Rick Wallace / Guest Column
Remember when Market Basket was the popular grocery store in town? It was located where the Marmalade Cafe, ballet studio and Wells Fargo are now. The highest point in the Santa Monica Mountains is 3,111 feet. It is the Sandstone Peak above Yerba Buena on the Ventura County side of the range.
Would you agree that Malibu has only three restaurants that are equally suitable for breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
(No further comment about anything to do with restaurants. As far as I am concerned, everything about the Marmalade is just dandy)
More than 30 years at its Malibu location, it is easy to forget that Pepperdine was established elsewhere. Pepperdine College opened in 1937 as a small, private, Christian college in south-central Los Angeles, before it was “South-Central Los Angeles.” How often do colleges move, especially from a small, flat parcel in the rough part of the town to the hills above the beach? And, who was Pepperdine, anyway? George Pepperdine was a businessman who owned a chain of auto parts stores. He died in 1962, ten years before the dream of a Malibu campus became a reality, but long after his college had become a fixture in Southern California. The move was due in great part to the Malibu Adamson family who donated the land, and Frank R. Seaver who donated much of the money to construct the original campus, thus named Seaver College. The current campus is about one-fifth the size it was when I attended in the late ’70s.
Just think! These may someday be referred to as the “bad old days of Malibu.” When the pier is still not fully open, there is no public bike/walking path on either side of the Malibu Creek, too few ball fields, and Malibu Legacy Park is still a barren gopher nest.
Regarding Jerry Perenchio, isn’t it well past time he be given some credit? I have never met the man; I wouldn’t know him if I saw him. But he has surely compromised his business instincts, possibly his philosophical and political views, and surely economic potential to allow that someday over 20 acres of the Chili Cook-off site and the walled private golf course acreage adjacent the lagoon will all become popular public lands. He is owed some debt of gratitude by Malibu. And this after years of visceral attacks upon him while he freely allowed the Chili Cook-off site to be a cook-off site, unfenced and undeveloped.
Wouldn’t you agree the elections in Malibu have become a little less intense? It seemed hard to argue new leadership was needed when the current gang has just made two critical park acquisitions and lacks the spite and disharmony of past councils. The opposition mantra was, “Wow, two new valuable park acquisitions. We would’ve done it better.” The only challengers anymore are unknowns just out of the woodwork or the radical fringe that hates everything our council does and protests everything, often with a lawsuit. It just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
I still think that three city council seats should be available every two years in our municipal election. The top vote getter should get a four-year term, the first two years designated as mayor. Second place should get a four-year term. Third place should get a two-year term. Every election would be equally important and every vote would have an effect on the final placements.
Which category has more Malibu homes listed for sale, less than $2 million or more than $10 million? Answer: It’s about the same, roughly 25 each.
When you think of Malibu and its high-priced real estate, and specialty boutiques, and $10 glasses of wine, and ultra-expensive college, and huge cache of mega-movie stars, and $100,000 septic systems, don’t forget this: The Dume Room is still there for us.
Kanan-Dume Highway opened in 1970.
At one time, in the 1960s, a large movie theater was planned for the brick-surfaced parking lot next to Starbucks.
It is possible for a person to drive from one Malibu house to another and spend over one hour driving-with no traffic. Try driving from the hills above Yerba Buena down to PCH and then a half hour down to Las Flores Canyon whereupon you go to a house at the top of the mountain along Saddle Peak. All Malibu. Over an hour!
The legendary Colony Coffee shop existed from 1958 to 1989 when it was demolished for the Colony Plaza development. I will never forget my first visit there one morning in 1975, in the pharmacy section. I found myself in total awe of Mick Jagger standing in front of me, shirtless and in bell-bottoms, yelling to the back, “Yo, ya got any drugs back there?”
PCH is often slowed by accidents and construction but there was a time it was closed indefinitely. The huge rock slide at Big Rock in April, 1979 caused the highway to be closed both ways for more than a month. Had the uproar of protests not overwhelmed Caltrans, they would’ve kept it closed longer. And those were the days when all the Malibu kids went to SaMoHi.
The original name for Paradise Cove was Whiskey Gulch, pre-1960.
The signal at Zumirez ended the longest drought between new signals along the PCH. It had been 15 years since the previous signal installation, at Busch Drive, February 1990. The previous record was only eight years between Morning View (Dec. 1978) and Paradise Cove (Feb, 1987). First signal ever in 90265 Webb Way, Feb. 1955, when it was originally the foot of Malibu Canyon Road.
By the way, when did Malibu become 90265? It was on July 1, 1963, when the ZIP code system was implemented throughout the United States and Malibu alphabetically landed between Lynwood (90262) and Manhattan Beach (90266).
Visit the beach! Visit the beach!