SELLER: Richard "Cheech" MarinLOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $5,995,000
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since sometime in the mid-1990s pothead actor and comedian turned respected and prolific art collector Richard Marin and his second wife Patti Heid began to buy up contiguous parcels on the now very hoity-toity Encinal Bluffs in the northern reaches of Malibu, CA. Some of their nearby neighbors now include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie although it seems that peripatetic pair and their always-expanding brood rarely visit their lonely ocean front home in Malibu anymore.
Mister Marin is perhaps best known among those over the age of 40 as Cheech of the doobie-smoking duo Cheech and Chong. Mister Marin all but put his professional bong away after 8 Cheech and Chong films but he's been a busy beaver ever since with dozens of television and film appearances and roles (Judging Amy, Nash Bridges), a couple of children's records and a number of hugely successful animated film productions such as The Lion King and Cars. He also has a line of hot sauces that bear his name and mug. That's right, hot sauces.
As popular as Cheech may have been, Mister Marin's largest contribution to the world may not be that he tacitly taught millions of of teenagers how to roll a joint and smoke weed from a bong but rather he may well be best remembered as a committed, prolific and respected collector of Latin American artwork. Mister Marin's collection includes works by well known artists like Mexico's Diego Rivera as well pieces by a laundry list of other Latino and Latina art makers such as Carlos Almaraz, George Yepes, Patssi Valdez, Leo Limón, Margaret Garcia. Mister Marin's extensive collection–portions of which have toured not just once but twice–is not limited exclusively to Latin American artists. He has at least one word painting by American über-artist–and former Malibu resident–Ed Ruscha that hangs in a guest bedrooms. Imagine for a moment, children, having a collection so thick that you can hang a famous Ruscha painting in the damn guest room.
Anyhoo, as best as Your Mama can surmise and sort out from the property records, the Marin's Malibu compound eventually grew to include four (and possibly five) contiguous parcels that stretch from the Pacific Coast Highway to the steep bluff that tumbles down to the sand and surf. Altogether there are three residences, one that backs up to the highway, another directly on the ocean and a third in between. The center property appears to have been originally acquired in October of 1996. Mister and Second Missus Marin wound up in the court of dee-vorce sometime in the early to mid 2000s and in early 2011 ownership of that centrally-located piece of the Marin compound puzzle was transferred directly to Second Missus Marin.
Way back in the celebrity real estate Dark Ages of March 2007, not long after Your Mama started the wee engine to our little blog enterprise, we discussed Mister Marin's highway-side residence, a Craftsman-Tudor style mini-mansion then listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,595,000. The house, built in 1979, had been purchased–it appears to Your Mama based on the documents we looked at–along with an adjacent vacant parcel in September of 1998 for $1,585,000. At the time of our first discussion, the adjacent vacant parcel was also for sale separately with an asking price of $1,695,000.
Since then the 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house has been on and off the market several times. The property, according to records, remains in Mister Marin's property portfolio and is now listed with a significantly slashed asking price of $1,999,950. The adjacent vacant parcel also remains in Mister Marin's list of real estate assets and–in truth, butter beans–Your Mama has no idea if it is still available for purchase and if so at what price.
Yesterday we received a thoughtful missive from The Rolling Stone who pointed our celebrity real estate nose back out to Malibu where Mister Marin has listed the ocean front mini-compound within a compound portion of his spread with an asking price of $5,9995,000.
It not entirely clear from available online property records when Mister Marin acquired to ocean front jewel in his property crown in Malibu. However, own it he does, at least until someone comes along and pays him a fair number of millions for the hippy-dippy mini-compound that
listing information shows includes a main house with three bedrooms and a guest house with fitness room with three more sleeping chambers. A detached music room–Third and Current Missus Marin Natasha Rubin is a pianist–completes the scene. Altogether, according to listing information, there are 6.5 bathrooms split between the various structures.
