Home sweet home. For some that means an 18,000 square foot villa perched on a cliff above the ocean. For others it’s a contemporary Mediterranean brimming with art and eclectic finds from world travels.

Four families opened their magnificent Malibu homes to the public Saturday afternoon for tours and hosted a progressive dinner of sorts, raising $15,000 for the Malibu Methodist Nursery School.

Guests lounged in lushly landscaped gardens, taking in the sweeping ocean views, listened to live jazz and nibbled on gourmet offerings donated by some of the area’s finest restaurants. The Marmalade Caf provided Thai salads and intriguing flavors of ginger beer. Sapori Cucina prepared generous helpings of focaccia capres sandwiches and tira misu. Chefs from the Gray Whale and The Regency Club offered cooking demonstrations. Last minute Mother’s Day shopping was convenient with gift baskets for sale and specialty boutiques featuring high quality hand-crafted items.

Kay Gabbard, director of the school, is the mastermind behind this popular event now in its 14th year. Selling tickets at $40 each, Gabbard said the tour proceeds provide scholarship money for families otherwise unable to enroll their children in the school.

“We want diversity and a variety of languages and cultures in our school,” said Gabbard. “So rather than continuously hound the parents for extra money, the Cook’s Tour is our one annual fund-raiser.”

When families sign up their children for school they sign a contract that states each family will provide one person to help with the event.

Saturday, 80 volunteers, made up of parents and friends of the school, reported for duty. Dads served as shuttle drivers in their sport utility vehicles to one of the homes with insufficient parking. Volunteers were staked out in every room of the homes on tour, acting as docents, keeping an eye on valuables and serving food and beverages. Still more volunteers were at the school providing day-care.

Among those volunteers deserving credit are the homeowners themselves, without which there would be no Cook’s Tour.

Ginna Nunnery gamely offered up her spacious hillside home when someone else backed out at the last minute. In the midst of opening her new Malibu boutique, Homespun Creations ‘n Craft Designs, Nunnery stopped everything to get the house ready.

“It has been a crazy week,” admitted Nunnery.

One of the outstanding features of this contemporary Mediterranean built in 1998 is the beautiful mahogany doors, which open out into travertine and wrought iron terraces in nearly every room.

La Dolca Vita for Lori and Ken Harges is their 18,000 square foot Italian style villa named Pacifica Venezia. Boasting more amenities than a four-star resort, Lori Harges said they built the house for entertaining. An elevator brings up guests from an 18-car garage. Floors and stairways are marble, painted garlands grace every arched doorway and a bar in the ballroom opens to a swim-up bar from the pool outside.

The Harges’ are a self-made American success story, and a gracious Lori Harges says she enjoys sharing her bountiful blessings with others. A tireless hostess, Harges stands in the middle of a cavernous kitchen slicing cucumbers for a dinner party scheduled to take place that evening. Sunday the villa would be making room for the four-footed guests of a kennel club.

“We started out with nothing,” said Harges. “My husband was a Marine and a laborer when I met him. But I’m glad we did it that way because I appreciate this every day.”

Russell and Lucia Nordstrom entrusted their home, La Casa Rosada, to the care of tour volunteers. The house, filled with eclectic furnishings and art from the owner’s travels around the world, was a popular stop.

“I can relate to this house a little more,” said Susie Homan. “Lighted candles in the fireplace, a saddle on the mantle, paint colors, are all ideas I can use.”

Many visitors on the tour make the trip annually, coming from as far as Orange County.

Jerry Ostendorf and Sheila Halcomb sat in garden chairs sipping Perrier and enjoying Ahi tuna appetizers freshly prepared by the chef from the Regency Club.

“We come every year from Manhattan Beach,” said Ostendorf. “It’s my favorite way to spend Mother’s Day.”

A fourth home on the tour was a rustic ranch style home on four and one half acres in Bonsall Canyon. The property includes stables, a riding ring, lighted tennis courts and three guest houses. The property is up for sale and was unoccupied. Guests lingered over Rigatoni Alfredo and Caesar salad prepared by chefs from the Grey Whale while relaxing among the lush gardens and expansive lawns. Work already began again on Monday for next year’s tour. Each year four new homes are selected. It takes a certain amount of salesmanship to convince a homeowner that having 300 people over for hors d’oeuvres will be fun.

