Vanity Fair arrived four days ago and among the articles was one entitled "From Coast to Toast" a somewhat breathless recounting of how the sand is receding on Malibu's Broad Beach and the Nantucket beach. Homes are at risk! The rich people that live there are prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars to put up berms! Import new sand! Build retaining walls! The poor things are semi-frantic!
Since we live down the coast, south of Malibu, the subject interested me. I felt rather smug as I thought of our wide beaches and grinned at the the distress of those with more money than maybe God intended them to have about their shrinking strip of beach. Yeah, I'm mean that way...
I'd read about David Geffren's refusal (for years) to grant public beach access because it ran in front of his house.
Photos of Broad Beach in 1972 and in 2013 show a loss of 65 ft. of beach.
And then yesterday, Architectural Digest arrived and I eagerly turned to my favorite section in the magazine - "On The Market" - listings of expensive and unusual homes around the world. (Previously covered.) Buy your own island; Scottish castle; French chateau, etc.
But hark! What's this? Malibu, CA - 6 bedrooms, 10 baths, 11,400 sq. ft. $57.5 million!
The house was designed by Frank Gehry for an insurance executive named Burton Borman.
The ad goes on, "Set on a 160 ft. wide stretch of BROAD BEACH, the roughly 1 1/2 acre parcel contains a lap pool and a tennis court. Neighbors include Steven Spielberg, Danny DeVito and Pierce Brosnan.
You can see the detailed photos of this and many other properties at archdigest.com/go/estates.
Magazine stories are written three months before publication so I wonder if the Broad Beach home owners were given an advance copy of the article. Given the money there, it's certainly possible that VF would have given them a copy. Real estate ads can pretty much appear at any time. I wonder if this is a case of Cause and Effect? Ah, the press is mighty!
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