Perhaps no area of the city epitomizes the Los Angeles mystique more than Malibu, at the north end of Santa Monica Bay along the Pacific Coast Highway. There are movie stars galore, extravagant mansions, film sites, exceptional wave breaks, and seemingly one natural catastrophe after another.

Visitors are often surprised by Malibu’s unremarkable retail centre of surf shops, fast-food joints, and an ordinary supermarket. However, the fine grains of sand are trod upon daily by the biggest names in the movie business, and have also played key roles in the Baywatch television series, in Franke Avalon and Annette Funicello beach flicks, and in the surf-breaking film Gidget, to name a few.

Originally settled by the Chumash Indians, the cherished parcel, including its glorious 22 miles of Pacific frontage, was purchased in the late 1880s by wealthy Easterner Frederick Rindge. After Rindge’s death in 1905, his widow, May, spent years fighting to deep the railroad and the highway from getting near the land, but in the late 1920s, Pacific Coast Highway came barrelling through.