The Battle for Malibu

Compared to the fight for Malibu cityhood, battling the Learnean hydra would be a piece of cake. Image: John Singer Sargent, Hercules, 1921, via Wikipedia Commons

The City of Malibu turned 25 on Monday. Technically, it turned 25 on June 5, 2015, the day that Measure Y passed by a landslide. But March 28, 1991, was the day Malibu officially became a city, and what a strange, long, hard journey it was to get to that day.

The battle to make Malibu an incorporated city has often been compared to the task of Sisyphus, condemned to push the same rock up hill forever. It certainly felt that way to many of the activists involved in the seemingly unending multi-year cityhood fight. Image: Titan, The Punishment of Sisyphus, 1548-9, via Wikipedia Commons

 It’s been said the fight to save Malibu from the county’s plans for a major metropolis was like poor old Sysyphus, pushing that stone uphill, but to me it was more like a mashup between the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and Hercules battling the hydra—every time residents succeeded in defeating a project, ten more sprang up, and the rules changed all the time, leaving everyone scrambling for a chair at the table. 

This cartoon from the Malibu Surfside News highlights the Alice-in-Wonderland-like lunacy of the incorporation battle and casts the county as the Red Queen. 

It’s hard to convey just how crazy the whole process was to those who weren’t involved in it. I summarized the three previous unsuccessful attempts at incorporation, as well as some of the other challenges leading up to the final cityhood vote in the March 23, 2016 issue of the Malibu Surfside News. You can read the story here. But somehow the article doesn't entirely convey the sense of urgency and anxiety.

I was a small child during the 1975 incorporation effort and an undergraduate in college during the 1991 battle. For almost as long as I can remember, my parents were involved in the fight to save Malibu. They held meetings in the living room, spent weekends and evenings gathering signatures and meeting with officials. My dad traveled to Los Angeles for Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meetings and to Sacramento to meet with state officials. I grew up stuffing envelopes and walking voting precincts, and I definitely wasn't alone: a whole generate of Malibu kids participated in the Malibu revolution.

The county had plans for a golf course and housing at what is now Charmlee Wilderness Park. They also had plans for 2.2 million square feet of development in the Malibu Civic Center, vast blocks of high rise apartment buildings along PCH; a shopping mall at Trancas; a high intensity development with 700-800 housing units, plus shops and restaurants at Topanga Creek; a giant marina between Paradise Cove and Point Dume and even a multilane freeway through the Santa Monica Mountains. It's not surprising Malibu residents felt besieged and disenfranchised.

While many battles were being fought on all fronts, the sewer became the major focus for the simple reason that a central plant was essential for the high density development envisioned by the county. Without the sewer, the 2.2 million square feet of development planned for the Malibu Civic Center—a 1988 L.A. Times article described it as "equal to roughly one-quarter the office space in Century City," and the high-rise apartment complexes, shopping centers, golf courses, county clubs, and marinas could not be built. 

If things had gone the way the county planners intended, Corral Canyon Park would be a golf course, county club, and housing tract. A dozen years earlier, planners wanted a nuclear power plant in the same location. Today, the canyon and its spectacular views are safe from power plants and golf courses as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

In the Surfside article, I wrote: "A 1966 report by the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission predicted that with sewers to accommodate growth, the population of Malibu would expand to 117,000 by 1980. Malibu voters fought back, overwhelmingly defeating county-sponsored sewer bond measures in 1966, 1968 and 1971."

The Corral Canyon nuclear power plant is a favorite example of out-of-control Malibu development plans, but the marinas were a much bigger threat. The power plant never got past the initial planning phase once the geology of Corral Canyon was examined, the yacht harbor plot endured for decades. The first plan, for a small craft harbor at the Malibu Lagoon, was proposed immediately after WW II. The Malibu Post took a look at that particular battle in a blog post titled "Sailing onto the Rocks."

