While there may be contrasts between die-hard East Coasters and people with more of a West Coast sensibility, they all have one common denominator… their love of the ocean. Even if one never dips a toe into the Atlantic or Pacific, having a sparkling sea nearby to enjoy is the allure of coastal living.
Before you dive into this issue of WAVES, allow us to introduce you to a couple of the Los Angeles area’s newest residents from the East Coast. They are two charming hoteliers who run what the U.S. News just named as the top two hotels in Santa Monica, Hotel Casa del Mar and Shutters on the Beach. These General Managers are experts in the fine art of coastal living. Their perspectives are fresh, their palates refined, their tastes discerning, and (after their daily property inspections) their shoes a bit sandy.
CHRISTOPHE BARATON GENERAL MANAGER, SHUTTERS ON THE BEACHTaking over as General Manager of this iconic property is one of the best professional decisions I have made in my life. I was a little worried about giving up the glorious beaches of South Florida, but I am so pleased to have gained majestic mountains and colorful deserts not far away. Southern California’s topography is incredible and so are its people. From Playa del Rey to Santa Monica and beyond the beach, we have met the most warm and welcoming Angelenos in one of the most beautiful settings in the US.
One of my favorite local places to spend my time off is Venice. This funky little city offers a truly unique beach culture. My wife and I love wandering Abbott Kinney’s galleries and shops. When our two children are with us, the line-up is usually Blue Star Donuts, the Venice Skate Park, and a walk along the canals. The drive up the PCH to Malibu is not to be missed with visitors.
We are an active family that has lived near an ocean for most of our lives. Biking, swimming, and soccer are weekly activities for all of us. When we can, my wife and I love ending the day sipping on a crisp white wine watching a sunset over the Pacific … this is the dream that we get to enjoy whenever we want.
MAX JONAS GENERAL MANAGER, HOTEL CASA DEL MARI grew up in London and spent the last 12 years in New York City. Living in California always seemed like a lofty dream. Happily, life on the West Coast has exceeded all my expectations. The climate, people, and how this extraordinary place makes you feel has me smiling.
The thing I miss most about New York are my friends, but LA is the city that all my friends cannot wait to visit. Very soon I will be welcoming them all for cocktails and spectacular sunsets at Terrazza Lounge where they can see me in my element.
Hotel Casa del Mar is in the center of it all. My wife and I have have a beautiful two-year-old and another baby on the way, so we stay close to home most weekdays. Weekends are reserved for going out to play. You will most likely find us at Barrique in Venice for their their house-made pasta. In Santa Monica, The Place to Be on Main Street has unbeatable French pastries, a lifesaver during my wife’s first trimester. For our active toddler, any beach or park where she can run with merry abandon is where we go. She is fascinated by the horses at Will Rogers State Park, and seals off the Malibu Pier. My wife loves a day of shopping, dining, and the surf in Manhattan Beach.
As my colleague Christophe described above, the employees at our hotels make our time each day very special. They welcome everyone with a warm smile, and genuinely want to make every guest feel at home. We trust you will feel equally as comfortable as we do.
WAVES TV: GOING THE DISTANCE
At Santa Monica Beach, Gerry Rodrigues’ Tower 26 prepares athletes for all elements of a triathlon.
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A good road trip will last forever in your brain. It’s a bit like the music that was playing during your first kiss.
— Stefan Bogner
For photographer, and native Angeleno,
Amanda Villarosa, hiking in Santa Monica is a way to reconnect with the city she loves.
Los Angeles is a destination city for many reasons—Hollywood! The food! The natural landscape! “Walking” wouldn’t be at the top of most people’s lists, but on the beachy west side, there are plenty of places to get in a long hike.
Maybe that’s why local Angelenos enjoy hiking so much: all those hours spent in our cars, commuting to and from work, or these days being stuck at home working, has perhaps inspired residents to explore the city’s natural environments more. Add to that the allure of Southern California’s sunshine and the fact that an outdoor lifestyle can be so easily achieved — in fact, it’s culturally encouraged (SoCal sees over 300 days of sun each year).
I was born and raised in LA County, but as an adult, I’ve traveled extensively as a photographer and lived on the opposite coast. It’s always special for me to come back and discover what home can still offer: paths untaken, views unseen, and the chance to explore my city with fresh eyes.
The Los Liones Trail, right off Sunset Boulevard near Santa Monica, is popular amongst westsiders, but was new to me,
an inland LA local. Sometimes spelled “Leones,” the Los Liones Trail was named after the local mountain lions (according to the National Park Service, sightings are “extremely rare”), and is located in the Santa Monica Mountains, a range that was originally part of the homelands of the native Tongva and Chumash people. Today, this area is called Pacific Palisades, home of the Getty Villa, and neighbor to Brentwood, Malibu, and Santa Monica.
The trail is considered moderately challenging, and ascends up from the south end of Topanga State Park. It’s heavily trafficked on weekends (like I said, Angelenos love to hike), but my friends and I were lucky to have it mostly to ourselves on a Wednesday morning, and we quickly discovered what makes this hike so special: It’s one of the most scenic hikes I’ve done in the city, with a canyon full of lush chaparral and sage brush and ivy, winding paths through wildflowers and rolling green hills of grasses, and an expanding view of the ocean as you climb higher.
Topanga State Park is the world’s largest wildland within the boundaries of a major city, and it doesn’t disappoint.
We took our time, soaking in every turn and vista, only pausing to take photos along the way. You’ll stop quite often. About 1.5 miles up and requiring around 2.5 hours, the trail opens on to a mesa, and you’re rewarded with the first full view of LA: the snowcapped San Bernardino Mountains framing the towering skyscrapers of Downtown transition to Santa Monica Bay and the Pacific Ocean, with Catalina Island visible in the distance on a clear day.
Parker Mesa Overlook provides sweeping views of Santa Monica Bay below you and panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean, and the coastline that spans from Palos Verdes to Malibu.
From there, you have a choice to continue higher for more expansive views of Temescal
Ridge and the houses off Palisades Drive. Or follow a trail that descends toward the ocean, or turn back. Warning: It will be hard not to spend time taking in the vista and enjoying the serenity it offers.
After sitting for a moment to take in this spectacular view we decided to head back down, as that famous LA sun rose higher in the midday sky.
To access Los Liones Trail, take Sunset Boulevard (off the PCH) 0.3 miles and turn left onto Los Liones Drive. There are two staging areas, both on the right side of the road, along with multiple trailheads to the east.
A moderately challenging route, Los Leones Trail takes less than three hours to complete.
Brett Nestadt’s vision for a new kind of fast casual dining helped fuel the poke craze in California, and it started right here in Santa Monica.
When Sweetfin began slinging poke in Santa Monica in 2015, it was part of the first wave of establishments bringing the Hawaiian delicacy to the states. According to Sweetfin co-founder Brett Nestadt, at the time there was only one other restaurant making poke in Los Angeles, and the risk inherent in being the second made him a little nervous. Nestadt and his co-founders, Alan Nathan and Seth Cohen, had spent almost two years getting ready to open their first restaurant, formulating the menu with former “Top Chef” contestant Dakota Weiss and sourcing sustainable ingredients and a beautiful interior. But would anyone come?
“The night before we opened, I was panicking that no one would show up,” says Nestadt. “I was like ‘what am I doing?’ Thankfully, that first day we ended up with lines out the door and we had to close because we ran out of food, and it felt like a great success.”
