Except for the bright splashes of color on an old bougainvillea planted by the Bernstein family and Jimy Fitzpatrick, there are no tangible reminders of the houses that once stood side-by-side along the beachfront and PCH from the Charthouse restaurant to the creek.

A dynamic beach community was bulldozed into oblivion to make way for another colorless, sterile State Beach. The people who formed the fabric of that community scattered, far and wide.

But once upon a time, before the
bulldozers ...

In the winter of 1959, Topanga Beach was still unexplored territory for me. Like Zero, Pt Dume, Latigo Cove and The Colony, Topanga was one of Malibu’s ‘closed’ beaches and ‘outsiders’ were not welcome. Public access was denied simply by virtue of these beaches being locked-in by land that was either privately or communally owned, like The Ranch is today. Private property rights extended down to the ‘mean high tide line’. The locals enforced the sovereignty of these lifestyle fiefdoms with fences, paid security guards, or, as in the case of Topanga, guerrilla warfare.

Then one night at a party in up in Topanga Canyon, I met a Topanga Beach local named Bill Cleary. We got talking, swapping surf tales and generally ‘shooting-the-shit’. As the party broke up, Bill threw out a vague invitation to drop by his place on Topanga Beach sometime.

Surfguide photo of Topanga Beach by Ron Dahlquist

Topanga Beach before the bulldozers. You can see Topanga Beach Road coming off the Pacific Coast Highway.
The Point Restaurant (now the Charthouse) is on the next point down the coast.

The tall redwood stake-fence that ran across front of Bill’s place had three entrances and, as instructed, I opened the gate on the left, started to walk in and scared myself shitless. The gate swung open directly over a steep set of old steps that ran straight down to a tiny brick courtyard ten feet below. As I held onto the gate for dear life, my feet dangled over the abyss until it swung back far enough for my toes to touch the ground again. What a welcome. What an entrance. Within a month I’d become the fourth roommate in Bill’s den of iniquity and could finally call Topanga Beach my home.

Years later, the LAAC abandoned their Topanga Beach bathhouse and additional houses were built on individually leased parcels of beachfront until just about everything that could be built on was built on between what’s the Charthouse and the point.

Unlike the Santa Monica neighborhood where I grew up, I was getting to know all of my many neighbors and, in an imperceptible way, becoming part of their lives. The people themselves varied in age, occupations and interests. There were families, couples, loners, and strays like myself. The only thing we had in common was a mutual love of the beach and respect for the sea. But that was enough.

Bill Cleary in front of the old LAAC bathhouse - 1961
Bill passed away on July 4th 2002 in Montecito, California. 

Bill and Mary Cleary and friend playing on the beach in front of the old bathhouse
Photo by Bob Herron

One family in particular welcomed me into their home. Jim Fitzpatrick (known to everyone as ‘Fitz’) was a charismatic person. Handsome, witty, patient and generous. His wife, Dody (known to many as ‘Mother of the Beach’) had a wicked sense of humor and a table that was never too small for extra guests. Then there was Jimmy, known then as ‘Jimy’ or ‘The Kid’ and now known as Jim or, like his late father, Fitz. If his energy and enthusiasm for life could have been harnessed, it would have solved the energy crisis overnight. Jimy’s younger sisters, Donna and Cathy, were quieter, but only just.

Fitz was a film producer, director, editor and scriptwriter and the Fitzpatrick house was an energy center that saw a constant flow of fascinating people.

Some, like Cleary, were embryonic writers. Others, like George Van Noy or Larry Kraus, were aspiring intellectuals who wanted to hone their debating skills. A few were already recognized and respected in professions such as photography, cinematography, music and art with the occasional mountain climber or gambler thrown in. Sometimes it was like a three-ring circus.

On most nights, I’d sit safely on the sidelines in order to watch and listen. Every once in a while I’d be unceremoniously drawn in the discussion. And although these often became animated and sometimes heated, they never got personal or malicious. This was a place of ideas, conversation, laughter and discovery. It was, in a very special way, a reflection of the diversity and intimacy of the larger community. Because, more than anything else, Topanga Beach was a community - in every sense of the word - and it was that which was the greatest loss when the bulldozers came.

Enlargement of a rare photo of the bathhouse. Note the surfboards resting on the bulkhead in front of the apartment on the
ground floor (right). Willy Hunter Jr lived in the ground floor apartment hidden by the tree and the Fitzpatricks
lived in the big apartment that occupied the entire top floor. In the shadows to the right of the tree you can
almost see the stairs that led from the Fitzpatricks' down to the sand. The first four windows to the right of
that looked out to the beach from the narrow downstairs kitchen and below the window on the far right
was the primo spot where I had my first bed in the apartment. I usually slept with the window
open and could hear what the surf was doing before I could see in in the morning.
(Photo: courtesy of Jeff Ort)

High tide at the beach - another photo courtesy of Michael Bender

Malibu's undisputed 'Wavemaster' Miki 'Da Cat' Dora on an early 60's 
Topanga 'fun' wave - enhanced in PhotoShop by Bill Cleary.

Surfer, filmmaker & friend, the late
Grant Rohloff, with passersby in front of a
beach house rented by a succession of surfers
and students, including myself. John Clemens
(whose cat is ignoring all this) was the current
occupant when he took this photo.

Topanga Beach in the old days. You'll notice that there are two bridges spanning Topanga Creek.
Any information on when the photo was taken and who took it would be appreciated.
There are already several houses along the beachfront and quite a few across the PCH
in the Rodeo Grounds. The large structure on the beach in the center of the photo
may be the old LAAC bathhouse, but it's all guesswork at this point.

Topanga Beach after the bulldozers. As you can see, there were no houses left on the beach side of  PCH, but at least some of the community survived on the canyon side. To its eternal shame, The State obliterated what was left and dispersed the last of the community in 2006. 

Today, there are no private houses, businesses or community left on either side of the highway. Today Topanga Beach, the Rodeo Grounds and Lower Topanga are part of what the pencil pushers, eco-fascists and political whores in Sacramento call a State Park. 

I call it a monument to bureaucratic arrogance and public gullibility ... because not only was it public money that was used to bankroll this shameful example of bureaucratic empire building - and continues to pay for park maintenance and staffing - but the public purse has also been made poorer by the loss of taxes that were generated by the very community The State destroyed. 

However, as a former public parasite once said to me when I complained about his profligate waste of taxpayer's money, "Don't worry ... there's always plenty more where that came from."

Woody Woodward rides one of
his first waves all the way into the 
beach in front of his house at the point, Topanga Beach.

Watercolor
of the front deck
of the Woodward's house 
at the point. Gone but not forgotten.

Drawing of Topanga Beach 1964 - by Rick Hodgson

CLICK HERE FOR MORE LINKS

Vintage Topanga Beach Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_172678689458477

Notes from the Topanga Beach diaspora: http://www.surfwriter.net/notes_from_the_diaspora.htm

Topanga Beach Stories: http://www.surfwriter.net/topangabeachstories_66-79.htm

^{Surf Parties: http://atomicbride.com/surfparties.html}

^{Malibu Surf Photo History: http://atomicbride.com/tgraph.html}

^{Surfer's 'Talk Story': http://atomicbride.com/surfwrite.html}

^{LEGENDARY SURFERS: A Definitive History of Surfing, by Malcolm Gault-Williams: http://www.legendarysurfers.com}