The Dune at Sand Dune Park

In January, the Manhattan Beach council will decide the future of Sand Dune Park. One of the options that will be considered is to permanently close the dune and prevent anyone from ever climbing up it again. The people that want to permanently close the dune are very well organized and very vocal in their desire to see the dune permanently closed. These residents seek the permanent closure in order to reduce the number of people from outside the immediate neighborhood from using the park in order to alleviate traffic, noise and overuse issues.

If Manhattan Beach residents that use the dune do not make their desire to see the dune remain open clear, there is a very real chance it will be close permanently. If you live in Manhattan Beach and want to ever have the chance to climb the dune again by yourself or with your children, then I urge you to contact the city council and express your desire. You may also want to visit this site to share your ideas for keeping the dune open for us, our children & future generations of children so they can all experience the joy of climbing this unique jewel themselves.

We are working hard to devise a plan that will mitigate overuse, parking and noise issues. Our goal is nothing less than to keep the dune open for all while reducing the use such that these issues are on par with other neighborhood parks throughout the city and state. By reducing park hours, requiring a paid permit, extending quiet hours and increasing accountability in order to eliminate the bad apples, we can all continue to enjoy the park while minimizing the impact to the local neighbors.

This is for real. There is a very organized group of citizens that are working very hard to permanently close the dune for all generations. These people are my neighbors, and their concerns are certainly legitimate. But I believe that by making some of the changes described above, we can maintain the dune for future generations with minimal neighborhood impact. My goal is nothing less than to have the resident living closest to the dune glad that the city decided to keep the dune open since they will be able to enjoy it without the severe overuse issues that reached a breaking point this summer.

Save the Sand Dune

The 6 Million People project

Just wanted to take this opportunity to tell my readers about a project I've been spearheading on Flickr the last few years. I welcome you all to join in this project and help us reach the goal.

I need your help to continue an awesome project in the 6 Million People group. We're collecting portraits of 6 million different people as a way to help comprehend the enormous number of Jews, Gypsies, Russians and other people that were lost during the Holocaust. I hope that you can join, add a portrait of everyone you meet, and invite your Flickr contacts to do the same.



Along the way, I hope that you'll be inspired to improve your portrait photography and learn to appreciate the fine portraits that other photographers capture. The long-running Spotlight Seven interview series focuses on the work of one artist each episode. Our Featured Galleries are being curated by members with themes ranging from silly faces to facial hair and from toes to hats. World Portrait Days is a project to photograph many people during one weekend. And by translating the group mission into as many languages as possible--we already have nearly 20—we can make this project truly global.

So please join in the project, and invite your friends. Feel free to include this note or use your own words. We've already collected over 100,000 portraits and we intend to capture millions more.

One Solution to the issues surrounding Sand Dune Park

UPDATE AFTER 10/26/2009 Parks & Recreation Commission Meeting
I spoke at the meeting tonight, and pretty much said what I wrote below. Many of my neighbors from the bottom of the hill also spoke as well, most expressing support for closing the dune permanently. After the meeting, I spoke with some city staff, commissioners, dune proponents and people in favor of closing (or at least greatly restricting) use of the dune. I think we learned from those informal talks that we really are all after the same solution-- making the sand dune available for use by community members while greatly minimizing the impact on the closest neighbors and maximizing enjoyment of the park by all neighborhood residents. The next meeting will be held on November 16, and I encourage all Manhattan Beach residents to attend. At that meeting, the pros and cons of various solutions will be offered by all attendees, and these will form the basis of a report to be made to the city council.

Original post below.
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As readers of my last blog entry are well aware, I am a huge fan of climbing the 100-foot tall dune at Sand Dune Park. After attending the city council meeting, it became clear to me that Sand Dune Park is not going to reopen until major changes are made to minimize the community impact. I love the park, and want it to remain open to all, but I sympathize greatly with the neighbors that are impacted by its heavy use, especially during peak times. So I've brainstormed some solutions to the problem. I'll share these tonight at the Parks & Recreation meeting in Manhattan Beach.

First, let me list the principles that drove my thought process:

1. Minimize disruption to people living in the areas closest to Sand Dune Park;
2. Greatly reduce usage during peak times;
3. Maintain easy availability & use of Sand Dune Park for neighborhood residents and other people living in Manhattan Beach;
4. Preserve the ability for hyperlocals (i.e., people within walking distance) to spontaneously visit Sand Dune Park;
5. Make sure it's easy for kids to be able to safely play on the dune.

With that in mind, I quickly realized that a straight reservation system would not be ideal, since this would provide the same barriers for residents to visit as it would for non-residents. Further, it would greatly impact the hyperlocals who often visit the dune on a moments notice-- a problem that would not at all affect those that drive 20 minutes or more to enjoy the workout.

