A long talk about a short pier with Zuma Jay
By Benjamin Marcus, Columnist
Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner has a long history with the Malibu Pier, going back to cutting bait and cleaning fish in the 1970s. He has been involved with the pier in various ways out of the 20th century and into the 21st.
As of June, the end of the Malibu Pier is closed and probably won’t reopen until a new 20-year concessionaire is chosennext year. Will Zuma Jay be part of a new team to control the pier? We shall see. This is Part One of what could easily be a book about the Malibu Pier — past, present and future.
Where are we now? The end of the Malibu Pier has been closed since when? Why did they close it? And when do you expect it to be open?
The pier closed in January. John Stockwell would know the exact dates.
He definitely would know the exact dates. I think he said they closed it the same day the Palisades Fire broke out.
The deficiency was in the pilings and the cross members. I was down there about a week or 10 days ago, and some of the cross members were broken.
Was that from a certain swell, like what happened to Santa Cruz on Dec. 23?
No, just general deterioration of the pier. Wood and water don’t mix well and metal parts are stronger than wood parts andthe wood parts lose in that battle., That’s where we are now.
Do you think the collapse of the Santa Cruz Pier on Dec. 23 had anything to do with the closure down here?Images of 50 people all tumbling into the water at the same time?
No, the Santa Cruz collapse was due to a huge deficiency in that pier. The construction there. Ours is not in that bad of condition. The weight loads are spread out more.
It was a shock up there, believe me. I’ve been saying if you’ve been in Santa Cruz the past three winters, there is no doubt climate change is for real. It’s been loony up there. Any idea when the end of the pier will reopen? What do they have to do?
Yes the pilings have to be repaired, the deck has to be replaced, and the cross members have to be secured. It’s like the rebuild that took place 25 years ago. We’re going to be facing that same kind of complexity, but there will be fewer pilings to replace than in 2000.
The transition area from PCH to the buildings at the end of the pier is intact. The decking only has to be replaced over the deficient pilings, which are all at the end.
Also coming to a close is the 20-year concession contract for Malibu Pier that is currently managed by Alexander Leff and Malibu Pier Partners. The concession contract is coming up for bid in the next year?
Absolutely. In the next six months, probably, they will be accepting the Requests For Proposals. And then it takes the California State Parks and the Department of Parks and Recreation six months to make the analysis and settle the criteria and make sure that the financial encumbrances can be borne by the new vendor, if there is a new vendor.
Any idea how many people will bid?
I hope to be part of a local group here, but I don’t know how many others will be involved. It just depends on who’sinterested and who’s done their homework.
If you look at the revenue figures, the pier does make money. And a lot of that is attributable to the hard work and business sense of Helene Henderson. That’s the positive part of the pier.
She’s the hardest-working woman in show business. The revenue for the pier jumped from $743,434 in 2012-13 to $2,502,186 the following year — the year that Malibu Farm Cafe at the end of the pier and Malibu Farm Restaurant at the base of the pier went into business.
They saved the pier. No question.
The revenue increased by several million every year: $7,449,890 in 2014-15, then almost doubled to $14,961,648 in 2017-18. Then a dip because of COVID and the latest figures are for 2022-23 was $13,700,190.24, with $729,624.11 going to the state. Righteous bucks!
Yes and you can thank Helene Henderson and John Stockwell and their crew for that.
You had a relationship as a front man for Alexander Leff and Malibu Pier Partners at first, but that went sideways. We’ll get into that, but let’s say you submit a proposal and win the concession and now control the Malibu Pier — how would you run it? Who would you partner with? What would you place and what would you replace? How would you do it differently?
I would leave the restaurant and bar in buildings A and D alone, because that’s Helene Henderson’s operation, and then allow her to reopen at the end of the pier behind the lifeguards. With the other retail area, I would fulfill the promises that were made in the original RFP to have some kind of surfing museum out there.
I remember we talked about that museum way back when.
That would be revenue-neutral and satisfy the interpretive part of the pier concession.
That was required?
It was required in the original RFP but it was never satisfied and it all became commercial. Then I would open up the ramp and operate a boat operation which could be something as simple as kite rides pulled behind a power boat. Also thepier-to-pier ferry.
Do you think that plan could work? Do you think it will happen?
I do. Yes to both.
They’re talking about extending the ferry to Marina del Rey and then a shuttle service to LAX. That would be a cool way to avoid all that mess on PCH and the 405. Just chillax on the ferry and get to your plane on time.
You could have whale watching during that season and in the offseason, I think fishing charters would work. Once again, it just takes dedication and understanding of what it takes to operate that operation.
Talking to Ginny from Wylie’s Bait Shop, fishing was a big deal along the Malibu coast through the second half of the 20th century. The fishing charters were booming, Wylie’s Bait and Tackle was booming.
Yes. It’s not the same now.
Internet wrecked it or something.
Something.
My dad grew up in Los Feliz and he worked the bait boats back in the 1940s. And would hire the small skiffs out of Paradise Cove. He loved it.
