Community Corner: A letter to Topanga from Andrew Parrot
Maybe Topanga doesn’t really change anyone – it just restores and reveals who we are deep inside, if we allow it.
I came to Topanga in early December 2024, alternately staying in an Airbnb atop Saddle Peak—whose hostess is a talented sculptor—and in a zen bungalow on Topanga Skyline Drive with a charming Spanish proprietor. I arrived after years spent in Aspen, Colorado. I’d put all of my toys and most of my belongings into a 5 x 8 storage unit, packed four backpacks of books, beach clothes and laptops into my 2003 4Runner, and pushed forever West.
The same LA-based community, coworkers and company that facilitated my move to Aspen in 2015 again reached back, rescued me and invited me to Topanga a decade later, in 2025. I needed to swap solid mountains for liquid ones for a time, and Topanga is the perfect combination of both.
While sitting at Cafe Mimosa one December morning, I journaled: “Topanga is an unincorporated town of 8,000+ people in the Santa Monica Mountains whose name means ‘where the mountain meets the sea.’ Hippies are omnipresent, shamans and artists reside up one of the canyon roads, and I reside up another that is more populated by action-sports types. Topanga has just enough winding mountain roads and a similar, small population that makes me smile and feel ‘saudade’ for Aspen; just enough palm trees and warm air to bring back the groove of my years in Jamaica; and it is one of only three places I have felt truly safe and seen in four decades on this planet.”
I’m still haunted by January 7, 2025. Fire found its way into too many lives across LA — taking homes, taking lives and filling the air with a heaviness that lingered long after the flames died down.
I’ve ridden out Hurricane Sandy at home in Jamaica as 50-foot royal palm trees crashed around us and the eye of the storm passed over the island for the first time since Gilbert in ’88 and seen civil wars and wildfires from Nepal to Colorado. The LA wildfires are the worst natural disaster I have experienced in four decades on this planet. Many displaced people are still living this terror, with the rest of the population about to experience PTSD when PCH reopens and they witness, process and grieve the full scale of what transpired.
I believe that time and relationships are the only real currencies in life. In this respect, I have been blessed beyond measure—regardless of material circumstances, which ebb and flow. I was taken in by various friends, from air mattresses in Beverly Hills to car camping in my 4Runner in Agoura Hills to ADUs featured in the LA Times hosting cosmopolitan conversations over book clubs and wine, reminding me that, from Kampala to Topanga, “life is a moveable feast,” regardless of circumstance. But only if you have an optimistic attitude and supportive community.
After the fires, a lot of people chose to leave Topanga, LA and California entirely, just like a lot of people choose to leave Aspen (where I called home before here) for various reasons. Whether the proverbial straw is a natural disaster or a gentrified cultural displacement, life is full of seismic shifts that break or jade even the strongest wills. Hell, while those of us in LA remember—mourn—January 7 for our scorched earth, Tibetans commemorate the same day for the earthquake that killed at least 126 people, with some estimates reaching 400, reminding us that catastrophe doesn’t recognize borders.
As Lorde sings, “What are perfect places, anyway?”
I have an answer to that query, and the April 4, 2025, edition of this paper, in which the inimitable Marsha Maus reflected on “what Topanga used to be” and prompted me to author this column before she finds her “new playground.”
For years, I wrote weekly op-ed pieces on people like Ms. Maus and the ethos of community, competition and creativity for the Aspen Daily News (ref. July 30, 2021 “What do you do ‘in the community?’”). I saw the same civic foundations present in Topanga, from the indefatigable volunteer heroes at TCEP (Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness) to the grounding healing community at Ethereal Yoga. What I see in this town where “the mountains meet the sea” is not mere courage (difficult enough), but the more essential and impactful “zivilcourage,” a German word for moral courage even and especially in the face of consequence. The stickers in Pine Tree Circle exhort, “Don’t change Topanga; let Topanga change you.”
I have a theory that while everything changes, nothing ever really changes. It’s simply a matter of being a vibrational match for a specific place/person/point in time—flowing water that is always magical yet can never be touched twice. Ms. Maus’ OG Topanga experience cannot be replicated in 2025 any more than my Aspen or Jamaican experiences can. And yet. The same ethos of community, freedom and play that drew Ms. Maus to Topanga in the ’70s still calls the same action sports athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and shamans who in 2025 gave me healing pillows, homes, hope, heart.
Maybe Topanga doesn’t really change anyone—it just restores and reveals who we are deep inside, if we allow it. It’s this innate DNA, this zivilcourage and zest for life, across eras, that draws a certain type of person to a certain type of place.
On April 20, Easter Sunday, I journaled, “I had my community, creativity, health and dreams stolen and shattered, only to wind up in an actual inferno. Even as they were healing themselves, the people in Topanga not only regenerated my life, but made it more expansive and all-encompassing. This makes sense, because ultimate healing and integration can only occur in community with others. My tribe travels with me, across time and space, and I know where to find them, the world over. Similarly, they know how to find me, and they hold me down, lift me up, push me forever forward, raising my vibration. Topanga is a place of rebirth, regeneration, resurrection. So whether you rock with sativa, scripture or the ‘both, and’ duality of life, happy 4/20 and I hope you like the view from the mirror when Topanga reveals and returns you to yourself.”
So, Ms. Maus, thank you for reaching back across the generations to welcome the next crop of freshmen before you expand and evolve into the liminal space between. I’ll see you soon—on the playground, with my motorcycle.