Instead, what I propose is a yearly pass with the following characteristics:

1. Passes can be bought and are good for use for one year;
2. The passes cost a nominal amount, probably $10-25/year-- low enough to be affordable for regulars, high enough to discourage first-time visitors;
3. The passes are ONLY available for purchase one day each month, at City Hall. Passes must be purchases by the user-- they cannot be purchases on someone else's behalf. This has the benefit of making the passes easier to obtain for residents than they are for non-residents;
4. Passes are only required for use during peak times, such as weekends and spring/summer evenings;
5. Children under the age of 12 do not require a pass;
6. The passes could be GINORMOUS YELLOW BRACELETS that are easy for park personnel to identify;
7. People without a yearly pass will be allowed to purchase a 1-day pass for $5-10;

That's about it. Manhattan Beach residents that use the park regularly will be only lightly impacted, and most will be happy to help support the park in the form of the modest cost of the pass. Kids, most of whom are local, can visit anytime. Dedicated out-of-towners will still come, but in smaller numbers and they are much less likely to bring friends. And there will be more accountability, since the passes could be revoked. Out-of-town visitors will have to plan ahead and visit the park at off-peak times.

This is my simple proposal. If adopted, it will provide a modest amount of revenue for the city, decrease use during peak times, maintain the same level of accessibility for neighborhood residents and still let kids enjoy the park any time.

Save Sand Dune Park!

UPDATE, very late Tuesday October 6: Attended tonight's marathon 5.5 hour city council meeting, mostly devoted to a discussion of undergrounding utility wires. Starting the meeting by getting the proposal to keep Sand Dune Park closed (for 4-6 months while mitigation issues are addressed )from the consent agenda, which mean there would be an opportunity to discuss it. At the end, I spoke for 3 minutes in favor of keeping the park open, and after speaking it became apparent that 4 of the 5 council members had decided to keep the dune closed for now. Several others spoke, both in favor and against. Bottom line, the dune will remain closed until at least next spring while the city studies ways to discourage people from using the public park.



Sand Dune Park is a great park in Manhattan Beach, just blocks from my home. I've enjoyed working out climbing the 100-foot sand dune there, sometimes as many as 40 times as I trained for the Catalina Marathon. Currently, the park is closed and may remain closed through the end of the year unless the residents of Manhattan Beach can convince the city council to keep the park open to its residents. There is a organized group of residents fighting to close the dune permanently in order to discourage people from coming to their neighborhood; without a strong voice calling for the park to remain open to all, they may succeed. I may add some links later, for now see the most recent articles from The Beach Reporter and The Daily Breeze.

New links: here's the official Parks & Recreation Committee's recommendation to close the park until at least January. Another story in the Easy Reader. Here's an excerpt from the agenda item. They want to close the park for another 4-6 months!

Staff recommends that the City Council approve of maintaining the closure of the dune at Sand Dune Park until otherwise directed by Council and referral to the Parks and Recreation Commission for study of alternative ways to mitigate neighborhood impacts. Parks and Recreation recommendation, along with Parking and Public Improvements Commission recommendation, will both be presented to Council upon completion.

Staff estimates that the Parks and Recreation Commission will need at lease two or three meetings to discuss this issue and develop recommendations for park operations for City Council. The Parks and Recreation Commission should be able to develop the recommendations for City Council by January. This should coincide with the P.P.I.C. recommendations for neighborhood permit parking and meters on Bell Avenue going to Council in January. If the process is completed by City Council early next year, we believe mitigation measures will be able to be completed by spring.

The city council is meeting tomorrow night to decide the fate of Sand Dune Park. If you are a Manhattan Beach resident and want to ensure that the park remains open to all, please attend and express your sentiment. Here's a letter I sent to the city council.

As a 7-year resident of Manhattan Beach, and a user of Sand Dune Park for just as long, I feel that it would be unhelpful and contrary to the desires of most Manhattan Beach residents to close Sand Dune Park for an extended period of time. Since I moved to Manhattan Beach in 2002, only blocks away from the top of Sand Dune Park, I have climbed that dune literally thousands of times. Most often, I would walk up once at the end of my morning run along the beach and the wood chip path. Less frequently, I would have dedicated workouts at the park, climbing anywhere from 12 times to 40 times.

When Sand Dune Park was addressed by the City Council in 2002, I attended the council meeting where its fate was determined. Prior to that meeting, the opponents of Sand Dune Park, who had long sought to shut the park down, had dominated the Parks & Recreation subcommittees studying the issue. However, once the future of Sand Dune Park was seriously threatened, the residents of Manhattan Beach spoke with a clear voice-- well over 100 people attended the city council meeting, and the vast majority spoke up in favor of keeping the park open with some changes to how the park was monitored.

This time, history appears to be repeating itself. When I read about the temporary closure of Sand Dune Park in August, I was disappointed but understood the rationale, judging by the physical condition of the dune. Closing the dune for several weeks at the end of summer, by far the time of year when the park gets the most use, seemed to be a rational way of dealing with the issue by breaking the pattern of use, providing a respite during the peak times and providing time to come up with a longer-term solution. When reading about the council meeting for late September, all indications were that the dune would be re-opened, and a mitigation plan would be devised during the fall, winter & spring, before the period of heaviest use arrived again.