But those were fun jobs as kids, because it was cash, and we stored our surfboards out at the end so we didn’t have to worry about them near the wall.
Board lockers or something?
No, they were inside where Malibu Farm is now. This is when Mike Sprock was president of the MSA and we used to have our meetings there. Sam and Timothy Bottoms were surfers at the time, and they would come to the meetings, so it was a lot of fun. We enjoyed it. We had partial incomes working around the ocean. It was only summer work because of school.
You think a charter boat — a fishing boat — would still work? Like in the 20th century, when that business was booming.
I think a fishing boat would still work because it would be the only one between Channel Islands Harbor and Marina Del Rey, yeah.
Would be cool to get all of the different operations up and running and prosperous like Malibu Farm.
Yes.
How far back do you go with the Malibu Pier? Were you part of the construction crew who built it in 1906?
Not quite that far back.
Apologies. Sarcasm. Continue.
I was a bait boy on the pier in my teenage years. Our parents would drop us off at the beach and leave us alone all day. We would work on the pier and go surfing. It was fun. There were two charter boats that worked off Malibu Pier — the Lynbrook and the Aquarius — so we would cut bait and clean fish and the tips were pretty good. A lot of throwovers to the mackerel lurking at the end of the pier. We would throw it over the pier, even though we were told not to, but we would do it anyway. The gulls would eat a lot of it … We would make some pocket money, then go surfing.
To wash off the stink.
Yep.
That’s a fun teenage thing to do. This was the 1970s?
Yeah, the Angie Reno years.
Alice’s Restaurant?
Yes, Alice’s Restaurant. It was a meeting place for the older folks at the time when I was a teenager. But moving on into my 20s, I have a lot of history there hanging out with John Lalanne.
I was gonna mention John Lalanne. I interviewed him for SURFER Magazine many years ago. He said he worked at the bar and Flip Wilson would come in and flip a big tip and would say: “That’s for the college fund, kid.” Who else hung out there?
I had many dinners with Ted Koppel.
He lived in Malibu?
No, he didn’t live here, but he would come to Malibu. And I still have the original cash register from Alice’s at my surf shop.
You think Alice’s was the most popular restaurant on the pier ever? Even more so than Malibu Farm?
It was, because it had a mystique.
Chat GPT says Alice’s opened in 1972. Do you know how long it lasted?
I think it closed in the ‘83 El Nino event, or maybe ‘84. One of the big storms.
Fast forward through the 20th century into the 21st. The Malibu Pier was rocked by land and sea: Lawsuits, El Nino, big swells, economics. Fire and rain.
Still standing.
You were involved with the Request for Proposals for the first 20-year concession in 2003. How did you connect with Alexander Leff?
He found me. I was going to turn in my own RFP, and then we co-mingled our efforts, and the two of us were awarded the RFP, or the contract for the concessionship. But I had been part of the pier prior with the remodel through Hayden Sohm and Russ Guinea — those were the active State Parks guys. They were involved in the reconstruction.
In what way?
Well, I was following the engineering and making sure the Pirate’s Perch remained.
The Pirate’s Perch?
Yes, that is near what’s now the lifeguard’s ladder — the non-OSHA-compliant lifeguard ladder. If you go down that lifeguard ladder, about 12 to 15 rungs, there’s a perch there.
Getting back to Alexander Leff. You two got along at first, yes/no?
We did. I was the face of the pier. He was the legal and financial part because he has a law degree.
And there is a lot of legal involved with the pier.
There is a lot of legal.
Someone sent me a PDF of the concession contract and it’s 66 pages of legalese. Percentages and profits and setting aside funds for capital repairs.
Set aside funds, and insuring it, and assigning responsibility. From 2000 on, I was with Ruth Coleman at the opening of the pier. I was the one that opened the King Kong Gates with the King Kong Key.
I still have the King Kong Keys.
That was a big day. And there’s lots of photos of that online — a unique experience. We were supposed to bring the interpretive part of it mixed up with the Adamson House. I’ve been on the board of directors of the Adamson house for 24, 25 years now. We were supposed to provide the interpretive part as well as provide the tour boats and the fishing boats, right?
So you were operations manager.
Basically, yeah, and for the first couple of years of the contract, I ran a beach concession right there at what’s now the bar/restaurant, part of the bar, building D. So we ran that for three, four years, and I also ran the parking concession for the first couple of years
Which generates a fair bit of money, doesn’t it? If you look at the terms of the original concession contract, Malibu Pier Partners has to pay the state $12,000 a year for the parking concession. And I can imagine parking generates heaps more than that.
Multiples. It does. If you look in the contract, the obligation is $12,000 a year in parking proceeds to the state, but it does that in a month. Sometimes in a week.
Righteous bucks! As Spicoli would say.
Yes.
We’re outta time and there will be a Part Two and maybe a Part Three. There is a lot to say about all this.
Yes.