Santa Monica, Nestadt says, always seemed like the perfect location to launch the first Sweetfin, in part because of its proximity to the ocean. Sweetfin’s founders liked the idea of selling their fish as close to the beach as possible, and they liked the walkable, neighborhood-like community that the city provided. As Nestadt puts it, “You don’t get more quintessentially California than Santa Monica.”
“When people around the world think of L.A. as a city they’re picturing the palm trees and the beaches and boardwalks that you only really find on the Westside,” Nestadt adds. “It doesn’t get better than Santa Monica, where we can cater to a demographic that enjoys being active and will be able to take our food to the beach or enjoy it right before walking around or going on a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains.”
Almost a decade after Nestadt, Nathan, and Cohen started Sweetfin, the business is thriving, in part because of its California focus. The group has opened 14 restaurants— just about two a year—and all are within a couple hours of Los Angeles. Sweetfin is also centrally held, and hasn’t given out any franchise licenses, partly because Nestadt and company want to make sure the restaurant’s quality is both consistent and sustainable.
The fast casual restaurant has also made its mark in an increasingly crowded poke market by focusing on what Nestadt calls “California inspired poke.” While Hawaiian poke is meant to be a sort of side dish enjoyed alongside a number of other foods, Sweetfin is aiming to make it the forefront of a diner’s meal. Nestadt says he and his co-founders were influenced not just by Hawaiian flavors, but by a number of sushi rolls that were birthed here in California.
“We’re taking the California produce and the California flavors and this melting pot of different cuisines and putting it into our poke,” says Nestadt. That fusion of cultures is also evident in each location’s design, which Nestadt designs by blending Japanese, Scandinavian, and beach-inspired aesthetics to create spaces that are full of beautiful natural wood, ocean blues and foamy whites, high ceilings and airy furniture.
Interestingly, Nestadt’s background is in film, not design or hospitality. He moved to Los Angeles from South Africa, where he grew up, to attend the University of Southern California and got into the industry after graduation, but his dream was dashed pretty quickly when the prominent studio he was working for wouldn’t help him extend his work visa. Nestadt says he went back to school to extend his student visa, with the hope of getting back into movie making, but ended up finding the Sweetfin dream instead. Part of Nestadt’s role in the company is inspired by what he learned working in film. He tackles not only designing the restaurant spaces, but also Sweetfin’s branding, something that’s been essential to its buzzfueled growth.
Indeed, even the name Sweetfin was chosen with the restaurant’s brand in mind. The founders wanted the name to suggest what the restaurant sold, but they also wanted it to be easily searchable not just on Google but on social media. Nestadt says they chose the neologism of Sweetfin after testing out combinations of dozens, if not hundreds, of words.
Sweetfin knows that its product is a little high end for the fast casual market and has done what it can to make it worth the patron’s wallet. All of the company’s fish is sustainably farmed and sourced, and when possible, the company works with local vendors and producers.
It’s something Sweetfin is passionate about, with Nestadt explaining, “We aren’t willing to downgrade our product. We have spent years working with our suppliers, selecting different fish and making sure that we can track all of it back to where it’s coming from.” He continues, “Our salmon, for example, is farm raised, and we want to make sure that the feed is organic and that they’re being kept in humane environments.”
“Anytime you’re talking about fishing, you are dealing with the possibility of overfishing, especially when there’s so much poke going on,” says Nestadt. “We try to lean on products where we can make sure that every single batch that we’re getting is from somewhere that we know and trust.”
With over 94 million different combinations possible from the Sweetfin menu, that takes a lot of work, but Nestadt says it’s ultimately worth it, especially since part of the company’s goal was to figure out how to make poke portable.
Now, Nestadt says, with Sweetfin, health and environmentally conscious customers can “grab a bowl, take a walk to the beach, sit down, and eat.”
“We aren’t willing to downgrade our product.”
Filmmaker and Porsche racer Jeff Zwart puts the German sports car maker’s new electric Taycan through its paces on LA’s iconic Mulholland Drive.
Mulholland Drive has long been a car enthusiast’s dream — a road that snakes its way for 50 miles from the Hollywood sign in the east to the vast Pacific Ocean in the west, winding through the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains to Malibu.
The views are some of the best of LA: overlooking the Hollywood Sign, the city’s downtown skyline, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley. On a clear day, you can even spot Hogwarts Castle at Universal Studios’ theme park.
It’s a cinematic road of tight bends and exhilarating switchbacks that’s been celebrated over the years on film, including in David Lynch’s surealist neo-noir mystery “Mulholland Drive,” in 2001. “It’s a beautiful road … a mysterious road with many curves. It’s really dark at night and, unlike so many other spots in Los Angeles, it has remained pretty much the same over the years.”
It’s also a favorite of Jeff Zwart, a Long Beach native who has spent three decades immortalizing Porsche cars in commercials
and short films for the brand, and raced them professionally, winning the Pikes Peak hill climb eight times, and driving the punishing Baja 1000.
“As a kid, my dad would say we should go up on Mulholland and see what’s up there,” says Zwart, who learned to drive his father’s 1964 Porsche 901 and saved up enough money to buy a yellow Porsche 914/6 in high school.
“People like Steve McQueen and James Dean, they all came up here — often in their Porsches. There was a bit of folklore about it.”
First opened in 1924, and named after William Mulholland, who engineered Los Angeles’ reservoirs and aqueducts, Mulholland is where many drivers really learned to drive, and street racers flirted with disaster from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“It starts confined, with a lot of buildings and congestion,” Zwart says. “But then it opens up — a car can really flow here. High-speed sweepers and first-gear hairpins — there’s every combination of turns.”
“It’s a beautiful road...a mysterious road with many curves.”
In the middle, Mulholland is interrupted by an 8-mile stretch of gravel, along the northern ridge of the “Big Wild” conservation area, that leads to an old Cold War missile control site. It’s here that Zwart, was recently able to exerience the all-electric power of a Taycan 4S Cross Turismo.
With its Gravel mode that raises the Cross Turismo’s ride height, the Taycan was designed for the rough terrain of Mulholland, leaving behind a cloud of dust in the rearview mirror.
“Driving an electric car on gravel is like a dream come true — there’s such instant power,” Zwart says. “The capability of the car, and the trust you can put in it is really fun to explore.”
“Within a city as populous as LA, to have almost 80 kilometers of winding road, that’s a pretty cool thing,” Zwart adds. “And it literally stops at the Pacific Ocean. The road just ends there — it’s your final destination.”
“It literally stops at the Pacific Ocean...it’s your final destination.”
The Santa Monica Pier’s Pacific Wheel provides the perfect backdrop to illuminate a wedding proposal.
Los Angeles loves being in the spotlight so it’s no surprise that it’s got a popular performer on the Santa Monica Pier’s Pacific Wheel. Rising 130 feet above the Pacific Ocean, it radiates at night with 174,000 LED lights creating vibrant shows of colors, shapes and messages. That last part is especially useful for anyone looking to come up with a memorable marriage proposal.
The idea to let the wheel be used as a real-life rom-com prop presented itself after Pacific Park installed a $1 million state-of-the-art lighting package on the Pacific Wheel’s 40 spokes and two hubs in 2016, enabling it to display over 16.7 million different color combinations and animate patterns and icons in 24 frames per second for highresolution imagery.
The wheel is regularly used during holidays, scrolling a waving red, white and blue flag for the Fourth of July and Memorial Day; illuminating a giant pumpkin on Halloween, and counting down to ring in the New Year. The sides have featured logos to cheer on the LA Rams, Los Angeles Dodgers and LA Galaxy; and support for medical workers during the COVID-19 medical crisis. It was also lit gold to celebrate the grand opening of The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
It has gone dark, though, for Earth Hour, one of the largest global grassroots movements for the environment.