“We invited a few people on the tour this year with houses we are interested in,” said Gabbard. “We want them to see how we do it.”

The homes are all treated with care and respect. Shoe protectors are given to guests touring homes with carpeting. Rooms are monitored, floors swept, trash removed. A passport and a map allowed guests to see the homes in any order they wish, so traffic flowed evenly and a singular home was never mobbed.

When a director in Norway thinks of a scene for a movie shot in America in which he’ll have a little gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts, what does he picture?

Ed and Vern’s Rock Store in Malibu.

Actually, if you really want to get picky, the Rock Store is in “Cornell,” which is an actual town though Ed Savko, who has operated the store with his wife, Vern, since 1961, can’t tell you where the boundaries of the town are. He knows it is a separate town, though, as all his paperwork shows the Rock Store is in Cornell, virtually surrounded by Malibu Creek State Park.

The store is located on Mulholland Drive, a stone’s throw from the Peter Strauss Ranch, and is a Mecca for motorcyclists everywhere. It has been used for more than 60 film productions, including feature films and commercials.

Film location scouts are attracted by the rustic setting.

Ed and Vern aim to keep it that way. It started out as a grocery store and they still sell food, but 15 years ago a patio was set up for diners to enjoy their food. Most of the diners have been bikers in recent years.

“In the beginning there were the tourists from the Seminole Hot Springs coming over for a beer,” recalls Ed.

Then the bikers came, one of the first being the late actor Steve McQueen, the original “bad boy” biker. Now, every weekend there’s usually lots of entertainment folk, including Jay Leno and Arnold Schwarzenegger, mixed in among up to 150 motorcyclists.

Ed and Vern’s son helped out at the store when he was in high school. He went to Vietnam as a pilot, came back, and now is in the Air Force in Monterey. Now, a granddaughter helps with waiting tables. They’ve managed to build a reputation for themselves as a tourist destination and capitalize off it with t-shirts, beer mugs and assorted memorabilia, similar to what some chain restaurants do. But there’s only one Ed and Vern’s.

Ed was a biker once, but, at age 75, he no longer rides. He rode Harleys, as well as the rival, Indians. He admits bikers have a rowdy image but points out his customers are, “Doctors, lawyers, artists, actors – everybody’s riding a bike now.”

Ed and Vern are from Pennsylvania. Ed served in the Navy on a destroyer during the war in the Pacific Theatre.

He points out that the name “Rock Store” has nothing to do with rock-n-roll (though they play it on the PA system, along with ’40s tunes – more to Ed’s liking) but alludes to the rocks the building is built out of. The building dates back to 1909 when it was a stagecoach shop between Calabasas and Camarillo.

Although there have been many Malibu fires, the only one that came close to wiping them out was the Agoura fire. Fortunately, Ed had good water pressure and enough volunteers to hose down the roof and save the building.

Among the bikers at the store Sunday was Ken O’Neil of Ventura, a tall blonde man in full-leathers who, for a living, paints clay model prototypes of Volkswagens before they are sent to Germany. O’Neil rides a mint-condition ten-year-old Ducati 851, considered the Lamborghini of motorcycles. He has been through his Harley and Honda periods and now rides Italy’s best. He said he likes to ride down from Ventura to meet all the other bikers.

“This is the place to talk about bikes,” said O’Neil.

There’s a saying in the biker world: “There’s two kinds of bikers-those that have been down, and those that are going down.”

O’Neil has been down once since ’73, in one of the Malibu canyons but survived to tell about it. He is married and said, “My wife is a safety nut. She’ll only get on this bike when it has a roll cage.”

Two bikers who arrived astride one bike were Robin and Marty Davis, a married couple riding a yellow Honda Magnum. Robin is from England where everything is wet, but, he said, “I didn’t ride in the wet.”

He said he views California as “motorcycle heaven.”

Robin is in the world of computers and said he rides the bike for recreation. He has had four bikes and is building a Harley that’s lowered, though he resists the name “chopper.”

He said he makes a practice of ending each ride at the Rock Store to catch up with what’s happening and see the other bikes.

Robin said he isn’t worried about the heavy police presence near the Rock Store on occasion.

“They let the bikers know they’re there,” he said.

