get the car parked, make it across PCH, get onto the beach, set up the umbrella and the chairs, and the towels, and of course what happens next, one of the kids says “I got to go to the toilet.” So you say, “Go in the ocean,” and he says, “No, I’ve got to poop.” Now you’re faced with a parental dilemma. Do you pack the kid up, walk out to PCH, walk a quarter mile to the crosswalk, cross over and find a public restroom or do you look for a house with an overhanging deck? I don’t know about all of you, but elitist that I am, I would be severely miffed if I had a Malibu beach house built over a hastily devised public latrine.
So before everyone goes around patting themselves on the back because of the additional public accesses, the simple fact is that most people want to go to the beach where there is parking that doesn’t require bank financing, where there are clean public toilets, where you can buy something to eat, where there are lifeguards—particularly if you have kids—where there are garbage cans, and where there is a certain amount of police protection so you can feel safe and not vulnerable. Unfortunately, most of the public accesses do not meet many of those criterions, which I suspect is why most people don’t use them much. I’ve been walking Malibu Road for years where there are a number of public accesses and they don’t get much use, even on busy summer weekends.
I don’t imagine that the public access app will make a great deal of difference. But if it does, it’s absolutely incumbent on government to guarantee the visitors safety, decent sanitation, lifeguards—particularly on dangerous beaches, and there are a number of them in Malibu—and some rational way to handling the excess cars on a busy weekend, which currently is kind of a public lottery.