Entrance to the Malibu Pier on Pacific Coast Highway
At the city of Santa Monica, the 10 freeway becomes the Pacific Coast Highway, also known as The 1, Highway 1, or PCH. You can either take the 10 directly to Malibu, or from the heart of Santa Monica, turn left down the hill at California Street & Ocean Avenue and merge onto PCH.
Immediately you’re swept through a corridor of cliffs on one side, the coast on the other.
You might recognize these initial beaches from TV shows like Beverly Hills, 90210 or Baywatch. You might think these things to yourself and not say them out loud; it depends on the level of trust you have in your traveling companion.
Within a few minutes, on the right, you’ll reach what’s known as the Old Getty Villa, a truly beautiful art museum that focuses largely on the antiquities of Rome, Greece, and the Middle East. You sadly can’t just stop by — an appointment has to be made ahead of time — but I highly recommend it if you’ve always thought immersing yourself in ancient art would be like getting a migraine.
Re-opened in 2007 after a thirteen-year renovation, the Getty Villa no longer a mash-up of ill-described treasures and a reflecting pool bordered by creepy, black-eyed statues of boy-men. It’s now a cleanly-organized, modern space full of tiled fountains and flowering plants. The interactive “let’s learn about the ancient world” room is geared towards adults and seems genuinely invested in your actually grasping the timelines involved.
You can eat a foodie lunch of field-greens salads or a lovely cheese plate at the Getty’s cafe, or just up PCH you’ll find Duke’s Malibu. Using the history of surfing as its theme, this beach-side restaurant’s claim to fame is a glass-enclosed patio that looks out on the Pacific. The food isn’t particularly memorable, but that may just be because the cocktails are really good.
Back to heading north on PCH, you’ll glide through alternately beach-bum-scruffy and tony central Malibu, where you can either stop on your left at the beach-house-deck feel of Moonshadows Restaurant & Blue Lounge (which gained unnecessary fame as the place Mel Gibson got drunk shortly before spewing anti-Semitic comments to a police officer) or on either side of the street, take in the wide range of architecture.
At just about the end of central Malibu town you’ll find the Malibu Pier & Lagoon and historic Adamson House, former home of one of the founding families of Malibu. Here you can see dozens of Malibu’s best surfers at the often-crowded Surfrider Beach, stroll the thin strip of soft sand to look for rocks and shells and be near not only the rock-and-roll and great-breakfast glory of the Malibu Inn but also the expensive elegance of the recently refurbished, celebrity-friendly Malibu Beach Inn.
1/4 mile past the Pier & Lagoon area, on the right at Cross Creek Road, you’ll find the real commercial heart of Malibu, an outdoor mall that drapes over both sides of the street - the Malibu Country Mart. (For more information on this area landmark, please see the entry: Malibu via Malibu Canyon.)
One stoplight past Cross Creek Road, on the left, you’ll find the enclave known as the Malibu Colony. Due to its heavy concentration of celebrity residents, there is no public access to the beach here, and oddly, its adjacent outdoor mall is decidedly less sexy than the Country Mart. You’ll find a Blockbuster; an extremely comprehensive newsstand; a chain grocery store; Coogie’s, a friendly place for breakfast or lunch; and a health food store/juice bar where recently I not only had an excellent mango smoothie but also saw bleary-eyed Gary Busey flirting loudly with a gaggle of local teenagers — a spectacular pairing of salty and sweet.
A few years ago, Adam and I had semi-regular access to the comfortable wood Malibu Canyon beach house of his then-employers, a fantastic perk that allowed us to pretend we lived there. I’d always begin my days there just at dawn, tumbling out onto the sand for the last of the morning tidepools and occasional sea lion sightings. I’d always be the only person out there, bundled in sweats against the gray morning chill, watching the craggy black rocks slowly recede beneath the seaweed-strewn water; it was the perfect way to get in touch with the fact that for all its astronomical real estate prices, Malibu is just a beach community designed to lure you out of the nation’s largest city and into a state of relaxation.
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See also
Sunset Boulevard to Malibu
Malibu via Topanga Canyon
Malibu via Malibu Canyon
Malibu via Latigo Canyon
Three Great Malibu Beaches
[...] Central Malibu Along the Pacific Coast Highway [...]