Renting the Pacific Wheel out to romantics was a no-brainer, but they need to plan
ahead. As the lighting display grows in popularity, so do its bookings. Packages for custom proposal messages, offered by the concierge teams at Shutters on the Beach and Hotel Casa del Mar, start at $9,500. A simpler “Marry Me” is around $3,500. And making sure the special moment is recorded is an additional $3,500, and varies based on length, location and final editing.
Many planners have taken up the park’s offer, using it to feature giant red and purple hearts, the words “Marry Me” and “Yes!” after a successful engagement. “Marry me, Katia?” once scrolled across the face of the wheel with massive 40-foot letters.
Any message will certainly get noticed, with the Pacific Wheel jutting out into the Pacific Ocean, clearly visible up and down the beach. The pier is said to attract more than nine million visitors a year, and is one of the world’s most photographed attractions on Instagram.
Each whimsical design is manually animated by Pacific Park staff and can take hours to program. It’s even eco-friendly as the world’s only solar-powered Ferris wheel, with enhanced LED lighting providing 81 percent greater energy savings than the traditional incandescent bulbs on similar attractions, park reps say.
Now that’s worth beaming about.
Aligning our lives with nature is a really excellent free and instant upgrade we can all make.
– Sarah Barnard
For Sarah Barnard, beautifully designed interiors aren’t just places to live, they present opportunities to grow.
As a LEED and WELL certified designer, and founder of the boutique firm Sarah Barnard Design, Barnard has been crafting ecofriendly interiors and sustainable spaces that aim to promote mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing since 2003. From beach front cottages to sprawling office buildings, her work has caught the attention of VOGUE, Elle Decor, and Architectural Digest, and has won accolades like the American Society of Interior Designers Ones to Watch Award and the 2022 Best of Houzz Design. With sustainability gaining steam in the design sphere and beyond, Barnard is ready to take on the challenge of designing for a changing world, one room at a time.
Growing up in Los Angeles with historic preservationist parents gave Barnard a unique perspective on taking advantage of the world around you. There’s a popular saying amongst historic preservationists that “the greenest building is one that has already been built,” an axiom that Barnard’s father took to heart. Barnard would often come back to treasures her father found while scouring the neighborhood for homes that
were set to be demolished, like an old set of windows or other architectural dealings.
“Everything was repurposed or DIY,” she remembers. “Over time it taught me the practical side of sustainability and gave me a natural reflex to use what I had and respect my surroundings.”
Barnard’s inclination to cultivate interiors by bringing the natural world in follows a long lineage of Los Angeles design history. While cities like New York signified modernity by building ever higher into the sky, Los Angeles set itself apart in the world of modern architecture by fostering a symbiotic relationship between architecture and the natural world.
Inspired by California’s mild weather, year-round sunshine, and wild landscape, architects like Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Richard Neutra were drawn to the west coast to build homes that celebrated nature, health, and living in harmony with the surroundings.
“The
In her book “California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way” Wendy Kaplan refers to California’s “benign climate that permitted the great outdoors to be incorporated as an extended living room… California modernism became a different, and hugely influential, model for the rest of the country and was widely admired abroad because it reflected the way people really wanted to live.”
Reflecting the way people really want to live is at the heart of Barnard’s work as a designer. She regards her creative modality as “conscious design,” which refers to both her work as a champion of sustainability, as well as an advocate for self-awareness in exploring what you really need out of your home. According to her, “being able to facilitate folks making choices for their homes that feel good or right for them is a big, big part of my practice. I need to meet you where you are so I can plan your space to support your real life.”
In the vital but sometimes hypercritical world of green design, Barnard’s approach is refreshingly down to earth.
“One thing that I experience is that sometimes clients want to make sustainable decisions, but they’re concerned that their interior designer might judge them if they aren’t doing it perfectly,” she notes. “They don’t want to disclose that they actually eat pizza every Sunday, or smoke an occasional cigarette. But my job is not only to show you sustainable options you didn’t know existed, like vegan options, non-toxic finishes, or responsible manufacturing, it’s also to create a safe space to support whatever your life looks like now, and wherever it’s trying to go.”
Recently, she has been finding a sort of zen in the art of limitations. With people spending more time at home, her work as an interior designer has become more complex and multifaceted than ever before as she juggles the demands of making her client’s living spaces serve as everything from office space, to restaurant, to private gym. Her approach to this challenge is ever evolving, as she works to cultivate patience in her practice.
“It’s time to move away from hinging our present happiness on something that even with the best, most organized plan and
She regards her creative modality as “conscious design.”
intentions, the universe may not be able to deliver as a reality for six months or a year,” she says. “So I try to encourage clients to think about their daily experience and ask them questions like, ‘What are the ways that we can reduce clutter? What are ways that we can infuse joy or brightness into spaces that are becoming monotonous because we simply haven’t left them frequently enough?’ And aligning our lives with nature is a really excellent free and instant upgrade we can all make.”
These days, Barnard finds inspiration in simple, organic moments like time in her garden (currently living in a home that’s adjacent to woodland, she still delights in the deer that come visit and “decimate [her] roses,” to the surprise of her more jaded neighbors).
With an increasing focus on sustainability in the world of interiors and beyond, she believes that the future of design will rely on the growth of responsibly sourced and sustainable materials.
For her part, she collaborated with Kale Tree fabrics in 2021 to represent their new Tradescant & Son line of eco-friendly fabrics, adorned with birds, moths, and beetles inspired by the entomology archives of the University of Oxford Museum of Natural History.
Ultimately, she believes that a movement to create consciousness around our living spaces could spark something that extends beyond the confines of your home. Speaking of this consciousness revival, Barnard ruminates on the kind of society where “every human gets a house and a small plot of land. Imagine what creatures we would be if the basic struggles of housing, access to nature, and the ability to grow your own food were all solved. What amazing things would we do?”
Maybe if we all took Sarah’s brand of care towards ourselves and our spaces to heart, we could come a little closer to finding out.
The future of design will rely on sustainable materials.
In 2009, a pair of brothers from the Netherlands had an idea for a different type of city bike.
Taco Carlier, while riding in New York, noticed that, unlike Amsterdam, the streets of Manhattan were crowded with cars, not bikes. He and brother Ties soon got to work on a device that would amplify people’s peddling power and actively protect against theft.
It wasn’t long before their creation was a hit with riders around the globe.
VanMoof, the company founded by the Carlier brothers, has attracted roughly 200,000 riders since its early days, but the onset of the pandemic has made the company more popular than ever. Sales tripled once COVID-19 struck and the company sold more bikes in the first four months of 2020 than it had in the previous two years combined. (The company’s goal is to get 10 million people on its bikes over the next five years, if only for a test ride.)
VanMoof has stores in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tokyo—and last September, it opened a new location just blocks from the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles.
LA, the city that’s known throughout the world for its automotive gridlock, might seem a curious choice, but VanMoof’s Austin Durling says the company sees a lot of promise beyond I-10 and the 405.
“Los Angeles has a lot of potential as a great biking city, especially on the west side,” he says. “There are great bike lanes in Santa Monica and Venice. Some of my favorite rides have been along the beach coming down from Venice.”
VanMoof bikes are meant to fill the gaps that cars often occupy. Have to run an errand somewhere close by? Off to see a friend who lives just a couple miles away? Need to pick up just one or two things from the store? VanMoof bikes aim to make you opt to peddle rather than drive.