The Malibu Lagoon marina plan rematerialized in the 1960s and involved using vast amounts of fill from the proposed Malibu Canyon Freeway to channelize Malibu Creek, build a massive breakwater and create a full service yacht harbor. What is now Malibu Lagoon State Park was purchased with a marina, not a wetland, in mind, but Paradise Cove was the county's pick for a marina that would have been essentially a small city.

An artist's representation of the Quarterdeck Club, the first Malibu Lagoon yacht harbor proposal from the 1940s. The project refused to die and had to be fought off multiple times by Malibu conservationists over three decades. By the time this plan was finally dead, the county had set its sights on a marina at Paradise Cove. There were even plans for small craft harbors at Topanga Creek and Sequit Cove, at what is now Leo Carrillo State Park.

The plan to transform Paradise Cove into a harbor first surfaced in the 1950s, when the  Army Corp of Engineers announced it was was on board with a plan to build a breakwater and small boat harbor with a 1500-1800-foot-long breakwater. A November 20, 1960 Los Angeles Times article states, "A committee of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce expects to meet shortly with Rex Thomson [county director of small craft harbors] and L.A. County Supervisor [Burton] Chace to push the project."

Burton Chace seems to have had a bee in his bonnet over the boat harbor idea. By 1964, he had plans for four Malibu boat harbors. He was egged on by Realtor Bill Reid, the president of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce, who apparently shared the view of Kenneth Graham's character the Water Rat, that "nothing is half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Instead of tide pools, sandy coves, and a legendary surf break, county planners envisioned this stretch of coast from Little Dume to Paradise Cove looking more like this:

Image: Marina Del Rey, photographed by Howcheng, via Wikipedia Commons

By 1969, the ever-expanding Paradise Cove/Point Dume harbor plan ran afoul of the surfing community. Suddenly, the planners had to deal with a whole new level of ocean advocacy. 

"Good beaches for surf riding are diminishing everywhere," Western Surfing Association representative Robert Scott told the L.A. Times. But the county continued to push for the project, seemingly oblivious to a rising tide of opposition. An $11-million budget for the Paradise Cove marina was proposed in 1971. A 1972 article states that the county continued to prefer the Point Dume location despite "opposition running two to one there."

I have a copy of a petition my dad circulated, signed by more than 500 people opposing the marina. It states:  

"We, the undersigned, request that no further funds be appropriated for, or expended by, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of California, or the County of Los Angeles for the study, design, or construction of a marina, boat harbor, or related facilities along the fragile Malibu seashore.

"The narrow coastal Malibu bluffs and beaches are a priceless resource, the last unspoiled coastline and of major importance to the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan region.

Dad's first Malibu fight was over that marina, his second was to save the Point Dume Headlands.  A hotel was originally planned for the bluff, later the county wanted to flatten what is now the wildlife preserve and make it into a parking lot. 

Malibu activists, including my dad, battled county plans to bulldoze and develop the Point Dume Headlands. 

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, my parents gathered signatures for the Coastal Act initiative, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and Malibu Incorporation. They wrote letters, attended and held meetings opposing plans for hotels, golf courses, apartment complexes, housing tracts, marinas, and parking lots, in addition to the infamous sewers. My dad served on the board of the local homeowners association and on the Malibu Township Council, the community organization that served as the main voice for Malibu's residents and was the driving force for the incorporation effort. Juggling all that activism with a full time job didn't always leave much time for anything else.

It's only a flesh wound! Malibu activists refused to admit defeat despite major setbacks in early 1989. This cartoon appeared in the January 19, 1989 Malibu Surfside News.

Activists up and down the state passed the Coastal Act in 1972. Local conservationists successfully lobbied congress to create the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 1978. These were two key elements in the fight to save the local coastal zone from being paved under.

It was the power of the coastal act that finally ended the marina proposals. The Coastal Commission also partially reigned in the county’s other development plans in 1986,  halving the proposed maximum build-out along the Malibu Coast from 12,095 to 6,582, with a 2,111-unit cap on residential development until PCH could be “improved.” (we’re still waiting for that one).

