"It’s the last bastion against Los Angeles! You know shit’s getting real in California when we summon up the bogeyman of Los Angeles."

The Canadian film director and deep sea explorer James Cameron is tossing the keys to his beachfront joint at The Ranch for thirty-three mill, saying he and his fifth wife spend most of the year in New Zealand so the joint is redundant etc.

Called Tranquility Base, Cameron bought 89 Hollister Ranch Road, Gaviota, in 1999 for a little over four mill. The parcel sprawls over 102 acres and includes an 8000 square-foot main house, 2000 square-foot guest house, two barns (one in which Cameron used to keep his helicopter), a tennis court and a divine swimming pool.

In the upstairs library, the Oscar-winning writer and director wrote a movie about blue lizard people called Avatar (Didn’t see, was it good or silly?), which eventually spawned a total of five movies thereby edging Cameron even close to billionaire status. (Currently he’s sitting on around 800 mill.)

Per the selling literature,

“Other features of this exceptional offering include a solar power system, wind generator, theater, and a spacious gym. Tranquility Base is mere steps from Drake’s Beach and miles of the beautiful ‘Hollister Ranch Shoreline Preserve,’ with its world class surfing waves, fishing, diving, paddling, beach combing, and abundant ocean-related activities. For those who love horses, one can ride their horse directly to the beach and up the coastline, all while experiencing the natural beauty of the landscape and also the common area of approximately 125 miles of roads & trails Hollister Ranch offers.

“Developed with self-sufficiency and sustainability in mind, this property is solar powered with ample energy storage. Southern California Edison is available, if desired. There are sumptuous vegetable gardens and an assortment of numerous varieties of fruit trees.”

Another angle on The Ranch, of course, is that there’s a “hard ugliness” to the place, as Warshaw wrote a while back.

The big issue is that private beaches exist at all in a state that, decades ago, mandated “maximum public access” to California’s entire 840-mile coastline. Not helping things are all the fence-sitting surfers, like me, who have forever both-sided the public-private debate when it comes to the Ranch—everybody doing the same mental gymnastics, which is basically a version of how do I get in there while everybody else is locked out and not feel like an asshole. Which of course is where the “conservation” part comes into play—the Ranch is the last piece of undeveloped Southern California coast and must be preserved at all costs—and I won’t change anybody’s mind here by saying it, but I myself am giving up on this line of nonsense.

Open up the Ranch. Limit access, charge a fee, patrol the beaches—whatever has to happen in order to limit or mitigate the environmental wear and tear that comes with allowing people in.

But enough stalling. Let people in.

There will be more mess, and possibly some environmental damage.

But that’s us, that’s our low-budget democracy, and even if trashcans overflow at the end of the weekend or if some big-truck assholes go offroading now and then, that is so much better than fantasizing about Vahalla over the hill and behind the gate, and there you are stuck on the wrong side without a key.

Even Jen See gets het up about the joint.

All your arguments about keeping Hollister Ranch private make you sound like elitist assholes. There. I said it. I said that whole thing in my outside voice. I will probably get punched in the face at the coffee shop tomorrow. Live dangerously, is a thing I always say.

It’s the last bastion against Los Angeles! You know shit’s getting real in California when we summon up the bogeyman of Los Angeles. The Ranch will become another Trestles! Or Rincon! Filled with kooks!

Just listen to yourselves. Omg! Other surfers like me might surf where I want to surf! I mean, I hate the kooks as much as you do, but really, you are losing your minds here.

Want to buy and keep The Ranch The Ranch ie shoo away povo scum like Warshaw and See? Call Emily Kellenberger here and tell ’em BeachGrit sent ya.

“So fucking freeing…”

After yesterday’s stunning coup de grâce where the ex-girlfriend of Jonah Hill proudly shared screenshots of Hawaiian locals promising hell if the Hollywood star ever returned to Kauai one might’ve assumed that was that. 

However we must stroll back three hundred years, to dialogue in playwright William Congreve’s three-hundred-year-old play The Mourning Bride, Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d, to realise that this is a story without end.  

As any divorced man quickly learns, a spurned woman will only stop when the ruination, the utter destruction of her ex, emotionally, financially, is total. 

If you’re coming in late, here’s the play so far. 

Five days ago, Brady lit a very public fire, dumping a series of what she said were private texts between the pair on Instagram. Brady claimed to be a “survivor” following the  end of a relationship with a man she described as misogynistic and a narcissist. 

Brady said Hill was made sad by her posting bikini shots, the inference being these languid poses suggested sexual availability.

The world quickly sorted itself into two camps, leftists siding with wronged woman bravely navigating the horrors of a controlling or to use the language of the day “coercive” man and conservatives taking the hand of a shell-shocked actor who, again, is stung by the dark side of fame. 

Yesterday, Hill, who is a keen surfer, was banned from surfing one of the world’s great waves, Hanaeli Bay, on the north shore of Kauai, where he had holidayed with Brady during their ill-fated relationship almost two years ago. 

Brady posted a message from a supporter who wrote,

“Will do my part to make sure he’s clipped from surfing on Kauai. He was a hazard in the lineup when I saw you guys out at the bay and the only reason no one said anything to him was cause he was with you and you were shredding. There’s enough toxic masculinity in surf culture already, glad you are free of him so you can keep shining and elevating women’s surfing without his bullshit holding you back!”

Brady replied, 

“Thank you!! That was my original intention, to make sure no one was still calling him into waves because they knew him through me haha kinda petty but…

“He got mad at me that day, because I paddled up the point and he was too scared to follow me.”

It was Brady’s most emasculating posts thus far although today, as the imbroglio moves into its fifth day, Brady has now shifted gears into Ludicrous + acceleration mode, posting a whopping seventy Instagram stories including this contradictory message, 

“Now, I finally get to paddle out there not feeling like I’m just the surfer girl who dated Jonah Hill. So Fuckin freeing. Might sound weird to you guys cause I still am that but now it’s not like people associating me with him and him as a nice person who I still have to talk nicely about.” 

I think after five days of I’m-Jonah-Hill’s-wronged-ex, along with an avalanche of press coverage she will be forever prefixed as Hill’s girlfriend, yes? 

And, question, has any man here been able to safely exit a relationship with a woman and not feel the sting of her wrath, even if her idea, new stud etc?