MY CALIFORNIA DREAMS ARE LOST IN THE RAGING WILDFIRES OF PACIFIC PALISADES

Nothing was more fun than a day in a scenic town off Pacific Coast Highway, where I hung out and wondered who was eating at an Italian restaurant — until paradise was gutted by a terrifying inferno

With the ocean to the left and Temescal Canyon Road to the right, here was paradise. Pacific Palisades was where I swam laps at the high school pool. It’s where I shopped for shoes and dined at an Italian restaurant. Ted Danson showed up for dinner, as did Conan O’Brien, and made me wonder why I was there.

This was the Westside of Los Angeles. If you kept driving on Sunset Boulevard, the fairways of the Riviera Country Club were guarded by foliage. Just the other day, I stood atop a hill and gazed at the ocean in a town known by locals as “the Palisades.” Every so often, I’d pop in an Eagles song on the Pacific Coast Highway and heard Don Henley wail, “They call it paradise. I don't know why. You call someplace paradise. Kiss it goodbye.”

It couldn’t happen here.

It did.

Raging wildfires have turned my California into a place of mental wreckage, making it unworthy of life as we knew it. Three of our friends live in the Palisades, and one thinks her home was torched but might not know for a while. We haven’t heard from the others. As I write, restaurants on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica are on Evacuation Order. These are places I go often. Not anymore.

I live a bike ride from the inferno and will choke on smoke that ruins the promised land. My favorite ride for tourists started north on the PCH, with a shift toward the Palisades and past Brentwood, Beverly Hills, UCLA, the old Sunset Strip rock bars, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Dodger Stadium and downtown. Now, people wondering about the future of Malibu and Pacific Palisades will ask if scenic towns can exist by the surf. They will be devoured by flames or slip into the sea. In a week or so, I’ve lost the wildest ride of binge partying — a night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans — and a dip into Hollywood.

No fire in the city’s history has been more destructive. More than $57 billion already has been lost by this week’s fires in the region. Pressed against the brush and woodlands, the wealthy have dared to live in the hills with the vistas. Problem was, no elected official in our megalopolis paid attention to the infrastructure, allowing more than 16,000 acres to burn in the Palisades. You might have seen Ben Affleck in the area; to no one’s surprise, he evacuated and ended up at the home of his former wife, Jennifer Garner. If he didn’t end up leaving town, he was part of the crisis. Some folks stuck around and tried to use sprinklers to put out fires, which angered Rick Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village mall and lost to the inefficient Karen Bass in the mayoral race.

“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” he said. “The firefighters are there, and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning and businesses burning. … It should never happen. This is a window into a systemic problem of the city — not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old.”

It was Bass who slashed fire department funds by $17.6 million. She hasn’t been around for the destruction, visiting Ghana in Africa. “We’ve declared a state of emergency to amplify our response to this devastating fire and clear a path for a rapid recovery,” she wrote on social media. “To the hundreds of brave firefighters and first responders who have been responding all day to this blaze — we thank you. To the thousands of families impacted by this horrific fire — the City of Los Angeles is providing resources and shelter as this fire continues. The city is working AGGRESSIVELY to confront this emergency.”

No emergency should require combative warfire in this town. No one is supposed to stare at Los Angeles and see blazes across the mountains. The actor, Steve Guttenberg, said he saw a “volcano” as he tried to help residents. “Now I never think I'm going to die, but this is one of those moments where I said, ‘Oh man, these could be the places I'm going to go,’ ’’ he told the Los Angeles Times. The Pacific Coast Highway always was my joyful experience. Not now.

The Reel Inn, with its fun signage about LA life, was destroyed. So was the Rosenthal Winery. Moonshadows, the bar where Mel Gibson lost his career, also is gone. “Thank you for all of the prayers and wishes. Stay safe and strong everyone,” the owner wrote. The PCH is ravaged, houses charred and shedded to wood, a wasteland impossible to navigate.

And there was Donald Trump, blaming Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” he posted. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”

Said Newsom: “This time of year traditionally has not been fire season, but now we disabuse any notion that there is a season. It’s year-round in the state of California.”

As for Palisades Charter High School, TV watchers might realize it has been used for films and shows. Famous folks have emerged from the hallways, including NBA coach Steve Kerr, who said his mother was evacuated. “I wanted to send my thoughts and condolences to everybody in Los Angeles dealing with the fires,” he said. “Everything I'm seeing and reading is just terrifying what's happened down there.”

I will find a different swimming pool. It might be in another state.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.