The year 2020 opened ordinarily enough, without any hint of what was to come when the COVID-19 virus would hit California in March.
The city, which had been grappling, seemingly forever, with people parking overnight in campers and autos on PCH, took the step (with a 4-0 vote) to approve nighttime parking restrictions, initially at Las Tunas Beach and another at the Malibu Pier—and later at Zuma Beach and then Corral Canyon Beach. All this, of course, subject to California Coastal Commission approval.
Locally, the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue and Malibu Pacific Church, along with many others, beefed up their security, hiring security guards in response to several countrywide mass shootings in New York, New Jersey and Poway, Calif.
Weisman Museum, located at Pepperdine University for 25 years, suffered a loss also felt by the entire Malibu community when art director Michael Zakian died unexpectedly at age 62. Zakian had been a driving spirit in building the museum and putting it on the Los Angeles art scene map.
In yet another tragedy, a legendary basketball superstar, Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, was killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas that took nine lives including Bryant and his athletically gifted 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who were all traveling to a basketball tournament in Newbury Park in Ventura County.