Upon leaving the store, another biker pulled up, a native of Chile, with his two pre-teen daughters aboard, one riding in a side-car. Another computer professional, he, too, finds his weekend recreational relief in riding to the Rock Store to talk motorcycles. With a sidecar, he points out, you don’t do any motorcycling stunts. “My wife isn’t too happy,” he said of when he takes off on a weekend morning in the Harley with the side-car and his girls aboard.

But the girls? They looked like they were loving it.

Like a picture in a jigsaw puzzle, an image of the new City Council is beginning to take shape. A little bit from the Business Roundtable, another series of pieces from the City Council Meeting (Third Quarterly Review of the Year to Date), comments and staff reports, and a sense of direction begins to emerge about where Malibu may be headed.

The new council is starting to shape its vision and to implement it — very cautiously and politely. It’s obvious council members were still feeling each other out, and Mayor Tom Hasse was careful to give new members Jeff Jennings and Ken Kearsley an opportunity to add their input to the “To Do” list set by the previous council.

They were equally cautious about not making any sudden changes of direction. There are many things on the city’s plate, but a few things quickly emerged as central:

• The new council wants to complete the Local Coastal Plan quickly, because once they do and it’s been accepted by the Coastal Commission, Malibu will have the Coastal Commission out of its hair. The earlier Draft Malibu Coastal Plan, which was six years in the making, was said to be DOA earlier in the year by some high-ranking coastal staff. LCP Chair Werner Keonig came to the meeting to ask the council to retain the LCP Committee and let them continue to work on the plan, but he was told the work of the committee was over and now the plan would be in the hands of the council and city staff. Hasse said to Werner, “At some point, the committee must let go and let the City Council handle it. … Outside agencies are confused as to who is speaking for the city.”

• The city is currently interviewing for a new planning director. Henry Engen, a retired planning director, was brought on board to serve as interim director until a new director comes on board.

• City Manager Harry Peacock will retire the end of June, and potential city manager candidates are soon to be interviewed. The list of roughly 40 applicants has been winnowed down to between five and 10.

• The council is still one member short, and the last council decided not to appoint anyone to fill the vacancy but to wait and elect a member at the time of the general election in November. The new council has decided to take another look at the issue of appointing someone to fill the vacancy created when Harry Barovsky passed away. City Attorney Steven Amerikaner is currently researching the legality of the new council filling the vacancy by appointment. If legally permissible, the council would first decide if they want to do that and if they can muster the three votes necessary to appoint someone. Sharon Barovsky, Ted Vaill and Frank Basso have all been mentioned as possibilities for the vacancy, but whoever is appointed would have to run for the balance of the Barovsky term in November.

In other matters:

• The city will have a Sheriff’s Beach Team again this summer, probably five days per week, with the days to rotate, at a cost to the city of about $248,932 for the season. The Sheriff’s Department estimates the Beach Team should generate about $170,000 in revenues through fines for violations, which they estimate at 4,500 citations for traffic and beach violations, and towing costs for 400 illegally parked vehicles.

• The city’s revenues, which are estimated for the full year at $12,310,000, are on target at the end of the third quarter; expenditures also seem to be in line with predictions. However, the money the city was hoping to get from FEMA, roughly $2.5 million total, as part of the reimbursement for the 1993 fire, may not be forthcoming. FEMA has disallowed some $1.75 million of the costs (which is the worst case scenario), although the issue is still being negotiated. It’s unclear how much will ultimately be paid, but as of the end of the third quarter, the city had received only $38,881 of the $725,000 anticipated from FEMA this year. Hotel occupancy taxes and sales taxes were up, due in part to a better economy and possibly because the city, not the county, is now collecting its own money.

• The city has made some major changes in the Dial-A-Ride program, trying to hold down costs by raising the eligibility age from 55 to 60, raising the trip cost from $1 to $2 and some other adjustments.

• Cornucopia Farms’ Farmers Market is tentatively scheduled to open May 21 in the Civic Center; however, scheduling conflicts may delay this startup date.

• The anticipated on-line permitting for Building/Safety and Planning permits will not happen for at least nine months, because the necessary technology isn’t available yet.

• The city has an on-line network (LAN) up and operating for its employees, covering legislative history and such.

• The just completed Parks and Recreation Master Plan will be coming to the council at its May 23 meeting.

