Post by sparklingblue on Aug 8, 2004 10:23:10 GMT -5
Stars fight them on the beaches
Hollywood elite battle to keep the public away from their seaside idyll
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday August 7, 2004
The Guardian
It could almost make a Spielberg movie. Plucky Danny DeVito joins forces with Dustin Hoffman to defend their beachfront homes against the encroaching mob. When their efforts are thwarted by the state, they turn to suave Pierce Brosnan to be their saviour. The film ends with the Bond actor skipping through the waves, hand in hand with Goldie Hawn.
It sounds too unlikely to be true, but elements of this drama are being played out on a Malibu beach. And unlike fiction, all the stars are playing themselves.
Broad Beach in Malibu is an exclusive strip of beach 30 miles up the coast from Los Angeles. A line of large, luxurious houses faces the sea, separated from the water by 20 metres of sand.
Tables and deckchairs are arranged expectantly in front of the houses, maids dust windowsills and gardeners rake leaves. Architectural features abound.
The view from the road at the back of the houses is rather different. From Broad Beach Road the homes of the stars block even the tiniest glimpse of the beach. Each property butts up against the others, forming a barrier that deters all but the most determined of visitors. Two public footpaths, difficult to spot for the uninitiated, lead down to the sea.
Frank Sinatra had a home on the mile-long strip of sand that forms Broad Beach, as did Walter Matthau. Now it is home to Steven Spielberg, DeVito, Hoffman, Brosnan, Hawn, Robert Redford and others.
Not that they actually live there. In most cases the homes are holiday homes. When a fire threatened in 1993 and the area was evacuated, only a quarter of the houses were inhabited.
Now the desire of the stars and their wealthy neighbours to protect their privacy is clashing with the desire of the public to enjoy the beach, and the remit of California's Coastal Commission to protect coastal resources, including public access to beaches.
The result is an unseemly public spat. The homeowners' association has posted signs warning that the beach is private property, and employs security guards who patrol on bright ATVs to ensure that nobody strays on to the sand.
Should they find a miscreant sunbather - or worse still, a surfer - the offender is politely warned to move on, or face the full force of the California penal code.
But the Coastal Commission, prompted by what it says is an unprecedented level of complaints from the public, argues that the homeowners are in breach of the law, and has told them to remove the signs and instruct the guards not to move people on. It has also published a document on its website detailing with aerial photographs which areas of the beach are public and which are private property.
"The beach should not be private, the beach should belong to everybody," says the coastal commissioner, Sara Wan.
She drew attention to the situation at Broad Beach last year when she visited armed with legal documents proving she had the right to sit on the sand. When the security guards tried to move her on she refused to budge.
"For a number of years I had been receiving calls from members of the public complaining," she says. "This situation is not unique to Broad Beach, but the homeowners have these signs and guards which makes it more confrontational.
"The signs are confusing and misleading. They're using the signs to intimidate people into never using the beach. And the use of guards to keep the public off areas is not legitimate."
The signs are certainly confusing. Posted every 30 metres along the beach at the high-tide mark they proclaim: "Private property. Do not trespass. Private property begins 30 feet toward the ocean from this sign." (The figure varies for each sign.)
This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the public part of the beach starts at least nine metres into the sea, making sunbathing problematic at best. But California law states that the public area starts at the high-tide line.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of the homeowners have granted public access to an area stretching nearly eight metres inland of the high-tide mark, in exchange for receiving planning permission to develop their homes.
The result is that the guards assume the public should be in the water, while the Coastal Commission says visitors can walk on any part of the wet sand, and even the dry sand where it has been ceded by the homeowner. The public, for its part, simply remains confused.
"The guards aren't so bad. They haven't bothered us that much," says Scott Kinloch, sitting with his family on dry sand two metres behind a sign warning him to keep off it. "I guess they want their privacy but this is a beach. That's Robert Redford's house there," he adds, pointing to a house six metres behind him. Brent Ranck, who visits the beach regularly to fish while his sons go surfing, sympathises with the homeowners. "At weekends it can get pretty crowded here, people up in the dunes, but the rest of the time it's like this - beautiful, clean."
