The Joys of Screwing With Malibu Homeowners
A great piece in the L.A. Times profiles the Urban Rangers, a performance group leading a public art/information campaign to help take back public land from private control — while completely fucking with the multimillion dollar beachfront views of Malibu homeowners in the process. Glorious!
The L.A. Urban Rangers make it their business to inhabit a gray zone where reality meets fiction, art mingles with life and public interest clashes — sometimes dramatically — with private concerns. This month, they are conducting the latest in their series of “safaris” along the exclusive beaches of Malibu, showing their audiences how to negotiate the fuzzy line that separates your right to enjoy the beach from another’s right to spectacular oceanfront property.
In one sense, the safaris are a practical exercise in hands-on urbanism, L.A. style: The Rangers instruct their participants to stake out spots on public easements — the patch of sand between the ocean and private property that the public is legally permitted to occupy. Easements can be difficult to discern because they literally shift with the tide — the official boundary is the mean high-tide line over the last several months…
“We want to shift the rhetoric of public discourse,” says Sara Daleiden, another founding member of the Rangers. “We want people to think of these places as public beaches with private land next door, not the other way around.”
Malibu homeowners, who completely have this coming after years of illegally sticking “no trespassing” signs on public beaches in front of their homes, aren’t so inclined to accept this shift in the public discourse. Watch them freak out!
Both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County have long and sordid histories of blurring the lines between public and private space – a scenario that almost always ends up benefiting private concerns. I wrote about the topic last year when I went undercover as a homeless person at the Americana mall in Glendale: a private, publicly subsidized mall that has a public park at its center — policed by private mall cops. Security wouldn’t let me lay down on the grass.
Always great to see folks standing up for the public side of the equation.
Los Angeles Urban Rangers go on ’safari’ in the city
The unofficial group teaches hikers about the shifting boundary between public and private space. Its latest outing: Malibu shores.
Hike participants sunbathe in front of private homes on Malibu beach. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times / August 3, 2009) |
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You’d be forgiven for mistaking members of the Los Angeles Urban Rangers for real park employees. After all, they wear official-looking uniforms and speak with authority (plus a touch of Scout-tastic chipperness) about what you can and cannot do on public lands.
But as anyone who has spent time with them knows, the whole thing is something of an elaborate charade — or is it closer to tongue-in-cheek performance art? It’s often difficult to tell, and the ambiguity is definitely deliberate.
“People often mistake us for the real thing, and we don’t go out of our way to correct them,” says Jenny Price, one of the founding members of the group.
The L.A. Urban Rangers make it their business to inhabit a gray zone where reality meets fiction, art mingles with life and public interest clashes — sometimes dramatically — with private concerns. This month, they are conducting the latest in their series of “safaris” along the exclusive beaches of Malibu, showing their audiences how to negotiate the fuzzy line that separates your right to enjoy the beach from another’s right to spectacular oceanfront property.
(The remaining safaris are today, Aug. 22 and 23 and are free to the public, but space is limited.)
In one sense, the safaris are a practical exercise in hands-on urbanism, L.A. style: The Rangers instruct their participants to stake out spots on public easements — the patch of sand between the ocean and private property that the public is legally permitted to occupy. Easements can be difficult to discern because they literally shift with the tide — the official boundary is the mean high-tide line over the last several months.
Once situated, participants are asked to perform typical “beach activities,” such as yoga, building sand castles and reading trashy magazines. The intent, according to the Rangers, is for people to exercise their right to be on the beach as demonstratively as possible.
But there’s an intellectual angle as well. “We want to shift the rhetoric of public discourse,” says Sara Daleiden, another founding member of the Rangers. “We want people to think of these places as public beaches with private land next door, not the other way around.”
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Oh man, this is great. Wish I was there just to help tweak these greedy morons.
I hear Jet Blue is having some kind of flight special…
In response to another comment. See in context »“Go back to the Valley!” What a horrible snobbish prick. He might as well have said, “I paid millions of dollars for this beach, and I won’t have the view besmirched with you peasants!”
Now that I think of it, what that jerk actually said was worse: scumbags, ugly old lady. Yeah? Well you have ass juice on your stringy hair from sticking your head in your hole.
Haha. Ass juice. Love it.
I applaud your righteous indignation. The Rangers are running some more Malibu tours this month. Not sure if you’re in the LA area, but you should sign up if you are.
In response to another comment. See in context »I lived on S. Topanga Canyon Lane in the late sixties, early seventies – it doesn’t exist anymore – and Topanga Beach was private. Those of us who lived on the Lane, and on Rodeo Grounds – it was all called the “Snake Pit” – had access to the beach and we were pretty territorial about it. There were a few actors who had a little money, a couple of dealers, maybe a musician or two but most of us were poor. We just didn’t want the beach fucked up by Valley people. The Malibu homeowners just need bigger retaining walls like the fair citizens of Laguna Niguel. Come on, leave the rich people alone and get rid of those badges. You ever see the mudslides along the Coast Highway in February? People pay a price to live along that strip of coast. Tom Medlicott