What appears to have happened instead is that a small minority of organized Sand Dune Park opponents banded together to address the city council in pursuance of their stated agenda of permanently closing the dune. While they did not accomplish that, it appears that the city council is now on the path to keep the dune closed through the fall and winter while they study the issue further. While this may coincide with the objectives of the Sand Dune Park opponents, it is counter to the wishes of most Manhattan Beach residents, and will provide no additional benefit over the initial closure. Let me explain.

The 3 reasons above for closing the dune in August-- peak usage period, breaking the pattern of use and providing time to solve underlying issues before the pattern of heavy use resumes-- are no longer valid. The pattern of usage has already been broken, and the peak usage period has ended until next May, as I'm sure your park statistics indicate. By closing the park, the City Council would be depriving its residents of a treasured resource at no benefit to the community.

I hope you take these issues into account when you decide on the immediate fate of Sand Dune Park. It is a wonderful place for a workout, to relax and to interact with people from Manhattan Beach and the surrounding communities. Addressing the underlying issues of park abuse are important, but these issues are almost exclusively the domain of summer, and closing the park in the fall and winter, when usage is much lighter with higher percentage of city residents, will do nothing to help solve the long-term issues.

I hope that you and the city council listen to all the voices of Manhattan Beach and decide to re-open the park while long-term mitigation issues are addressed. Thank you.

Camp Lawrence Family Camp 2009 Recap

Actually, this is more like the shameless commerce division of 2009 Family Camp. I do not know what to say other than it was a wonderful week, 7 days of perfect weather and 1 day of perfect rain. Everyone attending this year was a returning vet, full of kids of all ages. Of course, I was there, camera in hand. There's so much more to say than I can possibly fit in a single blog post, and less is sometimes more. So, without further ado, links!

The 2009 Family Camp photo book, featuring 298 photos from the week that was. Available at Blurb.com, starting at $39.95 for the 80-page epic. You may want to look for a Blurb coupon before buying the book, to save $10 or more. Also still available is the 2008 photo book at the same price. Both come in hardcover or softcover, with Blurb's "premium paper." Get them while they're hot! Full previews are available for each book.



Next up, buy the official Family Camp 2009 t-shirt at Zazzle.com. While standard gray is recommended, the shirts are available in hundreds of different colors and styles.

Next up, more photos! Without breaking everything out, all the photos can be found in this Family Camp 2009 collection, including the 120 best photos, from the 3000+ I took!



Finally, there are also photos from Family Camps past-- my those kids have grown! And last year's blog post. The Facebook group. There's the Google group, too. Please add your own links in the comments.

Also, a few quick things. You are all free to use the family camp photos for printing, sharing with your friends, putting on a t-shirt, etc. But please let me know if you use them- I'm always interested to know what happens to these photos. If you're going to print them, make sure you click on the "All Sizes" button above a photo and get the original size image. The quality will be much, much better.

For now, I leave you with another slideshow, West Beach silhouettes. Enjoy.

2009 Family Camp Quicklinks

Camp Lawrence Family Camp 2009 Portrait, originally uploaded by jakerome.

I'll have more later. For now, here's a collection of links to Family Camp related projects I've partaken the last few years.

The 2009 t-shirt.

The 2008 Family Camp photobook.

Family Camp photos from 2004-2009 on Flickr.

I'll update this with more links as necessary.

Will Be Deleted Soon

Will Be Deleted Soon, originally uploaded by jakerome.

Lovely. I can rent a movie from RedBox for $1/day, or I can download a movie from Amazon for $5 (the non-HD version is $4) and have 24 hours to watch it. Watched the whole thing last night, then wandered back to re-watch the opening scenes. And got this. So tough luck if it takes you 2 nights to watch a movie-- that's $10 gone. Really, would it be so hard for Amazon & the movie studios to give their customers a full week to watch a movie?

Honestly, these movie executives are idiots. The number of people that rent the same movie twice within a week has got be well below 0.1% of their customers. In the meantime, they're losing 10-50% of their sales because some people aren't always able to watch a film in one night, especially if it's three hours long. So they rent it from RedBox for $1/night. Which the movie studios in their infinite wisdom, recognizing a novel (yet simple) service that people really enjoy, are trying to shut down.

The movie studios are about where they record companies were 10 years ago, trying to hold back the flood. The record companies wasted 10 years and squandered billions of dollars trying to protect, through artificial means, their obsolete business model. The movie industry is doing the same.

Amazon Video on Demand via TiVo is a great service, but I spend far less on it than I would because of the rigid DRM requirements. It's a shame really that the movie studios are crippling what could be a great service in its infancy, making all too appealing for people to download movies via Bit Torrent b/c that's the only way they can be easily watched on a wide variety of device, without restrictive rules.