dwell — Who Gets to Use the Beach?

Mike Killion/Surfrider Foundation

June 29, 2023

By Duncan Nielsen — The wealthy have a habit of creating an unwelcome atmosphere on sandy stretches abutting their properties. The problem is that everyone is actually still invited.

Welcome to Beach Week, a celebration of the best place on earth.

With enough money, you can own the beach. Or at least you can behave like you do. There are a lot of bad actors on this front, but two you’ve likely heard of are tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who, in 2016, built a wall around their Kauai estate they purchased at the dismay of locals, greatly diminishing access to a stretch of pristine coastline once easily enjoyed by the public.

They’re certainly not the first: Richard Nixon did something similar in the ’70s with his San Clemente, California, estate. He completely shut down the stretch of sand in front of it for five years, albeit over safety concerns, though he continued taking walks there as a sitting president. Ironically, his private strolls gave him the clairvoyance to turn adjacent federal land into San Onofre State Beach, which in turn gave surfers access to some of the best waves in the world.

As it turns out, presidents, tech moguls, and stoners can agree: The beach is a wonderful place. But whose is it? And who decides that?

…