A Place With Every Single Thing--and More

As a child, you expect that your parents will take care of you. Later, your employer and mate assume aspects of the job, as does the government, by mandating that you wear a seat belt, save for retirement and refrain from selling marijuana to your friends. But do you expect your home--the building in which you live--to take care of you, to keep you entertained, to set rules and make your life run smoothly?

The residents of the Marina City Club do.

The complex of condominiums and apartments that has been a landmark in Marina del Rey for a quarter-century provides an array of amenities that could coddle its nearly 2,000 residents from cradle to grave. Without ever leaving the gate that separates the Marina City Club from the world beyond, tenants can have their cars washed, order food delivered from the third-floor restaurant, get a haircut or massage, take a steam bath, buy food and liquor, see a movie, find a game of tennis, stag poker or Scrabble, go swimming or dancing, nurse a cocktail or orchestrate an affair.

The Marina City Club is a vertical neighborhood, a concrete village as friendly as any that Mister Rogers frequents. In this college dorm graying at the temples, there are no strangers. Howard Murad, a wealthy single man with grown children, met Carole Barlin here, then dropped her after a few dates, the club gossips say, when he learned she was older than he. Carole moved onto and in with Jack Eskenazi, after he’d decided he and Loralee Knotts weren’t meant for each other. And Loralee, a charmer once married to a popular comic actor, wound up with Howard, who was smitten after one dance. Thus does the Marina City Club shape the romantic destinies of its inhabitants.

It’s a place where the serial monogamists go while they’re licking their wounds, savoring their freedom or searching for mate No. 2 or 3. Jack moved into a studio on the Center Tower’s second floor in 1997, after his 33-year marriage ended. The female real estate broker who rented him the apartment told him, “The women here will eat you alive.” Why wouldn’t they, she thought. In his late 50s, he was professionally successful, tall and fit with a pepper-and-salt crew cut and a wit so dry that a smile never threatened his deadpan delivery. He became active in the tennis club and went to the bar and restaurant often to survey the talent in the building. Jack’s idea of an age-appropriate companion ranges from 30 to 60. That would make the pool of women he’s fishing in seem large, but he boasts that he won’t date out of his area code. Until an in-house phone system was disconnected two years ago, he could call anyone within the building by dialing four digits.

The gym, spa, tennis courts and three swimming pools are all part of the Marina City Club, but when someone says they’ll meet you at the club, they mean the restaurant and bar in the Center Tower, which is open for dinner Monday through Friday. People start arriving at the circular bar of about 30 seats at 6. Rhoda Rich, a real estate broker who handles many Marina City Club condo sales, has lived at the club on and off since the ‘70s. If she’s on her way home, too tired to cook and wants to eat dinner at the club, she will call ahead and ask Gabe, the bartender, to save her a seat. She’d never go to any other bar or restaurant by herself, but she feels comfortable at the club.

The lighting is dim, the hum of conversation low. All sorts of people hang out here: a neurosurgeon, a psychic, housewives, salesmen, an entertainment lawyer who collects Rolls-Royces, the president of an escrow company, a man who’s rumored to be a mercenary (no one’s really sure), a matchmaker, an heiress, a teacher, a television producer, a Holocaust survivor, a retired film director, a bathing suit manufacturer, a stage mother and a divorced man of 75 who met a socially ambitious 40-year-old woman in the buffet line one Tuesday last November. Now they dine together, these lovers, averting their eyes when her former boyfriend, also a club member, takes a seat at the bar and trains his gaze on the Laker game broadcast from six televisions. People table-hop with impunity, then linger for hours.

Proximity to the Airport

Howard, who lives in the West Tower, moved to the club in 1995, newly divorced. A dermatologist with a gentle manner and his own line of skin-care products, he travels frequently and liked the club’s proximity to the airport. He rented a one-bedroom apartment, then bought a penthouse when he decided to stay.