Marshall Grossman, a lawyer, Broad Beach resident and former coastal commissioner who is heading the efforts of the homeowners' association, says the guards perform a civic service. "We believe that this patrol is essential to the health, safety and security of the residents, and we intend to keep it," he told the LA Times. He also voiced fears that, due to the absence of facilities at the beach, the public would knock on residents' doors asking to use their toilets.
"I get frequently hassled by the security guards," says Steve Hoye, who runs the pressure group Access for All.
"I was there in 1993 and this property owner came out with a martini in his hand and said, 'I don't mind if you use the beach but could you move 50 feet away so I can't see you from my picture window.' I told him where to go."
For Mr Hoye, the celebrities are not the problem. "I've been swimming in the sea alongside those guys - DeVito, Spielberg - and they're fine. They don't hassle anyone and no one hassles them. The problem really is a couple of heavy-duty fat blowhards who don't like people from central LA coming to their backyard."
He adds: "We're looking for a compromise. They're going to court and they're going to lose. It's a question of how much they want to spend to stall the process."
Two years ago the DreamWorks boss David Geffen lost a court case he brought against the commission. It had attempted to make him comply with an earlier agreement to allow public access to the beach outside his Malibu mansion. He may have lost the case but the beach remains inaccessible.
The commission has sent letters to eight Broad Beach homeowners instructing them to remove the signs and cease the patrols. "At this point it involves a failure to obtain the necessary coastal permits," says Steve Hudson at the commission's local office. "They have to cease what they are doing there or obtain a permit."
But one line of defence for the homeowners' association is that it, and the signs, predate the 1972 coastal act.
While that claim has still to be tested in court, the association has its place in the history of the struggle to protect the privacy afforded by wealth. The entire 27-mile Malibu coastline, was privately owned from the late 1880s until 1938 by Frederick and May Rindge, who employed armed guards on horseback to keep the public out.
The Rindges allowed the celebrity hoi polloi on to their beaches when financial pressures forced them to rent land. Hollywood figures including Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Swanson and Ronald Colman arrived. A decade later they were allowed to buy their properties. The first layer of Malibu's exclusivity had peeled away.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
***
The part about the public knocking on residents' doors to ask for permission to use their bathrooms made me laugh. ;D
Hollywood elite battle to keep the public away from their seaside idyll
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Saturday August 7, 2004
The Guardian
It could almost make a Spielberg movie. Plucky Danny DeVito joins forces with Dustin Hoffman to defend their beachfront homes against the encroaching mob. When their efforts are thwarted by the state, they turn to suave Pierce Brosnan to be their saviour. The film ends with the Bond actor skipping through the waves, hand in hand with Goldie Hawn.
It sounds too unlikely to be true, but elements of this drama are being played out on a Malibu beach. And unlike fiction, all the stars are playing themselves.
Broad Beach in Malibu is an exclusive strip of beach 30 miles up the coast from Los Angeles. A line of large, luxurious houses faces the sea, separated from the water by 20 metres of sand.
Tables and deckchairs are arranged expectantly in front of the houses, maids dust windowsills and gardeners rake leaves. Architectural features abound.
The view from the road at the back of the houses is rather different. From Broad Beach Road the homes of the stars block even the tiniest glimpse of the beach. Each property butts up against the others, forming a barrier that deters all but the most determined of visitors. Two public footpaths, difficult to spot for the uninitiated, lead down to the sea.
Frank Sinatra had a home on the mile-long strip of sand that forms Broad Beach, as did Walter Matthau. Now it is home to Steven Spielberg, DeVito, Hoffman, Brosnan, Hawn, Robert Redford and others.
Not that they actually live there. In most cases the homes are holiday homes. When a fire threatened in 1993 and the area was evacuated, only a quarter of the houses were inhabited.
Now the desire of the stars and their wealthy neighbours to protect their privacy is clashing with the desire of the public to enjoy the beach, and the remit of California's Coastal Commission to protect coastal resources, including public access to beaches.
The result is an unseemly public spat. The homeowners' association has posted signs warning that the beach is private property, and employs security guards who patrol on bright ATVs to ensure that nobody strays on to the sand.
Should they find a miscreant sunbather - or worse still, a surfer - the offender is politely warned to move on, or face the full force of the California penal code.
But the Coastal Commission, prompted by what it says is an unprecedented level of complaints from the public, argues that the homeowners are in breach of the law, and has told them to remove the signs and instruct the guards not to move people on. It has also published a document on its website detailing with aerial photographs which areas of the beach are public and which are private property.
