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Bikers spinning wheels
A month ago, around Labor Day, sadly two bikers lost their lives in separate accidents. One on upper Las Flores Canyon and one on Stunt Road. It’s been rumored that a third has perished just recently somewhere in the same general area. Our hearts and sincere sympathy go out to their friends, loved ones and families.
To a canyon biker our remarks no doubt will appear to be an attack on their rights. In our minds nothing could be farther from the truth. We non-bikers, mostly walking adults and children, plus a few dogs and bicyclists, are all in fear for our safety. We do recognize that most of these 20-30-year-old “invincible” riders have rapier-like reflexes and much experience hurtling their Ducati, (or equivalent), “crotch-rockets” around the canyon roads, which are regarded as their God-given race course. I’ll eat my hat if, on occasion, these racers are not reaching 80 mph on the straight stretches. Is this safe? We think not. First, the speed limit here is 40 mph. Second, when accelerating out of some blind corner, already going 60 mph, one of many surprises could confront the biker. Is he/she always ready and capable to handle whatever they might confront? We think not, and definitely not always. Third, the walkers have precious little walking area and I personally have been “blown off” by a “Ninja.”
Take my word for it–this can be frightening. So as I prefaced this comment on bikers feeling we’re impugning their rights, we reverse the challenge. We feel the bikers ride the canyons without regard to “our rights.” The encompassing right of ours is to be safe from motorcyclists operating in violation of the law (i.e., speeding and reckless driving). What can we do? Don’t know. We will have to wait and see. What should be done? A few cool heads and respected riders should hold forth at the Rock Store and talk it up. We feel we at least deserve consideration. If we could open up a dialogue for discussion, this would constitute a quantum leap.
Bikers, vent your spleen, call us names, put us down. But please don’t ignore us. Let’s talk about these issues. Open communication can accomplish wonders. Phone or write us c/o The Malibu Times, please.
Once again we’re truly sorry for recent biker losses. Please help us to not be innocent biker victims.
Dave Wilson and Arthur Holmes
PCH closures cause massive back ups, angering residents
Once again, the City of Santa Monica’s long-delayed and on-going sewer repair project has created a daily commuter nightmare that has locals frustrated, angry and outraged.
“My fiance and I have had it. We’re ready to move,” snapped Sharon Sharpe.
The 15-year Malibu resident, who owns her own business based in Santa Monica, finds herself sitting on a small stretch of Pacific Coast Highway for hours along with thousands of Valley residents who cut over Topanga and Malibu canyons to avoid the 101 and 405 freeways. Her normal 20-minute trip to work now takes one to two hours.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s a parking lot backed up to Carbon (Canyon).”
The already high-volume of traffic through Malibu has been exacerbated by the massive repair project, which has portions of PCH down to two lanes.
The project began in 1999 when work crews started to replace two miles of old clay pipeline, which was damaged in the Northridge earthquake. Construction, which was suspended during the summer tourist months, resumed last week and will go through May 2002, if not longer.
The work is already one year behind schedule. “It was two years, but they ran into extra rocks and bad soil conditions so they decided to kick it over another year,” explains Malibu Public Works Director Chuck Bergson. “For some reason it seems to be worse this time.”
The problem has been frustrating for Bergson who has had numerous complaints from residents who are fuming and fed-up.
“We have 40 thousand cars a day coming over Malibu Canyon, but there are no buses. I’ve asked the MTA to address the problem, but they haven’t.”
Even without the project, out-of-town traffic has become a hot-button issue. “These communities keep building new homes,” says Bergson. “They live, work and sleep in Calabasas and they drive through our town. They get gas taxes and federal money to gold plate their streets while they beat ours up.”
The City of Santa Monica is advising commuters to use alternate routes (which are few) and vary their commute hours to avoid the morning and afternoon rush hours. But for people like Sharpe, that is impossible. “I own a business,” she said. “I have deadlines. I have to be here.”
There’s still no telling whether the project will meet its summer deadline. It hasn’t so far. For now, it seems there is no choice but to ride it out. Meanwhile, it might be a good time to grab some cassettes and learn a foreign language. You just might be fluent by the time its over.
Wild on–a good cause
Point Dume took on the flavor of Africa as locals got together for a safari soire to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Malibu on Saturday.