Part of the secret is making it easier to get from Point A to Point B. VanMoof’s e-bikes supplement peddle power with electric propulsion when you want, meaning you can make it up a hill without exhausting yourself (and becoming a sweaty mess) or, on flatter
terrains, go a lot faster than you normally would on a bike—one upcoming model will go as fast as 31 mph. The bikes also switch between their four gears automatically, making it easier for people to just enjoy the ride.
E-bikes can be popular with thieves, though, so VanMoof also offers robust anti-theft features, such as a kick-lock system that locks the bike and ensures it can’t be moved more than a few inches. The bike itself weighs 45 pounds, so thieves are unlike to simply carry it away. If they do, though, VanMoof offers a program where it will send “bike hunters” out to find your stolen e-bike using the company’s GPS tracking technology. If they can’t find it within two weeks, they’ll replace the bike free of charge.
Prices for a VanMoof start at just under $2,300 and go as high as $3,600. That’s in the same area as competitors, but it’s a bit out of the range of an impulse purchase. That’s why the company encourages customers to take them out for 30-minute test rides from its retail locations (or roughly 40 Workshop hubs, held in bike stores in cities where it doesn’t have a retail branch).
At the Santa Monica store, that means a ride along the beach, which can remind people (especially those who don’t have the funds for a convertible) of the joys of fresh air.
“We really think because this is such a carfocused city that people are itching for an alternative,” says Durling. “They just don’t
know it yet. … It might not replace the car in LA completely, but it could reduce car use.”
While there’s no research on whether riding a bike is actually faster in Los Angeles, Durling notes to curious customers that the time reflected in your GPS app is going to be exactly how long it takes.
“There are no delays or random traffic stoppages,” he points out.
The bikes’ batteries typically last between 30 and 90 miles, depending on how much the boost is used and the number of hills it must conquer. They’re also an e-bike that doesn’t look like an e-bike, hiding the electric components within the frame and making the LED matrix display subtle (and something only the rider can see).
Because of the pandemic surge in demand, there’s currently a five week wait for delivery, but the company is hoping to shorten that (something that’s not as impossible as it might seem, since it controls most of the components in its supply chain). COVID, though, made people more eager to explore the outdoors. And e-bikes were in the right place at the right time.
“I think that across the globe people were looking for different ways to get around the city,” says Durling. “They maybe had a little more free time. They maybe were uneasy about taking public transportation. People were revisiting their relationship with where they lived in the world and had different priorities.”
“...because this is such a car-focused city people are itching for an alternative.”
From Santa Monica to Sonoma, ordinary Californians are working to save the monarch butterfly.
There is a small, defiant section of Santa Monica’s Woodlawn Cemetery that brims with life. Here, symmetrical rows of headstones give way to a wild landscape bursting with deergrass and Cleveland sage, bordered by colorful sprays of California buttercup and seaside daisies. This half-acre strip is known as the Eternal Meadow, a green burial site which uses only decomposable materials for interment, and simultaneously provides a natural habitat for native pollinators like the endangered monarch butterfly. In a place synonymous with loss, it is heartening to see evidence of this beloved creature’s recovery.
“The monarchs’ numbers have been declining for a long time,” explains Connie Day, a retired schoolteacher, and the person responsible for this unlikely oasis. Day has spent most of her adult years advocating on behalf of this endangered species, whose population has experienced a dramatic 99% drop since the 1980s. In her view, the issue boils down to more intentional stewarding of the land. “The best way to support pollinators like monarchs is to support the plants they
evolved on over millennia. That’s why native plants are so important,” she said, pointing to the shrubs in the meadow.
California has been the wintertime refuge of migrating monarchs for centuries. Each November, the insects pour in from states like Colorado and Arizona seeking a mild climate with just the right amount of moisture, which the California coastline and the Santa Monica Mountains readily provide.
This four-month sojourn is known as overwintering, and it signals a time of little activity for the butterflies: mainly, they hang out on trees and sleep. Traditionally, these overwintering sites have been a source of wonder for many Californians; picture a cypress tree with its branches weighed down by thousands of snoozing monarchs. But lately, the natural phenomenon has become harder and harder to find.
Certain Californians have made it their job to keep track of these sites. During the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, a team of over 100 volunteers set out with nothing but
binoculars and a pad and pencil to conduct a yearly census of overwintering monarchs. The event has taken place every year since 1997, and aims to provide as accurate a picture as possible of the western monarch population. But the picture hasn’t been rosy: in 2020, participants tallied only 1,914 butterflies in the entire state of California, which led some experts to wonder dismally if the species had disappeared altogether. When LAbased plant ecologist Richard Rachman took over as a volunteer coordinator last fall, his expectations were low.
“Everyone told me, don’t worry, you’re not going to see any monarchs,” he recalled. But instead, the monarchs staged a surprising comeback. In LA alone, volunteers counted over 6,000 insects, and the numbers were equally encouraging in places like Pismo Beach and Pacific Grove, typically magnets for the monarchs. Media outlets were quick to spread the good news. “Monarch butterflies lift spirits along California’s coast,” proclaimed the L.A. Times, while the San Francisco Chronicle called the resurgence, a hundred-fold increase over the prior year’s count, “thrilling.”
The future for western monarchs remains uncertain, however. Deforestation, the widespread use of insecticides, and the
loss of milkweed have all contributed to the monarchs’ ongoing plight. (A United Nations report in 2019 found that over 40% of invertebrate pollinators, including bees and butterflies, are at risk of extinction.) But of those three factors, the latter might be the most crucial—and the easiest to rectify.
“The primary problem for our monarchs has been habitat loss and the introduction of non-native milkweeds,” explains Day. To combat this, she advises property owners to dedicate a small space in their garden or patio for nectar plants, as she has done at the cemetery. “Without nectar, we won’t have adults. And without adults, we won’t have eggs and babies.” So far, her approach seems to be working. The day we spoke, a pair of monarchs swirled merrily over our heads, then landed on a nearby California sunflower to feed on nectar, their brilliant orange and black wings unfolding in delicate V-shapes over the flower.
It is easier than ever for California residents to access these plants. In 2019, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation began distributing “habitat kits,” or free bundles of native plants, to communities all over California. So far, the organization has shipped over 40,000 milkweeds. One such recipient was the Institute for Sustainability
at California State University, Northridge, which oversees sustainability measures for the campus. Through the habitat kit program, staff have been able to grow their 1-acre Food Garden into a thriving green sanctuary, complete with Davidson’s bush mallow, purple needlegrass, California brittlebush, sagebrush, and plenty of narrowleaf milkweed. The garden, which also supplies produce to food-insecure students, has emerged as a vital educational center, where undergraduates (and a few local high schoolers) can learn about the important roles that native plants play in the ecosystem.
“When I came here as a student in 2007, the university used pesticides, and there were lawns everywhere with very few native plants,” said Sarah Johnson, a 38-yearold sustainability program analyst at the institute. Since then, CSUN has turned its focus toward cultivating native, droughttolerant plants. In 2018, it earned the designation of Certified Bee Campus, which recognizes efforts by university campuses to establish pollinator-friendly environments. Johnson has even spotted a few monarchs this winter, the ultimate measure of success for any native plant garden. “You see how much life is here on this tiny strip of land?” she gestured at the leafy plot around her, visibly pleased. “A little goes a long way.” In northern California, Raen Winery has
used the symbol of the monarch to jumpstart conversations about clean farming, which directly impacts the ability of pollinators like monarch butterflies to feed and lay their eggs safely. In 2016, the Sonoma coast vineyard debuted a limited edition Pinot Rosé called the Monarch Challenge, which gets shipped to customers with a packet of milkweed seeds tucked inside the box. “As farmers, we have a huge responsibility to be stewards of the land,” said founder Carlo Mondavi, the grandson of famed Napa winemaker Robert Mondavi. “We’re in a blessed place in the wine industry to lead by example,” Mondavi said. In addition to releasing the monarchthemed rosé, Mondavi has also co-developed the Monarch Tractor, an all-electric tractor that uses sensors to process data about the land, and thus help farmers minimize their use of harmful herbicides and insecticides.