"The beach should not be private, the beach should belong to everybody," says the coastal commissioner, Sara Wan.
She drew attention to the situation at Broad Beach last year when she visited armed with legal documents proving she had the right to sit on the sand. When the security guards tried to move her on she refused to budge.
"For a number of years I had been receiving calls from members of the public complaining," she says. "This situation is not unique to Broad Beach, but the homeowners have these signs and guards which makes it more confrontational.
"The signs are confusing and misleading. They're using the signs to intimidate people into never using the beach. And the use of guards to keep the public off areas is not legitimate."
The signs are certainly confusing. Posted every 30 metres along the beach at the high-tide mark they proclaim: "Private property. Do not trespass. Private property begins 30 feet toward the ocean from this sign." (The figure varies for each sign.)
This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the public part of the beach starts at least nine metres into the sea, making sunbathing problematic at best. But California law states that the public area starts at the high-tide line.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that many of the homeowners have granted public access to an area stretching nearly eight metres inland of the high-tide mark, in exchange for receiving planning permission to develop their homes.
The result is that the guards assume the public should be in the water, while the Coastal Commission says visitors can walk on any part of the wet sand, and even the dry sand where it has been ceded by the homeowner. The public, for its part, simply remains confused.
"The guards aren't so bad. They haven't bothered us that much," says Scott Kinloch, sitting with his family on dry sand two metres behind a sign warning him to keep off it. "I guess they want their privacy but this is a beach. That's Robert Redford's house there," he adds, pointing to a house six metres behind him. Brent Ranck, who visits the beach regularly to fish while his sons go surfing, sympathises with the homeowners. "At weekends it can get pretty crowded here, people up in the dunes, but the rest of the time it's like this - beautiful, clean."
Marshall Grossman, a lawyer, Broad Beach resident and former coastal commissioner who is heading the efforts of the homeowners' association, says the guards perform a civic service. "We believe that this patrol is essential to the health, safety and security of the residents, and we intend to keep it," he told the LA Times. He also voiced fears that, due to the absence of facilities at the beach, the public would knock on residents' doors asking to use their toilets.
"I get frequently hassled by the security guards," says Steve Hoye, who runs the pressure group Access for All.
"I was there in 1993 and this property owner came out with a martini in his hand and said, 'I don't mind if you use the beach but could you move 50 feet away so I can't see you from my picture window.' I told him where to go."
For Mr Hoye, the celebrities are not the problem. "I've been swimming in the sea alongside those guys - DeVito, Spielberg - and they're fine. They don't hassle anyone and no one hassles them. The problem really is a couple of heavy-duty fat blowhards who don't like people from central LA coming to their backyard."
He adds: "We're looking for a compromise. They're going to court and they're going to lose. It's a question of how much they want to spend to stall the process."
Two years ago the DreamWorks boss David Geffen lost a court case he brought against the commission. It had attempted to make him comply with an earlier agreement to allow public access to the beach outside his Malibu mansion. He may have lost the case but the beach remains inaccessible.
The commission has sent letters to eight Broad Beach homeowners instructing them to remove the signs and cease the patrols. "At this point it involves a failure to obtain the necessary coastal permits," says Steve Hudson at the commission's local office. "They have to cease what they are doing there or obtain a permit."
But one line of defence for the homeowners' association is that it, and the signs, predate the 1972 coastal act.
While that claim has still to be tested in court, the association has its place in the history of the struggle to protect the privacy afforded by wealth. The entire 27-mile Malibu coastline, was privately owned from the late 1880s until 1938 by Frederick and May Rindge, who employed armed guards on horseback to keep the public out.
The Rindges allowed the celebrity hoi polloi on to their beaches when financial pressures forced them to rent land. Hollywood figures including Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Swanson and Ronald Colman arrived. A decade later they were allowed to buy their properties. The first layer of Malibu's exclusivity had peeled away.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
***
The part about the public knocking on residents' doors to ask for permission to use their bathrooms made me laugh. ;D
Then he spazzed, rounded up the kids, dogs, photos et al into the car but was stopped on his way out when the other residents said they usually just went down a couple of miles to this burger joint and waited out the fires. So that's what they did.