• No one is quite sure if the moisture sensors that were supposedly installed at Bluffs Park to monitor irrigation levels were ever installed and running properly. It seems that when the contractor tore up the ground to build the ball field, he said there was no sign of the sensors.

• The Malibu Youth Coalition, which has forged ahead under the leadership of Laure Stern, already has modular buildings in place on the Malibu High School campus. The teen center, which will be the Boy’s and Girl’s Club of Malibu, was officially awarded a 5-year lease. They are about to announce the name of the new director.

• The city anticipates probably tearing down a city-owned house on the creek side of Las Flores Creek and building a pocket park with a small all-purpose building there.

• It was reported that the county may be trying to get out of the water business and that they are putting Water Works 29, which supplies Malibu’s water, along with its Marina del Rey water system, up for sale to a private party. It’s up to Zev Yaroslavsky and the Board of Supervisors. The council’s sense was that Malibu needs more water storage, as was evident when the PCH pipeline broke, and also a second source of water, so the city is not totally dependent on that same PCH pipeline.

• The city is going to be receiving roughly $170,000 next year from park bonds that were passed (Propositions 12 and 13).

• The traffic emergency radio will be up and running by the fall.

• It was reported the Code Enforcement Task Force was meeting every Monday, and its chair was invited to report its progress to the council at the May 23 meeting. This was a major election issue, and it’s clear the council wants this Task Force to do its job with all due speed.

• At the same time, the new Planning Commission is taking a comprehensive look at the zoning code, which most seem to agree is badly in need of an overhaul.

Repairs on the historic Malibu Pier have practically ground to a halt, bogged down in part by a joint-venture construction contract gone sour. The state will call the contract to a halt May 22 and put it out for rebid, which probably will delay the restart until early September.

Caught like a bystander in the ferocious conflict between the contractors, the state has been unable or unwilling to release money to pay subcontractors because the contractors can’t agree on it.

According to Hayden Sohm, superintendent of the Malibu Sector of the California State Parks system, the state has cut Phase 1 of the project short. Uncompleted portions of Phase 1 will be included in Phase II, which will be rebid and awarded to new contractors.

Phase I now includes new piles and decking on the long part of the pier, or “stem,” only.

“It goes back quite a while,” Sohm said. “For reasons I am not aware of, the joint venture has basically fallen apart. There is a lot of acrimony and contentious behavior between the two entities. This has manifested itself in problems with pier construction.

“We’re in the process of winding down the contract,” Sohm said. “It is not solely problems with the two partners. There are issues with the construction process.”

Those issues include previously undetected pier damage that surfaced as the work progressed and a crane accident that left the operator, the 20-year-old son of a subcontractor, with a fractured pelvis. But the project has been most significantly impacted by the escalating conflict between the two contractors, Bruce Darian of Malibu and Accent Builders of Lakeview Terrace. Relations between Darien and Accent, who together signed a contract with the state for Phase I, have been characterized by tension and charges of threats, angry verbal and physical confrontations, restraining orders and one citizen’s arrest.

Darian is a Malibu contractor and environmentalist who has been involved for eight years with the pier.

Accent, owned by Anthony Frederico and his son, Ronald Frederico, is an offshoot of Superior Gunite, the financial heavyweight behind the contract.

The origin of the conflict is murky. Both sides say they originated the bid and brought the other party in. Darian’s version is, “I needed a company that could put forth the advanced finance and bonding capacity that had to be in place for the pier. This company (Accent) wanted to work with me. I filled out the bid and all the subs came to me. I brought everything together. They were strictly to be behind-the-scenes money.”

According to Anthony Frederico, 64, a long-time mutual friend, Darian’s uncle, asked Frederico, as a favor, to work with Darian on the project. Frederico, who has been in business 45 years, said his company does $30- to $40 million in business a year, including the retrofit of the Los Angeles Coliseum; previously he had no interest in bidding the pier job.

“Bruce had never done a job over $20,000,” Frederico said. “He was tied into the pier and wanted to do it. It was my bonding, my money. If you want a joint venture, you usually don’t joint venture with somebody with no money.

“So I offered him $1,000 a week to work as a superintendent, doing work. When the job was done, I would get the first $50,000 of profit, he would get the next $50,000, and we would split after that. We wrote it out. I signed it and sent it. Unknown to me, he never signed it.