Developers seized the opportunity during the rabidly pro-development 1980s  to push through many of the ugliest commercial buildings on Pacific Coast Highway. The one on the left added insult to injury by replacing the historic train shed from the old Rindge Railroad.

The Coastal Commission's 1986 land use decision met fierce opposition from L.A. County Supervisor Deane Dana, who presumably just couldn’t bear to see all of that revenue—and potential voter base—slip away. He threatened the commission with legal action, and when the Malibu Committee for Incorporation succeeded in jumping through all of the hoops necessary to put Malibu incorporation back on the ballot, he famously vowed to "bury the process or delay the process," so Malibu residents would be unable to move forward with the election. 

I was convinced as a child that the Los Angeles County Supervisors was something like this, with Deane Dana in the starring role as the Lord of the Sith. Walt Keller, who worked tirelessly on incorporation and went on to become Malibu's first mayor, described Dana as the "Sewer King." In a December 17, 1989 L.A. Times interview he stated that Dana's "whole attitude has been insulting." Dana's response was that the opposition he encountered in Malibu was "of no consequence, really," and that "if they spell my name right, it doesn't make any difference." The county was redistricted towards the end of the Malibu cityhood battle, placing Malibu under the care of Supervisor Paul Edelman, the only supervisor who had supported the local independence movement. Fortunately, Malibu has had a much better relationship with the county in the decades following the departure of Dana.

1986 was an important year for Malibu, not just because of the land-use debate. It was the year the county revealed plans for a 17-mile-long sewer running down the middle of PCH to a central treatment facility that would dump effluent straight out to sea at world-famous Surfrider Beach. Assessments of $13,500-$26,000 were made for every property owner in the community. The controversy over this mega-sewer ignited the final push for independence from the county.

The sewer would facilitate not only the buildout of the Malibu Civic Center, including that five-story, 500-room hotel, but also a new “urban center” at the bottom of Topanga Canyon. This city of 700-800 apartment units and condos, and “upscale shops and restaurants and a new multimillion-dollar channel to safely and permanently route Topanga Creek to the ocean,” according to the Los Angeles Times. It was to be an entire new city, and for many Malibuites, it offered the final proof that there was no end to the greed and tone-deafness of developers.

Malibu could and did, and is celebrating its 25th year as an independent city. The February 8, 1990, Malibu Surfside News reported that “Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs has issued the order for the cityhood vote in the form of a mandamus writ.” After three years of open warfare with the county, Malibu incorporation appeared to be finally headed for the ballot. However, in order to get it there, the judge had to threaten the supervisors with contempt of court and order them to set the date, a sort of municipal shotgun wedding, or perhaps a shotgun divorce.

The fourth and final campaign for an independent Malibu began in 1987. It was an uphill battle all the way, but after three years of protests, lawsuits, countersuits, and appeals, Measure Y  finally made it to the ballot. 

Malibuites protested.

And rallied.

Malibu Incorporation passed by a landslide on June 5, 1990. Anne Soble, the original publisher and editor of the Malibu Surfside News, was committed throughout the entire multi-year battle to ensuring that the Malibu incorporation process receive due process from the county. Looking back at that coverage was a reminder to me of how journalism can help a cause by providing facts, demanding accountability from the players and keeping the story alive over time so that those not involved in the front line can know what's happening in the trenches. 

The City of Malibu is not perfect. Some of the major issues that fueled the incorporation effort continue to be contentious, including development in the Civic Center, which was delayed for a full generation but is once again an issue of critical importance and one that is no less divisive than it was a quarter of a century ago. However, despite the discord and continuing challenges, much has been accomplished. 

Malibu has changed in 25 years, and not all of that change has been for the better, but there are still a lot of all the things that make Malibu special and worth fighting for. It's still the unique land and marine environment that has inspired generations of activists to make an extraordinary effort to preserve it.

A quarter of a century after incorporation, we have a Marine Protected Area instead of marinas; open space parks in place of golf courses and county clubs; a national park in our backyard instead of wall-to-wall housing developments and freeways; and a City of Malibu that has a population of 12,861, not 117,000. And no matter what ultimately is built in the Civic Center, it won't be the 2.2 million square feet of development once sought. All of that is because, in the words of Walt Keller, "hundreds of volunteers worked thousands of hours to make it so." 

