Hands Off My Myth, Thank You

My first drive to Malibu took place almost 20 years ago. I remember because I was brand new to Los Angeles, so new that the moving boxes stood piled in my apartment. But I wanted to see Malibu, and see it quickly, for reasons I believed to be important at the time.

A decade before, back in Tennessee, my father had bought a particular model of Chevrolet named Malibu. And I had grown up dreaming about that stretch of beach, trying to imagine the way it looked. Any place deserving of a car’s name must be truly special, I reasoned. Chevrolet had never named a car after Memphis.

So I drove out for the first time. The effect was startling. Malibu revealed itself to be something other than the mythical place. The major architectural elements were beach shacks and biker motels. The beach itself seemed not exactly white and the ocean not exactly blue. All in all, Malibu looked slightly dirty, a place more or less dominated by the roar and road dust of Pacific Coast Highway. It was disorienting. I kept thinking I had missed the “real” Malibu. Eventually I gave up, drove home and unpacked my boxes.

Now, 20 years later, guess what. Somewhere along the line I made my peace with Malibu. These days, the fish burrito joints seem comforting. I even like the million-dollar beach shacks and would miss them if they fulfilled their promise and collapsed in a heap.

I’m not sure what this means. Maybe it’s the sort of thing we do to make L.A. bearable. That is, we convert the squalor to loveability.

And the interesting part is this: somehow we also preserve the myths. They get sealed away somewhere, and do not die.

Let me give you an example. Have you ever taken friends on their first tour of L.A.? Say you start with Santa Monica. It’s famous, after all. So you drive out and show them around. and then you catch the expression on their faces.

What they see is a town that looks like it belongs in the middle of Iowa. If it weren’t for the Range Rovers and the palm trees, it could pass for Cedar Rapids. The hottest thing around is a mall with some Cineplexes. They think you’ve taken them to the wrong place.

Then you try to explain. Those ratty, life-of-Riley houses cost a million per, you say. Get it? It’s glorious, in a way. And the mall is just a couple blocks from the Pacific. The Pacific! Really, don’t you get it?

No, they don’t get it. To them, it’s Iowa. At that moment, a myth is dying for them. It would take about five years of residency in L.A. to rebuild it.

For me and Malibu, I’m not sure how long it took. A while. I do know that now I can go to Malibu, nod affectionately to the beach shacks, and still believe I am in “Malibu.” That is, the mythic Malibu.

I have reconciled things, and am content. Surely there are others like me. That is why L.A. County’s recent plan to impose a sewer system on Malibu seemed so diabolical. It would have changed the equation of Malibu and required all of us to adjust again.

The sewer system, see, would have cleaned up Malibu’s act. And it just might have accomplished what 50 years of septic tanks and bad roads have prevented: the glorification of Malibu. We could have gotten swank hotels and spas. We could have gotten resorts.

A disaster. Malibu may be moving toward the swank anyway, but slowly. You still have to look hard for a decent meal. R.V. parks still snuggle up to movie star houses.

So when Malibu won its fight last month against the evil sewer system and became a city in its own right, it was a great victory. These days Pacific Coast Highway is adorned with hand-lettered signs hanging from lamposts that say, “Welcome to the City of Malibu.” Yeah.

The city fathers promised that Malibu would keep its septic tanks and its idiosyncracies. That’s fine, and cityhood will succeed splendidly as long as the city fathers don’t forget.

But beware. Things must be watched closely. There is now a mall, a fine one, at Malibu Colony where a neighborhood coffee shop used to stand. And all over the hills, pads are being scraped for houses that cannot, in any way, be described as shacks.

They are trying to build a grand Malibu. They are trying to upset the equation. And they must be stopped.

I say Trashy Forever. There is a myth at stake here.