The organization’s annual Dolphin Ball took place at the home of Barry and Vicki Helman, which was transformed into an exotic outdoor game park.
Guests were welcomed by traditional African dancers and came decked out in everything from safari suits to faux leopard coats, zebra print sarongs and pink python pantsuits.
“It’s jungle chic,” laughed Dolphin Ball honorary chairman Linda Hamilton. “I guess that means I didn’t have to shave my legs.”
The “Terminator II” star and Malibu mom got involved several years ago to help little Kayleigh MacGregor who had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and the Dolphin Ball was born. “It’s grown phenomenally,” she told The Malibu Times. “It just gets better every year.”
Since 1997, the organization has raised thousands of dollars for CF–dollars that directly benefit children like Kayleigh. Instead of just treating the symptoms of CF, doctors are now able to focus on treating the root cause of the disease. CF Executive Director Gary Green says the outlook is encouraging. “We’re focusing more and more on drug therapy and it’s paying off,” he explains. “There are 20 new medications in the pipeline, extending the length and quality of life for people with CF.” Clearly, progress has been made. Today the average age for CF patients has been increased to 32. Only a few years ago, youngsters like Kayleigh were not likely to reach the first grade.
As an African band played on, guests settled into a glittering outdoor dining room decorated with thatch, twinkling starlights and primitive masks. The cuisine also had an African theme. The feast featured a first course of Supu ya Maharage da Nazi (coconut bean soup), Ku Ku Paka (coconut chicken flavored with ginger, curry powder, garlic and cloves), M’Chicha (artichoke and mushroom couscous) and a killer banana cake with warm caramel sauce.
The drinks were equally exotic. The favorite was called a Lightening Rod–an apple martini made with Rodnick Vodka. The luscious libation contained an eye-catching electric ice cube, which gave the beverage an eerie radioactive-like glow. “First you freeze them,” said Silver Comet CEO John Robert Sutton of the evening’s big novelty item. “There’s a gel in there that freezes into an ice cube, but there’s also a small battery with a light that lasts 14 hours. They’re really fun and people have just been going crazy over them.”
Live auction items included a ride-along in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter and VIP tickets to the Billboard music awards.
The fun-filled evening helped raise thousands of dollars for CF with everyone hoping that it won’t be long before they’re here again going wild for another reason– this time celebrating a cure.
Architecture and sexual politics
A universal theme will play itself out in Malibu starting this week: The power play between women and men, student and professor, and between professionals.
“Private Jokes, Public Places,” by Canadian playwright Oren Safdie, debuts this week at The Malibu Stage Company. The setting is the world of architecture.
Safdie has an intimate knowledge of this world–his father is Moshdie Safdie, the architect who designed Habitat for Montreal’s Expo 76, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Vancouver Library. And Safdie, who was born in Montreal, was headed toward his father’s profession as well. That is, until he decided to turn to playwriting. During college, he took a playwriting course as an option. That option replaced a career in architecture, and set him on a new one.
His new passion brought him to New York where his off-Broadway play, “Jews and Jesus,” was produced. Safdie ventured into film and TV, writing a pilot for Castle Rock/CBS and the screenplay for “You Can Thank Me Later,” starring Ellyn Burstyn and Amanda Plummer, and has a new film in production, “De Facto,” to be directed by Jacques Fansten and produced by Denis Heroux (Academy Award nominee for “Alantic City”).
Safdie approached Jacqueline Bridgeman, board member of the Stage Co., about “Private Jokes” while in town pitching film and TV ideas to studios.
“I would go anywhere anyone wants to produce me,” said Safdie, whose one goal is to make more of a dent in the film and TV world–for financial as well as creative reasons. He recently moved here from New York.
“It’s kind of necessary,” said Safdie. “I will always go back to New York, [but the] agents are here, and more film and TV.”
A very in-demand director, Craig Carlisle, is directing the play. Carlisle currently has three plays running, while preparing for the opening of “Private Jokes, Public Places.”
Safdie said the two know each other from New York. Safdie’s wife, M.J. Kang, plays the female student, Margaret. Fritz Michel, Rod McLachlan and Geoffrey Wade play the professors.
