Taken from: http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=5964&IssueNum=218

The People’s Beach
How to take a stand in Malibu – once you find the sand

~ By MINDY FARABEE ~

~ Hey man, we’ve got our rights ~

eter wants to cheat. “We could just look at the map,” he reminds me for the third time as we double back for a second futile pass down Broad Beach Road. We are in search of an elusive public path to the beach, and are so close we can almost taste salt in the air. In fact, all that stands between us and the legendary Malibu coastline is a platoon of multimillion-dollar homes and some very confusing signage.

Admittedly, Peter and I do not look like beachcombers. He wears suspenders over his blue-checked shirt and a pair of khaki pants. I am sporting jeans and a notepad. We have teamed up for a treasure hunt designed by the Los Angeles Urban Rangers – first prize going to the group which most quickly spies the third gated entrance to Lechuza Beach – and we are failing miserably. Ultimately, we will arrive 25 minutes late, only detecting the rendezvous spot once a fellow treasure hunter generously takes it upon himself to stand in the middle of the road and wave his arms in the proper direction. Which is actually the point.

“We were just discussing some of the ways access ways have been camouflaged,” Ranger Emily Scott greets us as we pull up the rear.

In total, we are about 30 in number and a motley and multi-generational assortment of families, couples, and individuals hailing from the Valley, the Eastside, Westwood, Santa Monica, and even Malibu itself. We met up at 9:30 on this Saturday morning for a seashore “safari,” a three-and-a-half-hour tongue-in-cheek tour of our rights as the sunbathing Californian public, presented by the L.A. Urban Rangers, a troupe of environmentally minded artists, writers, and architects who investigate our local eco-system with a style crossing educational with performance art. Decked out in matching forest green shorts and caps and beige T-shirts emblazoned with their signature insignia—a freeway cloverleaf overlaid with a palm tree – the Rangers formed three years ago as part of a series of art gallery talks about our built environment, imagining in their inaugural offering that “Thoreau Goes to Los Angeles.” Since then, they’ve been honing their ironically gee-whiz, politically neutral Ranger personas. It’s still a work in progress: They have, for instance, certain rules to live by. “A ranger should always be dressed neatly, and clean cut,” Ranger Jenny Price says. “And …”

Back on in Malibu, we gather round to sprawl on beach blankets and munch on trail mix, indulging in a “public easement potluck,” while Ranger Scott educates us on the local fauna. “The most common forms of wildlife found on the Malibu beaches are homo sapiens,” she says. “Some typical specimens including surfers, dog-walkers, the silicon-enhanced, and star-stalkers.” Deadpanning, she adds: “Some populations rarely seen include nannies, gardeners, and maids.” A couple miles down the road, we’ll stand in front of Escondido Beach and Ranger Scott will point to an unauthorized “No Parking” sign and announce, “What we have here is an example of mimicry.”

Of the 27 miles of Malibu coastline, a full 20 are lined with private development. According to the Rangers, the good people of the Malibu Colony are now entering their third century of contentiousness, carrying on a tradition that began with late 19th century attempts to block construction of the Pacific Coast Highway and the influx of riffraff that would entail. Since the great beach access battles of 2004, by all accounts, residents here have loosened up a little. For instance, as stipulated in our state constitution, the public owns the coastline up to the mean high tide line, and Malibu homeowners are no longer bulldozing sand dunes to push it back. And, Ranger Price informs us, the yellow-shirted private patrols employed by the locals are much more congenial now, though, “the practice of hiring private guards to tell the public what they have the right to do on public lands is still a little questionable.”

This morning, we learn that, evidently, one of the quickest ways to test the evolution of community relations is with a stake in your hands. Splitting off in small groups, we are each handed a canvas bag containing an official Coastal Commission public easement map, a measuring tape, and four of the aforementioned posts. We are charged with the task of “trailblazing” a line in the sand that will illustrate nebulous property lines. That proved to be smooth sailing for our merry band, but a little more complicated for others. “It was colorful,” Ranger Scott dispassionately reports back from the momentary back and forth between one opinionated homeowner and a faction of safari-goers.

For those too nervous to exercise their civil liberties without the safety of numbers or a uniformed back-up of their own, the Rangers have put together a handy pocket guide – or “defensive resource” – complete with tips for reading tide charts and charting communal right of ways, methods for distinguishing between legal, merely unfriendly, and illegal signage, and quotable excerpts of the California Coastal Act.

That Act, of course, is overseen by the California Coastal Commission, a venerable body voters willed into being in 1972, precisely because Golden Staters worried that private development was in the process of shutting off the public’s coastline access. Here on our fair shores, Angelenos have viewed Malibu a particularly egregious land grab. And, years later, that nerve appears to have remained a little raw. A week out, all four safaris were already full and overflowing onto a waitlist. “We’ve gotten such a larger response than we anticipated,” Price says. But locally, Price and Scott and their impish cohorts – Theresa Kelly, and Sarah Daleiden – are actually interested in tackling a deeper philosophical quandary.

“[In general] Los Angeles has historically privileged private over public space,” says Price. “I think that’s a commonly known fact.” In response, the Rangers are on a larger mission to investigate these often arbitrary boundaries in an ongoing series of similar events tackling the tricky question of how wealth eats away at the city’s shared square-footage. Upcoming affairs will include an exploration of the complicated public/private ownership of downtown spaces. Land use has already become a contact sport in Los Angeles, where rapid development is radically reshaping the city. Nationwide, urban planners have been noticing for a while now that our cities are all densifying, ratcheting up the need for accessible public lands at a time when their funding is dwindling. That’s a trend likely to hit park-poor L.A. especially hard. “Look at all the brouhaha over the new river master plan,” Price says. “That’s mainly about creating good public spaces for a community that by and large doesn’t really have them. This really indicates a larger story.”

Judie agrees. She drove over from Silver Lake to register her displeasure with the powers-that-be in Malibu, but says similar thinking is afoot across the city. “On Hyperion Avenue [in Silver Lake], some people want to implement permit-only parking. I don’t know, but I think I’m against that. It changes the neighborhood … [a neighborhood that is] really accessible to the public helps create community and makes people more tolerant of each other.”

Experts say that’s likely where our next open space battles could hit next. L.A., they say, is in fact blessed with an overabundance of de facto public property in its never-ending maze of streets, avenues and boulevards. But to transform them into lively and pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares will require immense political will and a sharp shift in our consciousness. It’s an idea the Rangers are already playing with, brainstorming a future foray into the world of valet parking.

“We’re not judging [L.A.],” says Ranger Theresa Kelly, “We’re saying, ‘This is what it is,’ and you can judge it for yourself.”

08-09-07