Here at the Malibu Post, we like to look at this full-page ad opposing Measure Y when we're discouraged, because it’s a sterling reminder that while the City of Malibu is a long way from perfect, it’s a huge improvement on what the county was planning for us, and none of the doom and gloom prophesied by that handful of incorporation naysayers has come to pass. Taxes, taxes, taxes! Parking meters! Lousy quality of life! Dogs and cats living together! 

At the 25th anniversary celebration, current Malibu Mayor Laura Rosenthal presented Malibu's first Mayor, Walt Keller and his wife and partner Lucile Keller with the first annual Walt and Lucile Keller Award for service to the City of Malibu.

The Kellers, with customary modesty, accepted the award in the name of all the unnamed volunteers who made cityhood a reality. 

I can testify to how hard those volunteers worked. I saw it  first hand. So thank you, Dad, for all you did for Malibu. And heartfelt thanks to all of the unsung local heroes who have cared so passionately for the place that Frederick Hastings Rindge called "very near terrestrial paradise" and  who have worked so hard to save it.

Dad and me in the early 1970s, under a rare summer rainbow on the beach he was working so hard to save. 

Watching for Whales

A gray whale spyhops—poking its head, or rostrum, out of the water for a look around just yards offshore at Westward Beach. All photos © 2016 S. Guldimann

It's a good year for whale watching, on track to be the second best year ever after the record-setting 2014-15 season. According to the American Cetacean Institute's Gray Whale Census Project, a total of  1,407 southbound and 747 northbound whales have been observed so far by volunteers at Point Vincente.

I had the opportunity to write about the whale migration and the ACI's program for the Malibu Surfside News last month. You can read that article here. However, it's challenging to fit everything one would like to share into a newspaper article—gray whales are one of the largest living animals, after all—so here's an update on the 2016 gray whale migration, from a front row seat at Westward and Zuma beaches.

No matter how many times one has witnessed the annual migration, the sight of the first whale of winter is pure magic. The first sightings of southbound whales start in December. By early March, the northbound migration is well underway. Cows with newborn calves often stay close to shore, passing by Point Dume and sometimes tarrying in the shallow water at Westward or the deep coves along the west Malibu coast before continuing north on a journey that takes these giant mammals all the way from Baja to the Arctic.

Spouts are the easiest evidence of whales to spot. This is a mama and baby surfacing together.

Gray whales breathe through two blow holes, producing a distinctive V-shaped spout that is often described as "heart-shaped." Unless I'm lucky enough to get a close, head-on look like this,  it usually looks more like steam puffing out of a tea kettle to me.

The flukes, or tail, of the gray whale can grow to be 12 feet wide. If you're lucky, you may see a whale "tail-lobbing," but it's more common to see just part of the tail, like this fluke lobe.

Gray whales range from medium gray to almost black. The white spots and blotches are scars and discolorations from barnacles and other parasites. Researchers can often identify individuals based on the pattern of spots and scars.

Any time you spot a gray whale flipper poking up there's a good chance the whale is foraging for a snack. Gray whales scoop up mud from the sea floor. Instead of teeth, they have flexible baleen that functions like a sieve, washing out sand and dirt and retaining a mouthful of tasty benthic crustaceans, including krill and other tiny arthropods that are this giant's sole food source.

Observers sometimes confuse a gray whale's flipper with the dorsal fin of the dolphin. The shape is similar, but the whale's flipper is much larger and not as curved as a dolphin fin. These fins belong to a pair of dolphins that were swimming with the whales. 

Gray whales don't have dorsal fins, instead, they have a "dorsal hump." Some gray whales have a prominent row of bumps, called dorsal knuckles, that make them resemble the classical sea monster. Only one of this trio of whales has the conspicuous dorsal ridges.

Gray whales often seem to travel in small groups, staying fairly close together, which can increase their resemblance to a sea monster. Calves frequently swim above the cow, and stay close for protection from white sharks and orca.