“In some ways [the play] is about architecture,” said Safdie, explaining the story. However, the underlying tones are the sexual politics involved between the mentors and female students “on a very primitive level–the male jockeying for position with the female. The architecture jury is the surface.”
Safdie said he did see this type of thing during his three years at architecture school.
In the play, architect student Margaret is presenting her final thesis to some “super star” architects. “Then there’s her teacher, who it’s hinted she’s having an affair with,” explains Safdie, about the complicated ego/gender struggles involved. The architects and Margaret try to one-up each other as they go over her design of a modern urban swimming pool and “a pool is no longer just a pool,” described in a press release about the play.
The story could happen just between males, said Safdie, but to maximize the drama he chose to make the student a female.
“Women are now at least 50 percent in architectural schools,” he said, though, there are not many famous women architects.
“It’s changing,” he said. “It’s kind of about that. This young student rises above that in some ways. It’s a commentary on the old guard and the new guard, or the changing of the guard.”
Previews are Oct. 9-11 at 8 p.m. A benefit performance party opens the play on Friday at 8 p.m., with a buffet provided by Monroe’s and dancing to a jazz trio after the play.
More information and tickets can be obtained by calling 310.589.1998.
Stand strong–don’t be a victim
From the publisher/By Arnold G. York
The bombs are falling on Afghanistan and I feel better. I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but for me, as I suspect for many of you, this attack on the World Trade Center has produced a ride on an emotional roller coaster.
I can’t stop it, I can’t get off and it feels like everything that happens out there, over which I have absolutely no control, impacts me personally.
I’ve tried all the standard cures; Prozac, alcohol, eating every fattening food known to man, talking it to death, writing about it and still it’s there, like a great big weight sitting on my chest and I can’t get rid of it.
I read the papers in the morning; check the online news sites during the day and watch TV news at night. Everything I see makes me feel worse. It’s hard to sleep at night. No matter how much sleep I get, I wake up not feeling rested.
Why is this so unsettling? People live through wars and bombings without this angst. What’s so different?
What’s different is the rules all seem so uncertain. I’m not sure what good and evil mean in the context of this conflict. I can’t figure out if we’re at war or not at war. No matter how much I think about it, I can’t seem to figure it out or make myself feel better. So rather than trying to figure it out, I think about the only thing we can do as citizens is to develop a set of rules of survival, which hopefully will carry us through this. I’ve based a set on my perception that this is a marathon and not a sprint, and to win we have to be standing at the finish line.
Rule No. 1– We cannot allow the terrorists to attack us.
They can hate us and malign us, picket and protest, burn us in effigy, run riot in our streets, threaten and bluff, curse us to the heavens, but never, never, never can they attack us.
Rule No. 2 — If they do, we will annihilate them.
We’ll do it wherever they hide, and whatever country they are in–no matter who riots, protests or threatens us, or whatever the economic consequences are, or how many resolutions are introduced at the United Nations.
Rule No. 3 — Anybody who aids and abets our enemy is also our enemy.
So either help us or get the hell out of our way because we’re going to do what we have to do to protect ourselves whether you like it or not.
Rule No. 4 — Stop caring about what the world thinks about us.
It doesn’t matter. Whatever we do or don’t do impacts somebody or some country in this world. Sometimes we can do something about it, more often than not, we can’t. If some shopkeeper in Afghanistan tells CNN how evil we are and how much he hates us, shrug it off or their hatred will devour us.
Rule No. 5 — Make it very clear that we are prepared to use force, and mean it.
Let’s not delude ourselves about what that means. It means we are sending our men and women off on missions that can kill them. We are going to see TV footage of dead Americans and body bags coming back. Despite all the rhetoric about smart weapons and minimizing collateral damage, the reality is war kills people, combatants and innocents, and if we are to remain strong we have to accept that. Sometimes in using force, we’re going to be the heavy. We’re going to aim for the missile site and instead hit the hospital. It’s unavoidable. War is a nasty business.
Rule No. 6 — Let’s stop beating ourselves up.
We didn’t pick this war and we didn’t pick this battle. Up to the time the World Trade Center was attacked, we weren’t mad at anyone and we weren’t fighting with anyone. The terrorists chose this battlefield and they set the rules of engagement. They decided that every American is a combatant. They don’t accept the concept of innocents. We can’t walk off, we can’t hide, we can’t negotiate, we can’t make nice and buy them off. All we can do is stand and fight.