“Being married and living in Brentwood, I never went to a bar. In my former life, I never knew anybody. I went home to my wife every night. Here, I feel like I know everyone. The first time I came to the club, I sat down at the bar and someone started talking to me. It was home, but I didn’t have to be alone.”

Friday night is singles’ night, when swing, jazz, rock and salsa bands and a disco-playing DJ are in rotation. Jack honors the unwritten rule that marks a woman sitting at a table, rather than the bar, as potentially spoken for; asking her to dance would be a violation of protocol. The first woman he met at the club, then dated, won’t talk to him now, although he’s never understood the grudge she carries. “At some point, you run out of people to go out with,” he says. “I’ve had my flings, my dates, my long relationships. If a new, appealing woman moved in, I’d try to get a date with her as quickly as possible. I’ve been through the inventory in the building.”

Singles’ nights, Tuesday buffet nights and Monday movie nights, when recently released films are shown on a 60-inch screen, render instant companionship. Social anxiety is relieved by a nonstop calendar of special events: St. Patrick’s Day, a traditional Irish band plays. Cinco de Mayo, mariachi players entertain. Think it’s more fun to watch the Academy Awards with a group of hecklers? Go to the club and grab a chair. Passover? Come to the Seder.

The 100 to 200 regulars at the club are a highly visible, self-selected social nucleus, people who choose to live where someone’s likely to start a conversation, or at least say hello, at the beauty salon or coffee shop, in the health club locker room, sitting in the outdoor whirlpool or walking through the garage. In the East Tower, Daniel Kelly can step out of the elevator and five of his neighbors will greet his dog by name. But for those residents who don’t participate in activities or spend time in the club’s gathering places, the Marina City Club is just like any other apartment building. “It’s a place where everyone is like family, but you can be left alone here, if that’s what you want,” says Norma Diamond, who has lived here for 13 of her more than 70 years and moved her new second husband into her apartment when they married.

Certainly the Menendez brothers made few friends when they lived here. The homicidal brats who were convicted of murdering their parents are remembered for hogging the tennis courts. Law-abiding notables who’ve called the club home include Billie Jean King, Bo Derek, Rhonda Fleming, Vlade Divac and Dick Van Dyke. (He was there with that woman who sued Lee Marvin for palimony, and no one could figure out what he saw in her, Nancy Oliver, of the West Tower, remembers.)

Cliques inevitably form. Young people who live in the building, and there are some, find each other. The tennis players bond. A group of Israeli immigrants stick to themselves, as do a number of African American athletes. The dog people convene at the doggy run, where they commiserate about the numerous rules governing pets. (No more than one domestic animal per unit; no dog weighing more than 25 pounds; pets must be carried on elevators so they can’t scratch elevator surfaces or jump on other passengers.) A gulf separates singles and married couples, but some people are so affable they bridge it. A children-only swimming pool symbolizes a child’s place here: They are a minority, rarely seen or heard.

Whether he finds love at the club or not, Jack thinks he dwells in paradise, a long way from the house in Tarzana where he lived when he was married. “The living standard here is equal to being in a resort. When I come home every day, it’s like being at a beautiful hotel, except I don’t have to go to Hawaii or Club Med.”

The Advent of Hedonism

To understand the scene at the Marina City Club, you must spend a few minutes on the history of the 20th century California mating dance, because it was the Marina, along with the Eagles, Warren Beatty and a few other cultural revolutionaries, who dragged mainstream America out of post-World War II goody-goodyness and into a sunlit, hedonistic version of the good life.

In 1972, when the first Marina City Club units opened, women had the pill, and scary sexually transmitted diseases weren’t a pit in anyone’s guacamole. Women were on their way to achieving economic independence, and Madison Avenue recognized singles as a group rich in disposable income. Unmarried people were liberated from a dismissive label that marked them as on their way to the state of matrimony. They redefined themselves as having arrived at a chosen, desirable way of living that offered the perpetual promise of self-actualization, partying till dawn, or both. The Marina would be the place where the indefinitely uncommitted could frolic.

