Phone app unlocks access to Malibu Beach

There are 27 miles of beach in Malibu, California, but the largely wealthy property owners have blocked off access to 20 miles of it.

Now a journalist has launched an iPhone app to help people enjoy the beaches which are open to the public by law. The app gives you pinpointed directions and expert tips so you can enjoy the 20 miles of gorgeous beaches in Malibu that are lined with private developments owned by the likes of Piers Brosnan, Michael Eisner and Dave Geffen.

Early reviews of the app, titled Our Malibu Beaches are very positive. “Awesome app!” said SlickvicAZ
“I’ve been looking for this info for a long time. I can’t wait to use it this weekend. Phenomenal contribution to beach democracy!” said Ki6H.

“I sort of see this as one of the most egregious problems we have with public space in a region that’s plagued with problems with public space,” Jenny Price, the app’s author told the New York Times.

Price is a writer, Los Angeles Urban Ranger and research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. She writes about the environment, Los Angeles, environmentalism, gun control, the Malibu beach wars and public space. Author of Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America(Basic Books, 1999), she’s written for numerous media outlets, including The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and writes “Green Me Up, JJ” a not-quite advice column for L.A. Observed.

Price calls the app “a beach-by-beach battle plan for anyone wishing to explore what are, by design, some of the most secluded beaches around.” It has maps to often hidden entry gates, house-by-house descriptions showing public property boundaries and spine-stiffening advice on dealing with counterfeit no-parking signs (“feel free to enjoy and then ignore”) and threatening property owners (“they’re welcome to call the sheriff”).

With the Urban Rangers art collective, Price has been a resident artist at the Orange County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
She has taught at UCLA, the University of Southern California and Antioch-Los Angeles; has been a Guggenheim fellow and was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University in fall 2011. She has an A.B. from Princeton, where as a biology major she studied the white-winged trumpeters of the Amazon rain forest, and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University, where she studied the plastic pink flamingos of the American grasslands.
She is currently working on a new book titled Stop Saving the Planet! & Other Tips for 21st Century Environmentalists.