“At our first meeting with the state in August or September, my son said that Bruce would be the superintendent. Bruce stood up and said, ‘I am a joint-venture equal partner, not the superintendent. I have to sign everything.’ When we were through with the meeting, I got a letter from his attorney saying he was a true joint venture partner. I called him and said, “Bruce, it’s my money. You want to sign on my money.’ From that day on he became a complete idiot.”

According to Frederico, the state “has not sent a dime. The state accepts what we are doing, but Bruce sent a letter saying don’t pay.”

He added, “All he had to do is go to work with his bag and nails, just go to work. He decided to become a legal beagle.”

Frederico said neither he nor his son had threatened Darian, but that he had yelled at him. He said the “90-year-old judge” who granted the restraining orders heard him say an expletive “75 times” on Darian’s 20-minute tape and was offended. But that’s the way you talk on a construction site,” he said.

Another court session is scheduled shortly.

Darian said he was to be the general contractor as they merged in a joint venture. The two contractors joined forces, winning the Phase I contract on May 20, 1999, with their low bid of $664,000.00.

They signed a contract with the state as Darian/Accent, a joint venture. But they neglected to sign a contract with each other. Nor did they establish a joint-venture bank account.

The start date for the project was Oct. 25, 1999.

According to papers provided by Darian, even before the start date, he charged that Accent attempted to repudiate the joint-venture agreement, signing subcontrators on its own, without reference to Darian. He said his joint-venture partners became more forceful. In a letter dated March 10, Darian wrote to the Contractors State License Board, “Commencing May 1999, shortly after the joint venture was formed, the Fredericos have engaged in a series of threats against my life, repeatedly assaulted me, vandalized my personal belongings and attempted to extort money from me. Addtionally, the Fredericos have induced subcontractors at the job site to threaten, verbally assault, and challenge me to fight.”

He also wrote, “Anthony Frederico threatened to shoot me on several occasions if we lost money on the project.”

Darian also wrote the board that Anthony Frederico demanded he pay $25,000 to fund the joint venture or sign an agreement giving Accent authority over the project.

During the course of construction, Darian took the matter to court and was granted restraining orders against Anthony and Ronald Frederico, specifying that at the construction site, “defendant (either Frederico or Anthony) is to stay a reasonable distance from plaintiff (Darian) unless a state official or neutral, non-affiliated third party … is present.”

With the job being carried on by Accent and the subs it had signed, Darian became odd man out. The employees blame him for the state’s refusal to write checks to anyone other than the joint-venture partners. Although the state is obliged to maintain primary contact with Darian, the construction employees “just ignore Bruce like he isn’t there,” according to subcontractor Ken Patrick, president of DCA Drilling and Construction of Camarillo.

“He tried to get every man on the job fired,” Patrick said. “Bruce doesn’t have employees. He shows up by himself. He tapes and takes photos. It’s pure harrassment. Nobody really likes him.”

Huntington Woodman, supervisor of Accent, said, “Bruce asked workers to do things. We were told never to do anything for him.”

Armed with a camera and tape recorder, Darian, working from a red construction shack on the gounds of the pier parking lot, keeps detailed records of the constuction activities, including reporting working conditions and environmental concerns.

Lifeguards at the cramped Baywatch office on the pier (shared with the state construction supervisor), according to one of the lifeguards, have been called on a number of times to break up confrontations. Darian called sheriff’s deputies several times, but no one was arrested.

Events came to a head May 2 when Anthony Frederico, who according to state reports is rarely at the site, ordered Darian to remove red circles he had painted on piles Darian claimed were leaking creosote through the fiberglass wrap. Darien refused. Frederico called for a deputy, who advised Frederico he could make a citizen’s arrest for vandalism. He did so, and Darian was removed from the job in handcuffs and taken to Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. His dog, “Action,” was taken to the animal shelter. Both were released later.

“This is the best location I ever had and the worst job,” Woodman said. “The politics were horrible. It was a nightmare for me.”

Woodman called the joint venture “the partnership made in hell.”

“I’m personally tired of not being paid since November,” said Patrick after the last pile of Phase I was successfully pounded into bent (row) 21. “I haven’t been paid dime one since November. Accent has not been paid dime one since November.”

Darien remains defiant. “They ruined my reputation. I want just compensation and my name cleared.”