Los Angeles County voters had passed a bond issue in 1956 to carve a new recreational boat harbor for the public from the swamplands of Venice. Virtually all of the publicly owned marina was leased by the county on a long-term basis to private developers who operated the area’s apartments, hotels, boat slips, restaurants, shopping centers and offices. An affiliate of the Hughes Corp. was the original developer of the Marina City Club. In addition to the West Tower, it opened a three-story structure of 101 apartments named the Promenade. The club’s Center and East towers were completed in 1974, expanding the complex to 659 apartments and 42 duplex penthouses. J.H. Snyder Co., a large local developer, bought the lease in 1986 and decided to convert the Towers from apartments to condos.

That change meant that the building’s population would morph from the young and carefree to the older and seriously solvent. Mortgages for Marina City Club units are difficult to get because the county owns the land. In addition to the cost of an apartment (from $130,000 to $750,000), a buyer must pay condo association dues ($208 to $1,468 a month) and a monthly land lease fee (of $110 to $800), which the county can increase by up to 8% a year. Many buyers wind up paying cash for their apartments.

It isn’t difficult to find a longtime resident ready to bitch nostalgic about the good old days, before the club went condo, when bodies were stacked five deep at the bar every night. The Marina has always been pricey, but somewhere in the late ‘80s, probably around the time when AIDS cast a pall on promiscuity, its image turned tacky. You’d look at a famous, envied playboy, and instead of asking, “How does he get all those great women?” you’d wonder, “Does he have some kind of psychological problem?” When it wasn’t cool to be a swinging single anymore, the hangouts and styles of the species lost their cachet too.

Both inside and outside the club, some people who were young in the ‘70s, like Beatty, went on to become paragons of domesticity. But others, in their plush apartments in the East Tower, with its harbor view, or the West Tower, with its panorama stretching to Malibu, look in the mirror and don’t see the white-haired guy staring back. They adjust the gold chains around their necks, open their shirts one more button, and wink at a vision of the same studs on the prowl they were 30 years ago. In their time warp, Jimmy Carter is still in the White House, and being single is still the grooviest thing to be. Dissonance only develops when eras collide: In 1975, “Hey, baby,” was a viable opening line. Twenty-five years later, it’s a bad Austin Powers imitation. Yet the Marina City Club, where membership assures at least a surface level of acceptance, is a very safe place to be a walking anachronism.

Seascape Views for Every Room

The three high-rise buildings jut awkwardly above the horizon. They’re called towers but are actually some mutilated geometric form--a cylinder sliced into two curves. Like many beach hotels, they were designed so every room enjoys its own seascape. Making the view top priority meant that other considerations, such as the structures themselves being attractive, became less important.

Visitors must stop at the entrance gate and mention the name of a resident in order to get a day pass to put on their dashboards, a hedge against certain towing. The labyrinth of garages, elevators and lobbies is so confusing that the Hansel-and-Gretel-trail-of-crumbs method would be the safest technique to ensure finding the way back to your car.

Suzi, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that her full name not be used, lived in her father’s studio apartment in the Center Tower after she graduated from college. “Friends would come to visit, and by the time they’d get to my place, they’d be exhausted and furious. It’s so hard to find your way around. Remember when Domino’s Pizza would give you pizza free if they didn’t deliver it to your door in 30 minutes? The delivery person would be wandering around for 20 minutes, looking for my apartment. By the time they’d get to my door I’d say, ‘Free pizza, thanks!’ ”

Exterior hallways of one tower, facing the curved outdoor tiers of the next building, bring to mind a prison cellblock. But once you’re inside the apartments, the reward lies beyond walls of windows. Each frustrating maze that must be navigated and every poor design choice is forgiven in the presence of the view, as boundless as hope.