This is the largest gray whale I've seen this season. Judging from the size of the dolphins that were keeping it company, it must have been close to 50 feet in length, the upper range for a gray whale.

It's tempting to imagine gray whales, like the one sneaking past these two whale watchers, may enjoy people watching as much as humans enjoy whale watching. In reality, the whales are too busy with their own concerns to pay much attention to us. That's why whale experts strongly recommend kayakers, paddle boarders, surfers and swimmers stay a respectful distance away.

Here's a size comparison showing an average gray whale and an average human. Gray whales are on the smaller end of the cetacean size scale—no where near the size of our living leviathans the blue whale and the fin whale, but they are still among the largest living animals, which makes it all the more remarkable that they come so close to shore. Illustration: Chris Huh, via Wikimedia Commons
 

The gray whale migration usually lasts until late May. There are all kinds of amazing whale watching boat trips available, and volunteers are always needed for the ACI whale census down at Palos Verdes Peninsula, but for many local whale watchers, the best place to be is at Westward or Zuma Beach. These beaches always seems strangely empty when the last migrants have passed by, despite the beginning of the human summer beach migration. It's comforting to know that, thanks to the work of generations of conservationists,  the whales will be back again next winter. 

Incommunicado

Unless the wind blows them down or an inept service technician accidentally disconnects half the street, Malibu's increasingly overloaded power poles provide electricity, phone, internet and cable service to the community, luxuries unimaginable for Malibu residents in the 1940s, when copper wire for phone lines was scarce and the only phones were a few strategically placed public phones and "party lines" shared by multiple residences. Photo: © 2016 S. Guldimann

Once there was an elephant,

Who tried to use the telephant—

No! No! I mean an elephone

Who tried to use the telephone—

(Dear me! I am not certain quite

That even now I’ve got it right.)

Howe’er it was, he got his trunk

Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,

The louder buzzed the telephee—

(I fear I’d better drop the song

Of elephop and telephong!)

—Laura Elizabeth Richards

When I was a small child, my mom would recite that poem to me. I found it extremely funny. After our recent communications contretemps here at the Malibu Post, I've developed a certain empathy for the elephant. Here's our own tale of Eletelephony. 

There are no power poles or phone lines in evidence in this 1925 photo of Castle Rock, opposite what is now the Getty Villa. Phone service remained scarce in Malibu until the 1950s, and many households made do with four or five house "party lines" until the end of the 1960s. Photo: USC Digital Library, from the collection of the California Historical Society.

The Malibu Post's new neighbors recently signed up for fiber optic communication service, or FIOS. The technician clambered up the telephone pole and connected this neighbor’s fiber optic cable by the simple expedient of unplugging ours and using that slot. 

The Malibu Post was instantly plunged from the 21st century into the year 1950. The only phone still functioning was a second line, the one we stubbornly refused to switch to the new technology despite the blandishments of the FIOS company. The Internet connection, TV, and main house phone were deader than a week-old mackerel and the cell phones could only be used up at the street.

While unplugging our service only took a moment, plugging it back in again seemed beyond the frail intellect of the technician. He arrived late the next day and pottered about for an hour. He left us with promises that he, or someone, would return in the morning with a solution and was never heard from again.

Many calls to the service provider's 800 number from that old copper wire phone line followed. It wasn't an entirely unproductive time. This poor abandoned Ariadne, waiting in vain for the return of Theseus, sewed on buttons, glued together various bits of broken miscellany and sorted the drawer that accumulates paper clips, thumbtacks, wood screws, business cards,  and extra bits of IKEA furniture hardware, all while listening to endless hours of elevator music.

Power poles and phone lines are such a ubiquitous part of the landscape that we forget their significance and how fast they've changed from carrying electricity to providing phone, cable and internet connectivity in addition to electricity.

Days passed. Various technicians came and went. The problem made its way up the food chain to construction and then to engineering. Once one made it past the elevator music, everyone at the other end of the 800 number was sympathetic, even when they weren't helpful. Eventually we learned that we were not alone in our technological isolation: four other houses were also impacted. 