The living room, while large and in possession of a staggering ocean view, seems pleasantly prosaic in comparison to much of the property's architectural melodrama and fantastical hard scaping. Rich hardwood floors provide gravity for the vaulted and beamed ceiling and at one end a brick fireplace anchors the room and at the other two banks of sliding and French doors that converge and allow the eye soar nearly unimpeded out towards the humbling view.
The ocean view dining room, tucked into a windowed bay with beamed wood ceiling and a phenomenal chandelier that looks like a suit of chain mail dripping with amber-colored glass tulips. The dining room opens into the galley-style kitchen that features floors of a notably different sort of wood than in the other areas of the main floor, slab granite counter tops, unimpressive but adequate appliances–they are asking six mil here after all–and honey-colored cabinetry with very crunchy-granola bas-relief detailing. At the far end of the kitchen a quaint but tight built-in breakfast banquette tucked into a doghouse-shaped extrusion has windows on three sides and a vaulted, beamed and sky-lit ceiling.
The high-drama cathedral-like master bedroom features vaulted double height ceiling, exposed wood beams, hardwood floors, a wacky fireplace that looks like an over-scaled piece of ancient pottery. A shallow but extra-wide a bay window lined with floral stained glass offers an ocean view, built in banquette with storage drawers for pulling on hose and lacing up sneakers. While most of the large but far from over-sized master bathroom is an out-dated hot mess that could cause a migraine if we looked at the listing photo too long there are three features Your Mama wishes to acknowledge: the skylight (always good for proper pooper ventilation), the weird but brilliant little collection of mushroom-shaped table lamps and the curvaceous all-tile sunken soaking tub. All of those things are good in their own special way. Everything else? A real damn decorative peeper punishment.
Listing information calls the estate "Carmel in Malibu" and it does sort of remind Your Mama of the ocean-side, wind-swept and cliff-top extravaganza that is Carmel (CA). Listing information also labels the multiple structures as"Craftsman" in style and maybe this is a kind of upscale Summer of Love-inspired Craftsman-ish type dwelling. However, everywhere Your Mama looks we see whimsical but deadly serious homage to the great Spanish surrealist architect Antoni Gaudí. There are droopy bent-wood window frames that look like something out of a Dalí painting, some of the tile work in the master bathroom has a random ripple that makes it appear to be slowly melting. Stacked stones and bricks arch, warp and ribbon around a table with swirling brick pedestal to create an Alice in Wonderland-like built-in dining banquette and pizza oven while brick and stone retaining walls on the terraced bluff pucker and buckle with an oddly elegant, mesmerizing and sensual sense of decay.
Lush and haphazard but well-tended gardens weave their way around the various structures and include tree shaded lawns that roll and slope towards the bluff and a raised stone dining and lounging terrace on the edge of the bluff where the property's multi-million dollar view is at its best most expensive. Pathways and staircases lined with undulating stone and brick walls meander down the bluff to the 120 linear feet of sandy beach frontage. The manner in which the bluff was hard- and landscaped reminds Your Mama of a trip we once took to España with our bawdy but cultured pal Falsetta Knockers. One afternoon while whittling away a spectacular week in Barcelona we hopped in our rented Euro-hoopdie and drove out to the flamboyant Gaudí-designed Parc Güell. As far as Your Mama is concerned there are few parks cum tourist attractions that match the unfettered and yet well-considered exuberance of Parc Güell where awe-inspiring architectural whimsy happily wallows in a happy and fanciful marriage to genius engineering.
But we digress....In addition to his real estate holdings in Malibu, it's been reported in the past that Mister Marin owns a substantial home in the snazzy Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, CA, which makes an odd counter-cultural sort of sense. He and the current Missus Marin were, reportedly, married at said home in 2009. However, despite a few minutes poking around property records we don't find any evidence of Mister Marin owning a home in The City By the Bay. We did find an address to a cliff top mansion on at least one digital document at which we peeped, but further investigation shows that Mister Marian does not currently nor does it appear he ever owned that particular house. If any of the Bueller's want to chime in on and clarify the matter, please do.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International / Malibu