Rule No. 7 — Refuse to be a victim.
I know now that’s what has been eating away at me. I feel like a victim and powerless. It’s tearing me up and I suspect also many of you feel the same way. We owe no one, no nation, no religion, no belief an apology because we are the largest, strongest richest nation in the world.
Rule No. 8 — Accept that we’re all going to lose something in this war, but we simply don’t have a choice.
We are going to lose some privacy, freedom, free speech, and some ability to assemble, travel, visit and earn a living, because, the truth is, wartime rules will apply. But the war will ultimately end. Terrorists don’t bring down great nations. Even terrorists get older and tired and need a little personal peace or get killed. When that happens, we’ll return to peacetime rules.
A taxing lesson
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper. Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy’s remarks in “The Malibu Times” (10/4/01) are puzzling. The California Lottery was delivered to California voters and promoted through the local schools as the cure for the California Educational money predicament of the time. Proposition 13 was passed to save the family (including schoolteachers) habitat and thus the American dream. Mr. Deasy alludes to the fact that it is an offense to have wealth. He further is quoted as saying that the end result of Proposition 13 is to equalize poverty and not level wealth. It is therefore a transgression to be prosperous. John Deasy is cited as articulating that “arts, music, P.E. and similar activities all become tenuous if funds have to be raised” to support these programs.
Mr. Deasy, Hello! Funds have already been raised for these under supported programs. Proposition Y, which Deirdre Roney takes credit for helping ratify, is a “must have measure” promoted by the Santa Monica-Malibu School District through our teachers and kids. It is a parcel tax increase totaling $700,000 (just for Malibu) yearly for the next 10 years which has been added to your district’s income on the tax backs of the entire Malibu property owning community. This tax increase totaling $7,000,000 (Malibu only) was levied on the Malibu property owner, as of July 1, 2001, and states that it is to be used directly for the aforementioned programs. Its stated purpose is to “enhance athletic, music and arts programs.” It is to also to be used to “protect the taxpayers’ investment in education and a safe learning environment,” whatever the inferno this poorly worded statement in the Property Tax increase Proposition Y means.
John Deasy, the California Lottery, Proposition X and Proposition Y were all promoted as a “must have” income for the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. We, the Malibu taxpayer, voted for your increase in our property taxes to show support for local education and the school district. You have failed us awfully. We were in wonderment when these funded programs were threatened with dying for the current school year. The members of the Lily’s Caf Steering Committee could not run their households’ budgets and survive overspending year after year as the school district does. The Lily’s Steering Committee expects the school district to operate within its budget like we have to in our personal household financial plan. Your financial planning to reduce the Proposition X deficit is creative but not sound business practice in the current economic environment
We invite you, Mr. Deasy, to attend the Lily’s Caf morning coffee (8:00 a.m.) to discuss with former Malibu Mayor John Harlow, Doug O’Brien and the coffee group the subject of school district financial responsibility. We feel that Malibuites who pay, I am told, 25 percent of the school district property taxes and are rewarded with only 12 percent of those funds in return deserve a better return on our educational investment.
It looks to the Lily’s Caf Steering Committee like wealth leveling is being applied to Malibu taxpayers, schools, kids and parents. To repeat what others have said, Mr. Deasy, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
And that is all I have to say.
Tom Fakehany, chair
Lily’s Caf Steering Committee
Inflammatory LCP draft
The Coastal Commission’s LCP draft is only what it claims to be….a draft. The reaction of some individuals to this draft appears to be more inflammatory and self-serving than constructive. Specifically describing this issue as “a declaration of war” and launching personal attacks is absolutely uncalled for. It is divisive, non productive and insulting. It lacks forethought as well as common decency.
Living with dignity, with decency and without threats, is a way which best honors one’s intelligence. The sensible thing to do is to use solid and insightful thinking to find the best solution to our Land Use problem.
I’m sure that a lawsuit against the State of California is not in the best interest of the City of Malibu. It is surely not what our citizens deserve as being their best hope. Let’s try to deal with the Coastal Commission draft with positive energy and intelligence. Our collective input might just result in a successful outcome.
Citizens of Malibu, let us unite toward a common cause!
Jay Liebig