“It’s been over twenty years since I saw a monarch flying around Sonoma,” Mondavi admitted. Still, that hasn’t stopped him from staying hopeful that farming practices can still change for the better. “Monarchs are an indicator species. When their numbers are down, it indicates that something is not right,” he said. “The good news is that more people are aware than ever.”
To learn more, visit themonarchchallenge.org
“As farmers, we have a huge responsibility to be stewards of the land.”
image by Amanda Villarosa
When you’re involved in making things with your hands, a piece of you gets left behind.
– Ernie Lee
How LA-based ceramist Ernie Lee found his calling making simple ceramic shapes—and ended up being the go-to for the Gjelina Group.
“The first time I worked with clay, I fell in love immediately,” says ceramist Ernie Lee. “When I touched the clay, it automatically responded; it was a form of tactical communication I’d never experienced.” Fast forward 30 years, and Lee is at the helm of LA Clay Company, an East Los Angeles studio where a team of eight (give or take) churn out more than a thousand hand-thrown dinnerware pieces a month for beloved local restaurants like Gjelina and Jon & Vinny’s.
Lee, who grew up in Pasadena but ventured to school in Iowa on a swimming scholarship, came to clay as a matter of convenience.
“Coach told me I had to pick a major, and the art department happened to be right next to the swimming pool. You could find me in the pool, at the studio, or sleeping,” he laughs. Post-college stints included time spent at Pasadena City College, and later, at California State University, Long Beach under the watchful eye of lauded ceramist Tony Marsh. “To see what these grad students were creating in a communal environment was awe-inspiring,” he says of the 15 years he spent managing art studios.
In 2006, as Lee and his wife were expecting their second child, he quit ceramics cold turkey, trading the potter’s wheel for a suit and tie at a Fortune 500 company on LA’s West Side. Then in 2014, as luck would have it, a friend forwarded Lee an email sent to UCLA’s Art Department: Gjelina, a local restaurant group over on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, was looking for a ceramist to make some cups.
The next day, Lee drove over to Venice and showed up looking for Shelley Kleyn, a Gjelina Group restaurant partner, and introducing himself as “the ceramics guy.” From there, he met Alex Liberman of AML Studio, who was putting the finishing touches on nearby Gjusta, a hybrid bakery and deli. Liberman handed Lee a ceramic cup and asked, “Can you make this for us?”
A month later, Lee returned with several prototypes in hand. Liberman placed his first order on the spot.
An initial order for 20—which Lee pulled off by calling in favors and posting up in friends’ studios around town—quickly turned into
“It was a form of tactical communication I’d never experienced.”
recurring orders of 40 cups at a time. During a routine drop-off at Gjusta, he observed a young woman finishing her coffee and promptly stashing the ceramic mug in her bag. “Why don’t we sell the cups on a little shelf at Gjusta,” he said to Liberman. The first cups retailed for $35 a pop.
In addition to cups, Lee started fielding requests for plates and bowls designed with specific Gjusta menu items in mind. He quickly realized that he couldn’t meet the demand of incoming orders without a dedicated space. His family home, tucked into the hills in Pasadena, was a natural choice. “It’s very casual,” says Lee of the indoor-outdoor nature of the studio, dotted with queen palms, a 50-foot oak, and one very large and bountiful citrus tree. “It’s my home and my family’s home, so I want people to want to be here.” (Worth noting, too, the fridge is always stocked with cold beer for friends and clients who drop by to talk about “making circles,” an Ernie-ism for throwing pottery.)
Over the last seven years, Lee has had nearly 30 ceramists come through his doors, many of whom are trained artists, others who aren’t. Regardless of experience, there’s a shared vernacular, a process that each potter must go through to uphold the immediately recognizable look and feel that LA Clay has honed over the years. “We have our own
language. ‘Go pop a cup,’ is a familiar phrase around here, our own way of operatering. Every studio does.”
Given the amount of time Lee spent studying the science of ceramics, it follows that LA Clay Company’s root forms mirror the utilitarian approach potters have referenced since the craft’s beginnings. “Our focus has always been on creating functional tableware for daily use,” he says. While there’s an immediately identifiable quality to LA Clay Company’s work, each cup, bowl, or plate has subtle quirks, whether it’s iron spots from the clay, color variations due to location in the kiln, or even the finger marks from throwing the pottery. “When you’re involved in making things with your hands, a piece of you gets left behind,” he says. (Lee jokes that subtle imprints of his own “meat hook fingers” can be seen throughout his work.)
Despite the repetitive nature of the work, the thrill of a piece emerging from the kiln glazed and fired remains its greatest reward: “There’s a feeling of validation for the time you’ve put in,” says Lee of the process. “Sure, they’re just cups and bowls, but I’ll never stop loving taking something simple and turning it into something beautiful.”
Los Angeles Clay Company’s wares can be found at Gjusta Goods in Venice (324 Sunset Ave, Venice) and online at laclay.co.
“Our focus has always been on creating functional tableware for daily use.”
For sommelier Vanessa Price, wine isn’t just to sip, but to savor visually and pair with whatever you want.
“Not gonna lie. Life is better with a beach and a bottle of muscadet,” says Vanessa Price, who is on a mission to unlock the mysteries of wine one glass at a time.
Price has a passion for wine and all the people who make it, sell it, and live it. The creative director and founder of The Vinum Collective, Price is a wine writer for New York magazine, an instructor of a popular wine class at Columbia University and for The Wine & Spirits Education Trust, as well as author of “Big Macs & Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World,” a book based on her column for Grub Street. According to Price, she’s “worn every hat in wine,” including wine importer, distributor, and sales representative.
Her brand is refreshingly cheeky and working with talented photographers, cinematographers, and storytellers, she specializes in creating and conceptualizing bold, colorful wine-savvy imagery and other content for clients. The goal: to make wine approachable, less stuffy and fun. Wine creates community, according to Price, and everyone’s invited to love wine as much as she does.
“There is so much information swirling around and it all seems to matter, but how do you put it all together to form a clear picture that is decipherable and applicable in any wine scenario?” Price says. “We should all feel empowered to have opinions about wine without having to be wine experts. I believe there are a few fundamental concepts that are the foundation of understanding all things wine. If you can wrap your brain around these, it can open up the ability to be confident in choosing and tasting wines for yourself.”
Price first caught the “wine bug,” as she calls it, while working at a winery in rural Kentucky. Ironic, considering that as the granddaughter of evangelical ministers, her parents didn’t consume alcohol in her presence until she was an adult.
Without access to backyard vineyards or summers in Provence, Price was self-taught, which is how she quickly recognized this lack of context, which she deems as the biggest challenge surrounding wine education.
“I believe that we as an industry speak about wine in a way that has done a disservice
“People should all feel empowered to have opinions about wine without having to be wine experts.”
to our non-wine industry wine-loving counterparts,” Price says. “We all love the flavors and experiences of wine as well as the stories and the facts—but there always feels like there is a divide between the ‘have’s’ and ‘have nots’.”
After following her passion for wine, Price moved to New York City in 2007, starting as a sommelier on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. From then on, it was a crash course in education and sharing what she learned.