It was interesting to realize how quickly we have become dependent on the Internet, for addresses and directions, restaurant reviews, movie showtimes, word definitions, fact checking, music, and research. 

When I’m not being an Intrepid Journalist, I research, arrange, and publish early and traditional music for the Celtic harp. When I started out, I relied on interlibrary loans, antiquarian book dealers, and occasionally trips to distant libraries to access necessary research materials. 

I’m currently working on a book project that involves original 18th and 19th century manuscripts housed in a British library. Last year, I would have had to travel to the library and arrange special permission to view them, or hire someone to do that for me. In 2016, I can access them online—or I could, if my Internet connection was working.

Despite the fact that many of the highest peaks of the Santa Monica Mountains are crowned with a sci-fi-esque assortment of antennas—this is the view from Point Dume of the far distant Saddle Peak antenna station, satellite communications are still less than reliable in this corner of the world. The inadequacies of local cell phone reception may be one of the only issues all Malibu residents can agree on. Dropped calls are a part of the Malibu way of life, and complaints about the various carriers a cornerstone of local conversation.

There was a time, not long ago, when phone service was a luxury for Malibu residents. Many neighborhoods still had party lines—a shared phone line that would ring a different number of times for each house and was ideal for eavesdroppers and nosy neighbors—when my family moved here in the late 1960s. Malibu residents fought a long, weary battle in the 1940s and 1950s to receive even that limited connection to the outside world.

Like so many parts of California, Malibu's population expanded dramatically after WW II, but there were limited phone lines in Malibu, and copper shortages persisted after the war, creating a demand that far exceeded supply.

The first power poles arrived in Malibu in the 1920s, when the Malibu Colony was first opened for development. The Colony also received some of the areas first phone service, but it would be decades before the more remote areas of the Santa Monica Mountains finally had reliable phone service. Some residents might argue that they're still waiting. It's a reminder that, in some ways, Malibu is still an outpost of the Wild West. Photo: USC Digital Collection, from the California Historical Society Collection.

Malibu and Santa Monica newspaper articles form the 1940s  are full of phone-related articles, mostly consisting of the Associated Telephone Company promising that reels of surplus cable would be arriving soon from the Philippines, that service was just weeks away, and that rates were being raised to pay for the cable that hadn't come yet from the Philippines, etc. It's unsurprising that residents were disgruntled. 

Driving up Yerba Buena Road is like traveling back in time to an era before there were power poles or telephones. The settlers in this part of the Santa Monica Mountains were some of the last area residents to be connected to both modern conveniences. The early 20th century in this part of the world was straight out of Little House on the Prairie. 

"Why shouldn't the telephone personnel weather a lot of criticism with amazing good humor? wrote Las Tunas resident Mrs Douglas Sirk in a letter to the editor of the Malibu Times in 1946, responding to an article on the delays.

"If I and scores of other people did not find our entire livelihood jeopardized and that we may be forced to throw our homes on the market at a great loss and try to find shelter in some other section of the city, we should and would be able to wait patiently with amazing good humor," Mrs Sirk wrote.

 "The fact remains that the war has been over for two years...and this company has a monopoly, which makes it impossible for us to turn to a competing company."

The Associated Telephone Company attempts to explain why customers have had a multi-year wait for phone service in this 1946 ad. ATC became GTE and then was bought by Verizon. Malibu customers are now in the process of being transferred from Verizon to Frontier Communications, and so it goes...

Mr Douglas Sirk was a film director. In the letter, his wife points out the necessity of staying in constant contact with the studio. 

"Had it not been that my husband, Douglas Sirk, had an unusually wonderful producer during the filming of Sleep, My Love, we would have had to close our house months ago and go to a hotel, where he could have gotten absolutely necessary and essential calls from the studio"  Mrs Sirk wrote. "We cannot count on such an understanding producer in the future."

