Is Malibu overrated?
Malibu is known as the playland for the rich and famous in the Los Angeles area. But is it overrated?
An article in the Hollywood Reporter talks about one of the most common pastimes in Malibu: dying by car.
Hollywood's summer getaway of lavish oceanfront rentals attracts 15 million annual visitors, but its main highway's "Blood Alley" is notorious for vehicular tragedy.
Fifteen percent of the more than 400 accidents each year on PCH [Pacific Coast Highway] are parking-related, and the shoulders on both sides of the highway are perpetually lethal. Rapper MC Supreme, aka Dewayne Coleman, was killed when a pickup truck slammed into his car when it was pulled over at Corral Canyon Road in June 2015. (Rob Lowe tweeted in response that PCH is "a death trap.") Producer Michel Shane (Catch Me If You Can; I, Robot) lost his 13-year-old daughter, Emily, after she was fatally struck in 2010 while walking along the road by Point Dume[.]
The roads that cross Malibu are small and windy and feature sharp turns that easily lead to collision from oncoming cars. People park their cars along the Pacific Coast Highway then walk along it to the beach, only to get hit by oncoming traffic.
Malibu is also home to wildfires.
Malibu is also home to mudslides.
Malibu's beaches are supposed to be great, but they are tiny strips of sand sandwiched close to the highway.
Because it is so dry, Malibu itself is rarely pretty, looking as though it had been hit by a neutron bomb that wiped out all life.
So why is it so popular with the wealthy? Is it because Los Angeles is so much worse that if you want to live in the area, Malibu looks better by comparison?
If you could live anywhere, would you live in a place like Malibu?
Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.