In 2017, Price’s ceaseless desire to contextualize wine culminated into founding (alongside her childhood best friend, Michelle McSwain) The Vinum Collective.
A popular column for New York magazine’s Grub Street led to a book deal for what is now a national bestseller, “Big Macs & Burgundy.”
As Price recounts in the introduction, “there’s an entire planet full of people who love wine as much as I do but have never had the opportunity to learn about it the right way— through informed experimentation.”
Price spends most of her time traveling between New York City and Los Angeles, where McSwain is located.
When they’re both on the West Coast, Price shares that the duo always stop at Wally’s for wines to shoot with.
“We make sure they are things that we personally love because once they are open, the only thing left to do is drink them,” Price says.
Another favorite is Venice Beach Wines, which Price describes as having the ultimate neighborhood vibe with a casual, intimate bar where there’s always a dealer’s choice option for wine flights. That’s a plus, because it allows you to discover new wines without having to risk ordering a whole bottle.
Scopa, Kismet, and Bar Bandini, where wine flows on tap, are a few other venues where you may find Price and McSwain sipping when not shooting in LA.
Back east, you’ll find Price working on two physical concepts: a high-end restaurant concept called Mavericks, in Montauk, NY, set to open later this year, and a North Fork vineyard on Long Island. Don’t be surprised to see Price pairing a glass of cabernet with a cheeseburger from In-N-Out the next time she’s in LA, however.
As Price would say, wine not?
Going to a film at a theater is much more than just watching a movie, it’s creating a personal experience.
— April Wright
Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre is a treasured cultural gem that celebrates the art of film and those who contribute to its creation.
Santa Monica’s 82-year old Aero Theatre still shows movies on one large screen—a rarity, as most vintage neighborhood theaters closed long ago. When the Aero Theatre opened in 1940, movies ran 24 hours a day to entertain the nearby Douglas Aircraft Company plant workers on day or night shifts. Built by the company’s founder and aviation pioneer Douglas W. Douglas, the name references his aerodynamic products.
Now the non-profit American Cinematheque manages the Aero’s varying repertoire that draws enthusiastic audiences to the 427seat, fully renovated historic theater. Despite changing movie-going habits, competition from online streaming services and a disruptive 18-month pandemic closure, the theater thrives at its landmark Montana Avenue location.
The Aero is the Cinematheque’s Westside showcase, open to the public, supported by filmmakers, film studios, cinephiles from the world over, American Cinematheque members and above all, its Santa Monica neighbors. “At the American Cinematheque,
we believe film is a communal experience with the power to entertain, enlighten and inspire,” explains Gwen Deglise, the arts organization’s deputy director and codirector of programming. The organization also programs Hollywood’s famed Egyptian Theatre (now under renovation) and one screen at the Los Feliz 3 in Los Feliz, east of Hollywood.
“The film programming first and foremost serves the community: our goal is to make sure we offer our members and audiences an eclectic, diverse and exciting slate of programs,” says Deglise, a French ex-pat and cinema fan, who’s been a key American Cinematheque administrator for 25 years.
The Cinematheque owes much to director Sydney Pollack (“Tootsie” “All The President’s Men”) one of the organization’s founders; much like Paris’ Cinematheque Francaise, Pollack envisioned a cinema for everyone, showcasing all film genres, new and old and from around the world. To that end, and essential to the Cinematheque’s core mission, is a best-in-class presentation.
“Film is a communal experience with the power to entertain, enlighten and inspire.”
Often this means projecting 35mm or even large-format 70-mm prints. A highly skilled projectionist is employed to actively monitor every screening. This archival aspect appeals to those who crave the authentic experience of seeing a movie on the big screen in its original format. There’s even a term for it: much like music fans who prefer vinyl records, format fetishists seek out films shown the way their filmmakers initially created them.
Screenings rarely are stand alone: Aero moviegoers can expect a film festivallike experience that puts the film’s origin, history or importance in context, often via an introduction from a filmmaker or film historian followed by question-andanswer session with those involved in the film’s production from actors to key behind-the-screen contributors such as cinematographers, directors and writers.
The Aero Theatre has many famous filmmaker fans who’ve premiered their work and sometimes drop in unannounced. Among those who cite the Aero as one of their favorite theaters are Paul Thomas Anderson (Oscar nominated for “Licorice Pizza”), Lulu Wang (2019’s “The Farewell”), Patty Jenkins
(“Wonder Woman”), Wes Anderson (“The French Dispatch”), Guillermo del Toro (2017 Oscar best picture winner “The Shape of Water” and “Nightmare Alley”) and Jon Favreau (“The Jungle Book,” “Ironman,” “Elf”). Favreau is the Aero’s unofficial guardian angel, per staff.
Past programs run the cinematic gamut from Oliver Stone and Val Kilmer discussing “The Doors,” to Al Pacino recounting his celebrated acting method in “Sea of Love,” and more recently, director Amy Heckerling looking back at her iconic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Although programmers produce a varied repertory of showings, there are popular annual presentations moviegoers can count on. Marx Brothers comedies at the beginning of the year, “Jaws” close to July 4th and “It’s a Wonderful Life” during the holidays. The most popular themed weekend (15 sessions so far) the Aero Horrorthon draws a devoted following when a dusk-to-dawn marathon of six or so horror film classics screen on the weekend before Halloween to devoted costumed crowds. Film buffs may even recognize the Aero from its appearances in “Get Shorty” and cult classic “Donnie Darko.”
The exterior of the theatre remains very much intact and true to its 1939 Streamline Moderne French-Normandy-style design. Carefully preserved interior historic architectural elements include female figure decorative motifs on the aisle seats (reminiscent of a goddess in flight), moderne glass and steel rest room signs, a glowing Glo-Dial blue-neon clock and large, plattershaped, perforated light fixtures on the auditorium’s walls. Outside the brilliant, boldly graphic, signature Aero multi-colored neon-lit marquee and the entrance’s original swirling patterned terrazzo flooring declare the theater’s presence. The original, glassenclosed, ticket office also survives, though it’s not in use.
Throughout the decades the Aero continued to exhibit first run films until the 1980s, when it became known for its bargain double features. When it closed in 2003 due to decreased attendance and financial issues, a prominent arts patron and producer Max Palevsky encouraged the American Cinematheque to step in to take over its operation. He helped fund the 2003-2005 renovation; the revived the movie-house (the formal name is the Max Palevsky Aero Theatre) included new seating, new projection equipment, a 44’x17’ screen and a contemporary concession stand. In 2019 a state-of-the-art sound system was installed. A new HVAC filtration system was installed during the pandemic closure and the lobby vibrantly repainted.
“The Aero is a pretty unique venue and provides a different experience,” says film historian and documentary filmmaker April Wright (her documentary “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace,” airs on Turner Classic Movies). Places like the Aero are known as “neighborhood movie palaces,” says the preservationist who sits on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation.
The Aero’s repertory line-up and retro programming are enhanced by the throwback movie going experience where patrons are immersed and not distracted by their devices. There’s no pausing the action either.
“Going to a film at a theater or drive-in is much more than just watching a movie, it’s creating a personal experience, a deeper memory and more of an emotional connection with the film and characters,” explains Wright. After all, seeing a movie on a larger-than-life, big screen is how America and the world have fallen in love with the movies for the past 100 years.
Follow the American Cinematheque’s programming announcements on Instagram and other social media outlets; sign up for the newsletter and email blasts announcing themed programming and in-person guests at americancinematheque.com.
Jef Holmes’ Beach Cycle brings a whole new perspective to stationary cycling.
