Community Essay : ‘The Beach Is Closed. Leave Now’

It was about 11 p.m. on a Saturday this summer when a friend and I pulled into the Will Rogers Beach parking lot off Temescal Canyon in Pacific Palisades. The gate to the lot had somehow been left open into the evening.

We removed our shoes and walked onto the sand, where we joined a dozen other people spread out over a two block-stretch on either side of the breakwater. We laid back in the soft, warm sand, listened to the rhythm of the surf, gazed up in awe at the stars and admired the “string of pearls” coastline from Malibu to Palos Verdes. It was one of those evenings that drew so many of us to Los Angeles in the first place.

The beach experience, especially a balmy night with a full moon sparkling on the waves, puts you in touch with the poetic soul that abides in each of us. Suddenly the night air crackled with a harshly amplified male voice:

“THE BEACH IS CLOSED.”

So loud it seemed to come form everywhere at once, it accused in stentorian cadence:

“YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO LEAVE OR YOUR CAR WILL BE TICKETED AND TOWED.”

Everyone on the beach rose up and faced the source of this shocking threat. It was a Los Angeles Police Department black-and-white, with blinding white spotlights fiercely glaring in our eyes:

“THE BEACH IS CLOSED.”

The voice repeated its command as it drove the length of the parking lot. Two cars instantly came to life, turned on their lights and raced for the exit:

“THE EXIT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOUR CAR WILL BE TICKETED AND TOWED.”

I don’t know which made me angrier, the insolently demanding voice that had so rudely terminated our beautiful evening, or the fact that my intimidated body was obeying without me:

“GET MOVING.”

I sat on the edge of my car seat with the door open, defiantly clapping my shoes together to knock the sand from them, when the world lit up:

“YOU’RE WASTING TIME--MOVE”

That faceless, squawking voice was directly behind my car now. I was grumbling and mentally preparing a speech about how “It’s incidents like this that have reduced the quality of life in L.A. No wonder so many Angelenos hate the police and consider rage and retaliation appropriate behavior.”

“MOVE IT”

I recalled that last month while visiting my ailing father I walked the length of South Beach in Miami at 3 a.m., listening to seriously drunken musicians and never even saw a cop. My thoughts of harangue were interrupted by a soft voice beside me: “Just get in the car and let’s go home.”

We drove away in angry, depressed silence. The next day I stopped at that same beach and paid $7 to enter through massive yellow steel-pipe gates to read all of the signs. Most say Don’t or No something or other.

During the last heat wave, many beaches were inaccessible even during the day. Of the 15 parking lots between Santa Monica Pier and Topanga Canyon Boulevard, 5 never opened, even on the weekend. When I suggested to one attendant at a full lot that they just open the untended lots, he said that was impossible because then people would get in free.

In any case I am not a sun worshiper--I burn. And my eyes don’t tolerate glare. I wouldn’t set foot on any beach on a hot sunny day. A mile down the road in either direction all the signs read, “Closed Sunset to Sunrise.”

A lifeguard tells me the signs are there to protect law-abiding citizens from “potential street-gang activity.” Now wait a minute. We seem to have one citizen killed weekly at a shopping mall in this city, but we don’t close the Malls. Nor do we stop all traffic on city streets to prevent scores of drive-by shootings. The edge of the continent, though, is closed to visitors at night in Los Angeles, unless they own a home on the beach or are a member of one of the exclusive beach clubs.

In the past month I have made nighttime visits to Zuma, Sunset, Santa Monica, Venice, Dockweiler, Manhattan and Redondo beaches. I have spoken to dozens of people I’ve met there between police sweeps. All were pleasant, even if puzzled by my questions. Many were cynically philosophical. One such denizen said, accurately, “L.A. looks like an armed ghost town at night-all the old folks have been scared away by media hype about gangs and all the young folks are hassled away by the cops.”

The beach is closed.

Leave now.

You’re wasting time.

MOVE!