How the hell does Malibu Barbie get out of her house?

Against my better judgment I crawled out of bed around 6:20am, dressed as silently as it’s possible for an ill-coordinated lump like myself to do, and headed down to the foreshore - determined to capture a hopefully compelling time-lapse of Morro Rock at sunrise. Although the experience of standing around on the rocks, watching sea otters and sea lions play off shore while the sun rose and threw three smokestack shadows across the rock was no doubt good for the soul, the benefits were offset by my own idiocy – it turned out my awesome time-lapse was marred by me underexposing the lot by a stop, my tripod being on a lean, and a huge chunk of crud on my lens leading to a nice black spot on every frame. “Fix it in post” seems to be becoming a new mantra. More likely the pace of things is starting to catch up, at last.

It was another unusually hot, sticky day in Morro Bay, and the room hadn’t cooled significantly despite the balcony door being left open all night. We packed up in humid discomfort, once again defying physics and managing to squash everything into the Escape, and hit the road for the last significant drive of the holiday – completing the loop, and returning to LA along sinuous, sweeping roads of Highway 1 seemingly custom made for car commercials, until finally making the disastrous decision to chuck a right after passing through less-than-glamorous Santa Barbara, then through less-than-less-than-glamorous Oxnard, and finally onto Malibu.

When I think of magical, evocative names conjuring up wild, heady, sun-soaked day and seductive, jasmine-scented evenings, Oxnard isn’t amongst them. It’s not so much that anything is wrong with the place, as much as that nothing is remarkable about it – from my experience it was little more than seemingly never ending string of traffic lights, faded looking shopping complexes and weed stuffed footpaths running up against blistered bitumen melting as one under the blazing southern California sun. Given the choice, though, I’d live there over Malibu.

Malibu is one of those places which somehow is exactly as you’d always imagined it, only to realize you hadn’t imagined it fully enough to appreciate just how wretched it truly is. Everything in my imaginings of the place (which admittedly, weren’t exactly comprehensive) were there - the thin, silvered strip of sand at the foot of countless stilted bungalows exiting onto a road behind them – but when you start to understand the logistics of what you’re dealing with, it’s apparently you’ve entered as close as I’ve ever come to Beach Hell.

It’s a town of 13,000 people, all of whom apparently live on a narrow strip of buildable land between crumbling mountains and eroding beach. Highway 1, slap-bang in the middle, takes up half the space meaning the end result is that, on the mountain side of Malibu, your multi-million dollar home and pool overlooks a choked highway, and thousands of garages of folk who are evidently wealthier than you and can afford absolute beach-front property. In the land of opportunity and relentless drive to succeed, it’s a constant reminder you were good, but not quite good enough.

Not that it’s better on the beach side of Malibu, where multi-million dollar shacks are perched at the edge of the Pacific, their thin purchase on the scrap of land that side of Highway 1 constantly dropping into the sea. Here you’d avoid the fumes and traffic of Highway 1 blighting the view from the Upper Side, but would be constantly grabbing for towels as you step naked from the bathroom, neighbors mere feet away, choking in horror on their organic granola. You have no backyard other than a car-length of space to the highway, and no front yard of your own - just hordes of weekend blow-ins playing spot-the-celebrity-and-upload-them-to-Facebook, all checking you out on your scrap of balcony, your own not-so-private slice of paradise, from the beach 10 feet away.

I love the beach – I’d love to be fortunate enough to live near the beach – but this isn’t living near the beach. This is living on the beach. With 1000 people you’ve never met, but have waved at, naked, whilst eating organic granola.

The fun of Malibu is that, to quote The Eagles, you can check out any time you like… but you can never leave. I can’t begin to imagine how you’d actually cross the road, if you lived there, but I presume it would involve a car, and would go something like this:

• Open garage door and creep car out onto your very own, car-length driveway
• Proceed to do 50 point turn to ensure car faces traffic, rather than is reversing into traffic
• Build revs, dump clutch, perform long, leisurely, snaking burn-out onto Highway 1 accompanied by a cheery wave at terrified passers-by as you demonstrate your The Fast and The Furious "Doriftu Sensei" honed skills.
• Execute well-practiced handbrake turn when you realize you’re heading the wrong way, emptying contents of 20oz coffee cup on power suit.
• Repeat as necessary.

The misery of Malibu is that, passing through, you don’t get to experience any of it. Not the beach, anyway. Just a jam packed succession of cars and traffic lights winding its way along the coast, only an occasional flirtatious glimpse of sea, shimmering like mackerel, through inch-wide gaps in the relentless row of driveways and garages facing the road. Malibu is a good beach, ruined. In my mind it was once an exotic weekend destination for those who lived and worked in LA and Hollywood – now, an exotic weekend destination is somewhere further. Pismo Beach, maybe. Or Morro Bay. Malibu is a cautionary tale.

After enduring a two hour drive covering maybe barely 20 miles we were only too happy to decide to skip Santa Monica Pier, sparkling becomingly through tobacco coloured smog, and instead pressed on to the mad-crazy race circuit that is I-10… currently being rebuilt. All of a sudden, Santa Monica pier and even Malibu seemed like attractive options as we were stuck fast, trapped in a canyon straight out of the Death Star, inching forward at the collective rate of 3 miles an hour. All credit to those alongside us on the freeway, as there were barely any instances of fatuously optimistic honking. Indeed, no-one lost their cool, no-one opted to reload, and Michael Douglas from Falling Down, armed with a rocket launcher, was not to be seen.

Ultimately a sign offering escape – “I-405, next exit” – beckoned through a glinting, steaming sea of cars and we crept mercifully onto the exit ramp, joining traffic which bore some semblance of moving. We drove past LAX – tying the knot, completing the loop, the trip now officially coming to a close – in blazing afternoon sunlight, finally slipping onto 22 east and to the cool sanctuary of the Meridian Inn and Suites nestled in the relative serenity of Anaheim, completely and utterly knackered.

The kids hit the pool. I hit the bottle. And then, as one, we plotted our all out assault on Disneyland for the last two days of our trip.