The beach traffic last weekend was something to behold, despite low-hanging toxic cloud cover. On both days, I headed out to find restaurants that have good food and accessible parking. I visited Las Flores’ hole-in-the-wall Country Kitchen on Saturday and enjoyed top-of-the-line V’s real eggs Benedict hollandaise sauce on Sunday.
The thing is, one cannot turn into Cross Creek without getting plugged up at the crosswalks. Cars are left with their bottom ends hanging out in PCH, which is very dangerous. People pull into gas stations too slowly, trucks are parked at recycling bins and blocking the back entrance to Marmalade’s lot, and several pedestrians walk both ways outside of Starbucks.
For all that, have you ever seen more than five people in any shop in any shopping center? No. Unless it’s a restaurant or a grocery store, shops are just advertising write-offs on a bag for swish designer duds to claim London, New York, Paris and Malibu. You don’t see a big name emblazoning on a Tony’s take-away or Tra di Noi’s excellent pizza window. Yet, if I just want a salad at John’s Garden, I have to go through every parking lot and, oftentimes, can’t find a single space, even on a weekday.
Do we really care to have another shopping center, even if it includes a Whole Foods, sandwiched into the melee that will be Santa Monica College next to the library and La Paz somewhere behind that? What if it was a Costco? I am happy to go to over the hill to get giant containers of toilet tissue, organic eggs and spring salad greens. I’ll go all the way to the other Costco at Washington and Lincoln. That doesn’t mean I want one in Malibu. Unless the traffic in the Civic Center is made a one-way system, with ingress being on Webb Way, I don’t see how we can fit any more vehicles into that snarl.
Our Planning Commission surfer, Mikke Pierson, did the math. All those testing days of traffic on PCH were done on similarly cloudy/rainy days, and probably not on weekends. It is almost November and there is no let up at the beach.
Beate Nilsen