Sun, sea, sand, surf, and cycling. When it comes to the ultimate Santa Monica experience, Beach Cycle’s one-of-a-kind outdoor stationary bike workout definitely ticks all of the boxes.
Launched by Jef Holmes in October of 2020, Beach Cycle is the first and only outdoor cycle class on Santa Monica State Beach. “As far as I know it’s the first of its kind on any beach,” says Holmes, a Venice-based entrepreneur. Holmes had been toying with the idea for years, but when the stay-at-home order was implemented in Los Angeles County in March 2020, gyms and boutique fitness studios were forced to shutter indefinitely and the demand for other forms of socially distanced fitness offerings boomed.
While many cycling classes moved onto rooftops or parking lots, a beachfront class remained elusive. “We knew that people still wanted to work out in a safe and healthy environment,” he says. “I saw a big opportunity at that point to do something different but we had to really think outside the box—and studio—to figure out the
logistics of bringing heavy stationary bikes onto the sand, seven days a week.”
Located between lifeguard towers 28 and 29, Beach Cycle is just a 15 minute walk south along the beach path, from either Shutters on the Beach or Hotel Casa del Mar. on a broad stretch of white sand has long been a go-to spot for open water swimmers and surfers. The 45-minute cycling classes, led by a team of professional instructors, combines high-intensity cardio, muscle sculpting, and strength training, and are suitable for everyone from beginners to experienced cyclists.
Riders are encouraged to go at their own pace and can wear either regular sneakers or cycling shoes that accommodate SPD or Delta pedals. Each bike sits on a heavy duty mat on top of the sand for stability, at a distance of six feet apart, facing the ocean. Riders are also given a pair of wireless, noise isolation headphones to create a “silent disco” style experience, allowing them to hear the instructor and custom playlists without interruption.
Depending on your weight and the amount of exertion, Holmes says the average each ride burns between 500 and 700 calories. It’s also a great way to get your daily dose of Vitamin D.
Beach Cycle currently offers between one and three classes a day (check online for their daily schedule) with the morning and evening classes offering two entirely different experiences.
Morning sessions come with a side show of surfers catching waves and swimmers doing laps, but be warned, the glare off of the white sand can be strong so sunglasses and a liberal application of SPF are a good idea. Evening classes are scheduled to coincide with Southern California’s famous sunsets, time when locals flock to the shore with beach chairs and picnics to catch the spectacle.
Both times a day offer plenty of distractions from the exercise burn as sandpipers speed along the ocean’s edge, pelicans dive bomb for fish, and pods of dolphins crest the surf.
And while Beach Cycle may not have fancy add-ons like lockers, showers or a smoothie bar, a post workout dip in the ocean is an amenity few other classes can offer.
“What sets Beach Cycle apart is that it’s more than just a workout class,” says Holmes. “It engages all the senses. It’s an experience you don’t want to miss.”
A single Beach Cycle class costs $35. Sign up at beachcycling.com.
Frank Gehry’s buildings are world-famous, but with an unusual project he’s helping support arts education close to home.
Swooping, curving, undulating. In his 60 years as an architect, Frank Gehry has established a signature design language for his many, many high-profile projects, from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to the Fondation Louis Vuitton. And while the forms themselves are instantly recognizable as Gehry’s hand, the inspiration behind them may not be.
If Gehry’s work often appears to be caught in billowing motion it’s because, next to architecture, the 93-year-old’s lifelong love has been sailing. So when the New York real estate developer and former client of Gehry’s, Richard Cohen, asked if his friend would like to design a competitive super-yacht for him, the answer was obvious. What wasn’t as apparent at the onset was how the project would ultimately help support one of Gehry’s other passions: arts education.
“The first step in any good boat project is finding a good naval architect,” explains Meaghan Lloyd, a Partner and Chief of Staff at Gehry Partners, LLP in Los Angeles. Naturally, Gehry reached out to one of the best: Germán Frers.
A second generation boat designer, Frers’ Buenos Aires-based studio has designed over 1300 craft, which have gone on to win every major competition, including the Admiral’s Cup, the San Francisco Big Boat Series, and the Louis Vuitton Cup, to name just a few. Frers’ role was not only to translate Gehry’s vision, it was also to act as the voice of reason, lest the architect’s more fantastical impulses get the best of him. (“Don’t let me go too crazy,” Gehry was reported to have instructed Frers.)
According to Lloyd, Gehry wanted an “old wood ship” feel with clean lines for the yacht, but wood construction adds significant weight, and Cohen desired a craft he could race. The compromise was found at the Brooklin Boat Yard on the coast of Maine, where over the course of two years craftsmen and engineers arrived at several novel solutions. Wood was layered with carbon fiber to create a “sandwich” which was then wrapped around a foam core, resulting in the warm, timeless look Gehry sought while also not compromising function.
By far the most challenging, and striking, aspect of Gehry’s design are the multiple daylights on the hull and deck. No mere portholes, these latticework structures of glass and teak are rendered in Gehry’s signature wavvy style. But glass robs a hull of its strength, and with 800 pieces intended for the deck alone, the Brooklin Boat Yard team began to worry about feasibility, and safety.
A lab at the University of Maine assuaged their fears with hydraulic tests that confirmed the plate glass would survive intense wave pressures, and in-house designers developed carbon reinforcements to shore up the hull. The result is a magical effect below deck, where dappled sunlight plays off the interiors of the salon, full galley, master cabin, guest cabin, and crew cabin.
“As with every kind of design project, we’re working with the engineers,” says Lloyd, looking back on the experience. “We’d ask some questions and they’d come back to us with some answers. You’re kind of finding your boundaries and finding where you can play and [where] you can’t. [Boats] have to sail, they have to float.”
When Gehry first laid eyes on “Foggy” (an acronym based on Frank Owen Gehry) it was at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod’s Hyannis Port, and it was with considerable relief. Not only did it float, the 74-foot daysailer is aesthetically unlike anything else on the water, simultaneously vintage and modern. It can also move. Cohen immediately put Foggy through its paces at the Martha’s
Vineyard ‘Round-the-Island Race, where it clocked the fastest time that summer.
These days, Foggy 2, as it’s now known (Foggy 1 is Gehry’s personal craft, a Beneteau First 44.7), is docked in Marina del Rey, not far from the architect’s home in Santa Monica. It’s all part of a life that Gehry credits to his childhood access to the arts, and that’s why he’s so dedicated to ensuring that other children are afforded the same opportunities.
In 2014, Gehry co-founded Turnaround Arts: California, a “nonprofit organization that administers the Turnaround Arts program statewide to engage, empower, and transform the state’s highest-need schools and communities through the arts,” according to its website.
To help fundraise for Turnaround Arts: California, Gehry is offering the opportunity to personally experience Foggy 2. A charitable donation of $100,000 grants access to the yacht for either six hours out at sea or docked for a private event. “Frank and his wife Berta have been very generous supporters to Turnaround Arts: California over the years and have come up with many creative ways to leverage their resources to benefit the cause nearest and dearest to Frank’s heart,” says Malissa Shriver, who co-founded Turnaround Arts: California with Gehry.
“For Frank, art was a savior in his life,” Lloyd remarks. “He wants to make sure that every child in Los Angeles has that same right.”
How pickleball pro Matt Manasse is bringing Hollywood’s biggest players together on the court.
