Make the club topless - April Fool's!

With our perfect weather, boardwalk, ferris wheel, and daily fireworks shows at sunset, we've got it pretty good living here in Santa Monica.

Thanks to $27.5 million of Annenberg Foundation money, it's about to get even better. Later this month when our fair city opens the Annenberg Community Beach House at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, we will be home to the first public beach club in the entire country. It's located on the grounds of a former 110-room mansion built for actress Marion Davies by her married lover, William Randolph Hearst, and in true Santa Monica fashion, the Big Blue Bus will drop people at the door for $1.

Coincidentally, Marion Davies gave the 51% of Hearst's fortune he willed to her when he died back to his family for $1 per year and following her example, money will not be an issue for anyone who wants to enjoy a day on our beautiful beaches - the Annenberg Community Beach House will be free and open to all. I literally want to hibernate for the next month so I don't have to live another day in a world without a free beach club ten minutes away from my apartment.

Operating the facility won't be cheap. The enormous pool & pool house, the splash pad for munchkins, the event house, the gardens, and the observation decks will all have to be staffed and maintained - and there will, of couse, be a need for round-the-clock security to protect this late-night traspasser's paradise.

The bottom line is we're projected to lose about $1.3 million the first year, so we'll be lucky if we lose less than $2 million. With deficits like that (especially in this economy), it won't be long before the Beach House gets sold to a private company - and we all go back to the horror that is a world without a free beach club ten minutes away from my apartment.

Luckily, there is a way to prevent this tragedy from occurring. Three little words that have been credited with saving and, in some cases, creating the pool scene in Las Vegas: European style bathing.

To be clear, I'm not talking about a clothing-optional beach in Santa Monica. Nude beaches aren't all they're cracked up to be (I learned that lesson at Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard), plus we don't want to end up in a naturalist travel guide somewhere and find ourselves overrun by naked, pasty, Midwestern families. I'm talking about a private, members-only section at the Beach House where ladies would have the European-style option of going topless, and gentlemen would absolutely not have the American-style option of making those ladies uncomfortable by staring. Ladies who pay the $10 fee to use the pool, changing rooms, and viewing deck would be allowed in free, and a limited number of gentlemen would be charged an additional $40 for daily membership on top of the pool fee. It's a little expensive, but that's the point.

Not only will it be a fat revenue stream to make up that $1.3 million, but the higher cost prices out the guys who would have a tendency to gawk. Besides, it wouldn't matter if we charged $100, we'd still be turning guys away by 11:00am. I know this because when I first experienced European style bathing in Vegas (complete with music and cocktails), I thought I had died and gone to 8th grade Kenny's version of heaven.

There would also be a benefit to our local economy because women in this town don't mind spending their money to look good (God love 'em).

They're getting up early to do the stairs or hit the gym, they're taking yoga classes, spin classes, and pilates classes during the day, they're running San Vicente after work, and they're biking and hiking in the mountains on the weekends. From the girls at SMC to the moms on Montana and everywhere in between, Santa Monica women are keeping it tight. Who are we to tell them they can't show their girls off if they want to? I say let it all hang out. Knowing these women, it'll be in cute shoes, fabulous hats and glasses, stylish bathing suits, flowing skirts, and dramatic sarongs - all stuffed into new beach bags and all of which they will purchase locally, I hope.

Let's face it, boobs are big in this town. Halle Berry's were powerful enough to carry John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, and a really weak script in "Swordfish," Angelina Jolie's support the "Tomb Raider" franchise on multiple platforms, and Pam Anderson's had enough pull to get her a Comedy Central roast - and she's barely even an actress, much less a comic. So there's no reason why we can't, in a "stay classy, Santa Monica" kind of way, pay for our new Beach House by utilizing the God-given - and surgically enhanced - talents of our city's lovely ladies.