Post #586497 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Mon, Apr 25, 2011 5:16 PM

On 2011-04-21 16:41, bigbrotiki wrote:
Aaah yessss - THOSE were the hunting grounds of the MARINA SWINGER...

YES!!

Marina Del Rey: In it's heyday was the only Los Angeles city with no churches, no cemetaries, and no schools. It was tailor made for the wealthier swinging single lifestyle.

I stumbled on this 1972 Sports Illustrated article last year. It captures the ambience of the place and the era perfectly and is a darn good read:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1085706/index.htm

"Only in fun and games does the marina abound, but this hedonistic approach has attracted, as year-round residents, a rapidly growing number of assorted Angelenos. The apartment buildings they occupy are mostly pale, low-slung affairs that rise from the water's edge like sides of a bathtub, a tub so filled with toy vessels there is scarcely room for a bar of Lifebuoy. Only one marina resident in four bothers to own a boat himself, the rest being content simply to live near the water. It is taken for granted that every apartment complex has swimming pools and tennis courts, and many of them feature luaus, Sunday barbecues and everything else one associates with Southern California living, except perhaps oranges just for the picking."

...and:

*"Marina del Rey's freewheeling lifestyle is most faithfully reflected in the local chapter of the South Bay Club, a chain of singles-only apartment complexes of the kind so dear to newspaper feature writers, most of whom have proved admirably adept at sniffing out the occasional 85-year-old bachelor to be found living in such places.

There was a more serious front-page story two years ago when somebody spiked the potato chips with LSD at a party at the Marina del Rey complex, resulting in the serious illness of several people. The incident also resulted in an effort to play down the club's swinging-singles image and emphasize instead an activities schedule worthy of a Caribbean cruise, including yoga classes, south-of-the-border nights, karate lessons and an appearance ("in person," advised the sign in the lobby) of Atoris the mentalist.

Not nearly as regimented but certainly as active is the singles' scene in the lounge of the Second Storey/The Basement, another of the marina's restaurants. A younger crowd dances to hard rock in a lower-level room but upstairs it is strictly the mating minuet: the men in shirts twice unbuttoned, the women with sunglasses perched atop the head, everybody wearing suedes and leathers and available looks. Garth Reynolds, the mustachioed part-owner, calls the Second Storey "a superswinger's spot," an assessment that drew no quarrel from Ginny Miller, a curvy, hazel-eyed secretary who occasionally drops by after work in order, as she put it, "to meet quality guys."*

...And finally this quote about the Warehouse restaurant:

"Up went several dozen restaurants: such places as The Warehouse, a drafty establishment carefully built with a rusty iron roof and rafters hung with a great clutter of Mexican oregano sacks, Indonesian pickle barrels and German nail kegs. Clad in a Frank Buck safari suit, Burt Hixson, the 31-year-old proprietor, explains, 'I didn't want it to be another of those corny restaurants with fishnets and conches.'"

...which cracks me up, since Burt's previous restaurant, Beachbum Burt's was one of those "corny" restaurants that served drinks in coconut monkeys. It seems he was trying to recreate his own image in the Marina.