A good story for your weekend reading from the Los Angeles Times, "U2's The Edge and his decade-long fight to build on a pristine Malibu hillside," about the rock guitarist's decade-long effort to build his dream home compound in the exclusive coastal town. Running smack dab in to the California Coastal Commission, this was a clash between a guy who is touted as being "an activist, an artist, that made his money from spreading peace and love in the world," and people whom you might expect would support a guy like The Edge.
Yeah, but it's still filthy lucre, and even Mr. Edge's donation of a public-access hiking easement and $1 million to maintain it were not enough. 8-4, project denied.
Not until the Coastal Commission's Director-For-Life died, and The Edge replaced his project manager with "an artist and sometime model, who had interrupted his architecture career in 2007 to play the title role in a National Geographic documentary, 'The Missing Years of Jesus'" (a guy whose name is also biblical, Moses Hacmon), did things start falling into place.
"We are artists," Hacmon told the commissioners. "For us, the mountain is the sculpture, and our inspiration…our intention is to disappear and become one with the mountain."
Who could possibly argue with that? The 8-4 vote against the project swung to a 12-0 approval. No less than a miracle, a parting of the Red Tape.
As you might expect -- even when a righteous dude like The Edge, an environmentalist, is the one doing the developing -- the Sierra Club has sued to overturn the Coastal Commission.
