A Walk on the Beach Is No Stroll in the Park

They say it’s supposed to warm up over the weekend, so I thought I might stroll the beach in Malibu. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back yet from David Geffen to see if I can dash through his front door and out the back, which is one of the only ways to get onto the lovely three-mile stretch of public sand and sea I had in mind.

That’s right. Starting at Moonshadows, up past Duke’s, and nearly all the way to the Malibu Pier, there’s no way to get onto the beach, unless maybe you know that knucklehead Dennis Rodman, who has been known to make helicopter landings near his beach compound way down the road in Newport Beach.

So I called DreamWorks to see if Geffen, an unabashed liberal do-gooder, might lend a beach pass to a member of the hoi polloi.

I left messages for Jeffrey Katzenberg too, a beachfront neighbor of Geffen’s, and for Steven Spielberg, who has a beach bungalow just up the street. (Please don’t confuse this with Spielberg’s “in-town” Brentwood spread, where neighbors were aghast at his proposal to build a domed, five-story riding stable).

So what do you say, SKG? I’ll just bring a couple of beach chairs, a body board and a few friends. We’ll be in the front and out the back in less time than “Artificial Intelligence” hung around the theaters.

I’d gladly use the public easement next door to Geffen’s compound, but it’s been locked for years. In fact, several such public pathways are blocked, as my colleague Ken Weiss noted in Sunday’s Times.

For decades, government agencies have done next to nothing to open those gates. That’s partly because they don’t want the expense of managing them, and partly because the rich and powerful, many of them movie stars, have used clout, cash and lawyers to keep them closed.

I drove and walked that stretch of Malibu the other day and saw nothing but padlocks, barbed wire and signs that say, “Keep Out” or “No Parking.” You can barely even see the ocean from Pacific Coast Highway, let alone put your feet in the sand, thanks to those cheek-to-jowl box structures that constitute some of the worst public planning on record.

Worst, that is, if you don’t count the fact that Malibu resisted a modern sewage system as a means of limiting growth, even as evidence mounted that the septic tanks of the rich and famous were fouling Santa Monica Bay.

“The most stunning thing is that a lot of the people who own those houses only come to Malibu occasionally,” says Steve Hoye, an open-beach proponent. “But whether they’re there or not, they don’t want anybody on the beach.”

It’s not a bad deal. You carp and moan to keep public beaches private, but then scream for public assistance every time there’s a mudslide or brush fire.

Former MGM boss Frank Mancuso and a Malibu neighbor have demonstrated unparalleled leadership in the campaign to keep out the riff-raff. They offered to subsidize a program that would bus kids to other beaches in return for the permanent bolting of the beach path between their homes. If there’s a Malibu Spirit Award, they’re the winners.

Then you’ve got the industrious trio of Eli Broad and former Mayor Dick Riordan’s wife, along with TV mogul Haim Saban, who found a way around a size restriction and erected sprawling mansions. Their trick was to buy and donate a beach, half a mile away, for use by the great unwashed.

This naturally caused the blood to drain from the faces of those who live near the donated beach. So far, they’ve blocked the opening of the beach in a nasty little scrum that pits Malibu millionaires against Malibu billionaires.

“I don’t argue against access; I argue against unreasonable and inappropriate access,” says Jodi Siegler, one of those who wants the lovely chain-link fence to stay where it is.

There’s nowhere to park, Siegler says, and there are plenty of beaches nearby, like Will Rogers. Besides, she adds, the state ought to fix the Malibu Pier and develop other, more accessible beaches before it sends people dashing across PCH and between people’s homes.

I can certainly understand Siegler’s take, but it just doesn’t hold up under the lights.

First of all, if you buy a house on a spectacular beach at the edge of a gargantuan metropolis, you ought to expect that someone might like to have a swim now and then. But for the very access reasons Siegler cites, the beaches near her house are not going to be overrun, so why the big nervous breakdown?

Second and more important, private citizens, no matter how precious or exclusive their spreads, don’t get to wear a badge and tell the rest of us which beaches are open and which are closed.

“Development shall not interfere with the public’s right of access to the sea,” says the California Coastal Act, which voters embraced 30 years ago. I don’t see much gray in the wording.

On top of that, many Malibu beach dwellers were allowed to build or modify their homes only in return for guaranteeing public access.

I’m tempted to call Barbra Streisand next. She’s another of Malibu’s self-congratulatory liberals, so maybe Miss Do-Gooder will put on a charity concert to liberate public beaches. (As you read this, several private groups are plotting to take over the public-access easements and throw open the gates.)

The bottom line is that you can’t buy a waterfront house in this state and tell everyone to keep off the beach any more than you can buy the Ahwahnee Hotel and tell everyone to stay out of Yosemite.

“The beaches of California,” says Malibu resident and Coastal Commission Chairwoman Sara Wan, “are owned by the public.”

Throw a couple of hot dogs on the barbecue, David. I’ll be over around noon Saturday.

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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com