Suzi, now a bouncy 28-year-old, bought her father’s studio apartment two years ago. She had first lived here as a 7-year-old, when her father--divorced and, she says, ready to swing--moved down from Oregon. When her golden retriever, Sam, grew way over the canine weight limit, she had to choose between the Marina City Club and him. Sam won. The dog now rules the frontyard of their small house in Venice, where the view is dominated by the Marina City Club towers. Suzi rents her apartment out but retains a club membership and goes there at least once a week to use the health club, relax at the pool or entertain friends. Sometimes she brings her boyfriend along, which helps discourage approaches from men old enough to be her grandfather.

Almost 400 nonresident club members retain most of the same privileges as condo owners, for which they pay a $500 initiation fee and $1,500 annual dues. Whether nonresident club memberships should be continued is a perennial issue of club politics.

Hank Abouaf’s favorite tennis partner is Alan Gordon, an 84-year-old nonresident member who lives in an apartment nearby and usually arrives at the court on in-line skates. Hank and his wife, Sandy, married 42 years, are among a small group who sought refuge from the 1993 Malibu fire or the Northridge quake of ’94. The couple moved to the club when their Encino home was damaged, thinking their stay would be temporary.

They’re enthusiastic participants in many club activities, and signaled their decision to stay by spending seven months and $100,000 redoing their three-bedroom unit on the West Tower’s ninth floor. They gutted the space, installing travertine flooring and a wall of glass blocks that floods the master bathroom with light. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors in their living room reflect the boats in the marina below, which look close enough to jump onto.

While not a blood sport, apartment renovation has its competitive aspects. Ordinary powder rooms are replaced by masterpieces of marble, stone and polished wood. Maximizing the view by installing walls of mirror is such a popular decorating choice that Westside Mirror and Glass does an installation at the club at least twice a month.

Once beautification has been accomplished, the desire to show off the result is irresistible. “Everyone lets you in their house, which is kind of strange,” Suzi says. She also found being drawn into conversations in the health club’s locker room disconcerting, at first. “It was a little awkward, because I’m not used to talking to people when I’m naked. But the ladies are so nice. They’re just chatty Cathys. I like talking to the older people because they’re always really kind. When I was looking for a job, people offered to introduce me to people they knew.”

Chatty Cathy, of course, was the famous doll who “spoke” when you pulled the magic ring on her back, saying, “Cookie all gone,” or “I’m sleepy.” She never said, “Did you hear that Tara and Jeff broke up, which isn’t that big a deal, because they always kept their separate apartments in different Towers anyway, and they’re still planning to share their dog?” Where there are back fences, real or symbolic, and friendly, chatty neighbors, there is gossip. Or, as Larry Brandis, a nonresident member for 20 years says, “It’s very theatrical in the club. There are people who sit up there and move information around.”

You’d think that would bother Carole, a petite, yellow-haired woman whose daily gym workouts have given her a figure many women over 60 would be pleased with. Although she describes herself as a social animal and says she thinks gossip is fun, she’d have to have a good attitude to tolerate the fact that she and Jack are the club’s longest-running soap opera. Are they on, are they off?

If gossip be the food of love, Jack’s a glutton, which doesn’t help the situation. He’s been known to show up at the swimming pool wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend “I Survived Carole Barlin.” He gave her one that proclaimed she survived him too, but she doesn’t wear it in public. Jack finds it all amusingly inescapable. “There are no secrets here,” he says.

When Carole first moved to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, the Marina City Club was under construction. She was a divorced special education teacher, with a daughter just out of diapers. The Marina was out of her price range then, and most places in the area didn’t allow children (even 25 pounds or under). She knew she wanted to live near the water but found the apartments she looked at in Playa del Rey and the southern beach towns depressing.

“I really didn’t like Los Angeles much,” she remembers. “I pulled into a gas station and started to cry. The attendant was so nice, and he asked me what was the matter. When I told him he said, ‘Now, lady, don’t you worry about a thing. You just drive over to Marina del Rey, and you’ll like it.”’

Cool breezes, warm friendships, unobstructed views and romance in the air. She did like it.

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Mimi Avins can be reached at mimi.avins@latimes.com.