Pickleball’s star is on the rise, and so is the profile of Matt Manasse. Thanks to the interest in one of the fastest growing sports, Manasse has become Hollywood’s go-toguy at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, coaching comedian Larry David, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, and United Talent Agency co-founder Jim Berkus. His nickname is “Pickleball McNasty” to many of his clients, including “Entourage” creator Doug Ellin, himself a pickleball enthusiast, and regularly makes house calls to train people at their multi-million dollar L.A. mansions. Not bad for a game much of America only started hearing about over the last two years.
A blend of badminton, tennis, and ping pong, pickleball is a game that can be played by pretty much anyone, from ages eight to 80. It’s easy to pick up, doesn’t require a wide range of movement or much exertion, and can quickly get competitive. It’s also on the come up, with a 2021 Sports & Fitness Industry Association report estimating that 4 million active “picklers” pick up a racket at least once a year, a number that represents
a 21.3 percent increase from the number of players in 2019.
Though he’s a pro now, Manasse himself only found the sport when he was stuck at home during the early days of pandemic lockdowns. A former collegiate tennis player turned professional coach, Manasse was working with tennis pro Shelby Rogers when the pandemic shut down the WTA Tour.
Finding himself out of a job, he returned to his hometown of Erie, PA, where, looking for a little exercise and excitement, he looked up his old tennis buddies only to find that they’d all switched over to pickleball. He gave it a try and quickly became enamored. “I was home alone with nothing to do,” says Manasse. “I got into [pickleball], and kind of became obsessed. It was my escape during the pandemic when there was nothing going on.”
With his competitive tennis background, Manasse quickly outpaced his Erie peers in terms of pickleball skills. One day, while he was clicking around online, he happened upon a video of one of his old friends, who’d
since become a pickleball coach in Florida. “I saw videos of him playing with top pros and I felt like I could hang,” Manasse says. He quickly found himself in Florida teaming up with Pickleball Pro Ryan Sherry for an upcoming tournament.
“We trained for a week and then I ended up going to a clinic with the No. 1 [ranked] woman in the world and No. 1 [ranked] guy in the world: Simone Jardim and Ben Johns,” says Manasse. “I actually stayed with them during the clinic, which would be like if, three months into playing tennis, I was able to go to camp with Roger Federer and Serena Williams and live with them for the week while they were teaching me.”
After the tournament, Manasse came out to California, where he ended up playing with Ellin and Tennis Pro Sam Querrey.
Manasse says meeting Ellin and others convinced him he could make the move to L.A., where he quickly focused on The Riviera because of his familiarity with the club. “I remember one of the first mornings we drove in we almost hit Mark Wahlberg. He got out of the car and took pictures with my whole team and was really nice. It was like, ‘This club is where everyone’s at. This is where people make things happen.’”
Noticing the club didn’t have a pickleball program yet, Manasse pitched one to management, who took the bait. He says The
Riviera is “a nice place to be every day”—a suggestion that’s perhaps an understatement given the almost 100 year old club’s sterling reputation, lush grounds, exclusive clientele, and spot on the PGA Tour.
Manasse says the Riviera’s clientele has also embraced him. “It’s funny,” he says. “A year ago, if you told me these are the circles that I’d be running around with… Now, in a way, it seems normal. I consider a lot of my students to be friends, to be honest.”
One of those groups has come to hold a special place in his heart. Dubbed “The Sunday Crew,” the group’s heavy-hitting roster is composed of Larry David and his wife Ashley Underwood; “There’s Something About Mary” producer Bradley Thomas and his wife Izzy; Berkus and his wife Ria; Emanuel and his fiancée Sarah Staudinger, and producer Joel Silver, who prefers to watch.
“I think the husbands used to just play golf and then the women were left behind,” he says. “This is something they found they can all do together.”
Manasse says he’s especially impressed with the group’s camaraderie, despite Jim Berkus and Emanuel’s status as heads of opposing talent agencies. “The fact that these two power figures can come together on a Sunday and play… Pickleball brought them together. That’s pretty special.”
“Pickleball brought them together. That’s pretty special.”
It was in April 2019, that actor Jason Momoa —you might also know him as Aquaman —launched his YouTube video in which he shaves off his beard to draw attention to our plastic pollution problem. “Now that I’ve become Aquaman,” he says, “there are a lot of things I want to do to try to save the Earth.” Recently, our properties partnered with his aluminum bottled water brand Mananalu, a brand on a mission to eradicate single-use plastic water bottles.
Surrounded by the ocean as a kid, Jason had big dreams of becoming a marine biologist so he could protect our oceans. Years later he would find himself in Hollywood playing Aquaman, with a platform so big and so influential... he just knew he had to use it for good. In April 2019, he decided to take aim on the one thing he (and the ocean) hates most… single-use plastics.
On a flight is where the ‘aha’ moment happened for him. He found himself surrounded by single-use plastic water bottles but noticed that the soda, beer, and juice were all in aluminum cans. Why can’t we just package water in aluminum instead of plastic, he thought? What were we waiting for? So Jason called up a few friends, partnered up with Ball Corporation, the largest producer of aluminum packaging in the world, hired a group of passionate humans… and Mananalu was born.
In case you’re wondering what the name stands for: In Hawaiian, “mana” means the sacred spirit of life and “nalu” means a powerful wave that pushes across the ocean. With Mananalu, Jason sought to create a wave of change by fighting plastic pollution with aluminum-canned water, an infinitely recyclable material.
But, Mananalu is more than just an aluminum bottle that replaces plastic water bottles. It’s a wave of change. With their partner rePurpose Global—the first plastic offset platform in the world -they remove the equivalent of one plastic bottle from oceangoing waste.
rePurpose Global is taking a stand against plastic pollution by removing over 2.5 million pounds of it every year in eight different countries. These clean-ups provide a tangible way for companies looking to become Plastic Neutral or Negative to take action, as rePurpose Global removes and recycles at least as much ocean-bound plastic waste as the partner company produces.
So for every bottle you drink, rePurpose Global activates an army of do-gooders to stop plastic from ruining our waterways. What else can we say except: Hooray you, and hooray to disruptors like Jason Momoa.
With the help of Jason Momoa, Mananalu is helping people stay hydrated while preventing more plastic from going into the ocean.
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Spring is in full bloom and the wedding industry is gearing up for the busiest year yet. Forbes.com is estimating 2.6 million weddings will take place in 2022.
Countless nuptials fell victim to ‘pandemic postponement’ and couples everywhere, armed with social media vision boards, are athirst to live out their dream wedding.
The wisest of wedding planners have Hotel Casa del Mar and Shutters on the Beach at the top of their list of venues to peruse. Aside from their picture-perfect surroundings of sandy beach and sparkling blue Pacific, these iconic properties possess a colorful spectrum of unique locations to choose from.
“We have a lot of famous couples who celebrate their big day with us.” confides Bruce Hochberger, Director of Catering at ETC Hotels. “But what I find the most telling is that some of the most influential celebrity stylists from around the world have chosen us for weddings or receptions. They love that there are both indoor and al fresco spaces, allowing them to tailor their very own fantastical wedding wonderland.”
Weddings already on the books at these beachside beauties are diverse in theme —from coastal to regencycore (thanks, “Bridgerton”) to bohemian. Some are intimate casual dinners and others are extravagant black-tie events, defining no clear trend this year as to the optimal size for guest lists or dress code.
“There are no ‘rules’ anymore, but couples are still looking for flawless service, great food, and a memorable event. Also carrying out their creative vision is key,” Hochberger explains. “The range of ideas is incredible, yet, between Shutters and Casa, we have the ideal location for whatever they can imagine.”
“The range of ideas is incretible, yet, between Shutters and Casa, we have the ideal location.”
No matter the theme of the wedding, the beach is always the perfect place to tie the knot.
