Malibu Beach Safari with the LA Urban Rangers
If you are going to wait half an hour for a bus at 6:30am, it may as well be at Santa Monica and Ocean Blvds in Los Angeles, so I wasn’t complaining. Well, not too much anyway. I had a highly anticipated and sure to be awesome date with the LA Urban Rangers, who were taking a group of locals (and me) on a Malibu Beach Safari. The #534 heads up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), mostly carrying Latino domestic staff to the mansions of Malibu. Like every other bus I’d ridden in Los Angeles, it was late, overcrowded and manned by a grumpy and unhelpful driver. We were to meet at 9:00 at 22126 PCH which was about a twenty minute bus ride away, but of course, the only option to get me there on time was scheduled to leave Santa Monica beach at 6:40. A couple factors worked in my favour for killing time. As mentioned, the bus was half an hour late. Also, the bus driver forgot to tell me when we got to my stop so I was able to kill some more time walking a mile and a half back down the side of the parched and desolate PCH.
I arrived at my destination an embarrassing fifty minutes early, but fortunately, the Rangers were already setting up at the side of some poor millionaire’s home. Ranger Ron was nice enough to give me a ride back up to just past where I’d gotten off the bus so that I could pop into McDonalds to use the restroom. We chatted in that small-talk way you chat with somebody who’s helping you out while on vacation but who you will never see again. Like every other LA local I’d talked to, he asked whether I had rented a car and congratulated me for riding the bus, “because it’s so much better for the environment and such a great option.” Clearly none of these people have ever ridden a bus in Los Angeles.
I had done some research into the best beaches and while the
urban craziness of Santa Monica and Venice appealed to me, I
was keen on finding something a bit less zoo-like at some point during my two
day post-conference visit. The problem
with Malibu beach
though, is that it’s almost impossible to get to. While the state Coastal Commission requires that
all
On this particular morning, the Urban Rangers and I were gathered at the head of one of these access ways. I signed in quickly and headed down to the water. Basically, all beach below the daily mean high tide line (i.e. wet sand) is public. So, many people use a public access way to get onto the beach and then just walk the wet sand to their heart’s content. A certain number of access ways are now required by law, but for some reason it was deemed politically unsavoury to ask multi-millionaires to move their homes “a few feet to the left” to make room for a path. So, they are in reality few, far between, and often conveniently hidden by foliage from neighbouring properties, if not illegally blocked or locked.
Assuming you make it onto the beach, there are also public easements – places where the public can actually step, stop, play, and lay out beach towels on the dry sand. They seem to have been secured by good old-fashioned bartering. Does your swimming pool happen to lie on a spot where there should be an access way? Do you want to build a wall that endangers local flora and fauna? Well, then you’ll have to agree to give up some of your dry sand. Then each individual home owner can negotiate the specifics of their particular public easement, resulting in the incredibly confusing and seemingly random distribution of plots of dry sand that you may legally rest your bum on.
The California Coastal Commission produces lovely maps (www.coastal.ca.gov) for various Malibu beaches which, if your colour print cartridge allows, you may bring with you to determine what’s public and what’s not. The map is a satellite image of the houses with various beachfronts shaded in different colours to indicate the specific rules applying to public use of that beach. Most of the dry sand is off limit, but public easements exist between the property lines either side of some houses and may go all the way to the property edge, just to the lowest vegetation, or twenty-five feet (or some other number) from the mean high tide line. Most home owners post illegal “Private Beach” signs or hire private security to intimidate you from using their public easement. Without the map, measuring tape and a copy of the California Coastal Act, you’re pretty much limited to the wet sand.
This is where my new pals the LA Urban Rangers come in. They’re a fun group of LA locals who like to dress up as park rangers and seem to be interested in things like cultural geography, environmental history, and spatial politics. They’re not the anarchists or beach bunnies that I expected, but an articulate and well-organized group of educators. Rangers Ron, Jenny and Nick taught us the ins and outs of accessing and using the beaches of Malibu. They distributed maps, measuring tapes and props to plot out public easements and demonstrate typical beach activities in small groups. We spotted no trespassing signs, discussed their validity and came up with ideas for our own silly signs to deter low-lives like ourselves.
I realized fairly quickly that the Safaris really are aimed at locals, with the goal of increasing beach access and use by LA residents. I feel honoured to have tagged along. After the safari, I bummed a ride in an air-conditioned SUV back to the first beach we visited, with some women I will never see again. They congratulated me for taking the bus “because it’s such a great option;” I said “have a nice life” and they dropped me back at 22126 PCH. From there, I made my way on wet sand to a particularly lovely patch of public easement in front of a particularly hideous and huge mansion and plopped down for the most restful afternoon I’ve had in months. The sun was hot and bright but there was enough of a breeze that it was tolerable. The waves were lapping up on shore while tourists and locals passed below on the wet sand, gawking to see who I was, just as I had gawked at the children playing with their Latina nannies on the private beaches.
I waited forty-five minutes at the side of the PCH to catch the #534 back to my hostel in Santa Monica. By this time I was grumpy, bored and realizing I was slightly burnt, so I tried to strike up a conversation with the other woman at the bus stop – obviously a domestic worker. I thought, finally here is somebody who will share my disappointment in the LA public transit system, if only because she has been waiting as long as I have today. “Oh no,” she assured me, “This bus is always very good. It comes every half hour.” I mumbled something about how great it was that she was using the bus, because it’s so much better for the environment and why not, when there’s such a great system? She smiled and we both returned our attention to the passing bumper-to-bumper mess that was the PCH at 4pm.
Miriam Martin
September 1, 2009