A quick look at IMDB reveals the film had two producers: Ralph Cohn, the founder of Screen Gems, and Mary Pickford, who was an early Malibuite and would probably have known all about the Malibu community's phone crisis.

When phone service finally arrived it was less than perfect. Canyon residents had to depend on public phones, most of them located at the foot of the mountain, along PCH. Almost all residential lines, even in the "Malibu Movie Colony," were shared, or party lines—one line per four houses. 

Associated Telephone Company's party line policy advice: "Be willing to give up the line if a neighbor requests it to summon a doctor or for some other emergency." 

Even the fire department had to share a line. It's easy to imagine the town gossips blathering on about inconsequential minutia while Malibu burned and the fire captain waited for a chance to use the phone. 

A resolution by the Malibu American Legion Post Commander published in the Malibu Times requesting a single-party line for the Las Flores Fire Station. This was part of a lengthy campaign to convince the phone company that reliable phone service was a necessity for public safety. 

By the early 1970s, even the most remote canyon dwellers had single-line service, and the telephone poles were beginning to carry the latest innovation: cable television service. Falcon Cable was one of the first to provide Malibu-area service. 

Although Cable TV had been around since the 1940s, it didn't arrive in Malibu until the 1970s. By the '80s, the TV aerials that sprang up on nearly every roof in the 1950s were almost extinct. Today, they're enjoying a modest renaissance, as frustrated cable customers seek ways to cut the cord.

Point Dume  TV reception in the era before cable was obtained by antenna and generally good—you could watch the networks ABC, CBS, NBC, the local stations on channels 5, 9, 11, 13 that ran a bonanza of reruns (including Bonanza, over and over and over again) and KCET, the L.A. public television station, on channel 28. During Santa Anas you might pick up channel 24, the Orange County public television channel. That was it. Canyon residents were lucky if they picked up just the networks, which had the strongest signals. Cable changed that. 

As TV began to be available via phone carriers, and the Internet suddenly and almost magically became a thing and then an indispensable necessity, the poles designed to carry electricity and simple copper phone line became festooned, as if by an incompetent crocheter, in a mad profusion of lines and cables, boxes and antennae.

At some point, the power pole and phone line situation on Pacific Coast Highway went from this, to this:

In an area prone to high winds, devastating wildfires and catastrophic rockslides, not to mention high speed drunk drivers, it's remarkable that we have dependable service at all. All that cable creates its own set of hazards. Overloaded power poles were found to be at fault in the 2007 Malibu Canyon Fire, which burned 14 structures and 36 vehicles.

FIOS arrived in Malibu around 10 years ago with fanfare. Many disgruntled cable customers were eager to sign on. However, while FiOS provides magnificent speed and reliability, it can’t be spliced the way coaxial cable can. Each house is connected by a single glass fiber. 

When the company providing the FIOS service installed it in the neighborhood several years ago, no one appears to have taken into account how many guesthouses there are in the neighborhood, taking up all of the available ports. 

An Edison work crew struggles to restore power to Malibu in a post-apocalypic landscape in Trancas Canyon that was the result of the devastating 1956 wildfire. Back in those days, power poles carried just electricity and phone lines. Photo: USC

In order to undo the damage done by the neighbors' technician and get the disconnected homes back into the network, the company had to install 800 feet of new FiOS cable, stringing it like Theseus’ golden thread (to continue the Ariadne metaphor), across a labyrinthine network of telephone poles from the one available port, eight telephone poles and a street and a half away.

By 6 p.m. on an evening nearly two weeks after the fiasco began, we were reconnected, and full of hope that we will remain connected,  at least until the next neighbor signs up for FIOS service.

We noticed that at least one neighbor isn't taking that chance. The competition was there the other day, installing yet another cable. 

Here at The Post we are rejoicing in the restoration of high speed internet, but we have to confess, it was wonderfully quiet without all of those bogus robocall sales pitches for home repairs, back braces and carpet cleaners—there's something to be said for being incommunicado.

Two weeks and 800 feet of new fiber optic cable later, the Malibu Post is reconnected to the 21st century once more.