“Malibu’s Greek Fishermen”
by Pablo Capra
Part of a series on overlooked Malibu history
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| Spere Aneme fishes for lobsters with Mike Leonis, and mends a net with John Foundoukos. Photo c/o Illustrated Daily News, 1925-11-01. |
A Greek fishing community at the Mile
Long Pier, near Santa Monica, moved to Topanga Beach as soon as Cooper’s Camp offered
rentals in 1919.
Their leader, Spere Aneme (b.1884),
who “hasn’t worn shoes for 12 years,” shared a cabin with John Foundoukos
(1894-1969), “from Spere’s own island in Greece,” and Mike Leonis (b.1892),
“the handsomest Greek fisherman on the coast with gay ties and shirts.”
Together, they opened a fish market of
unknown name in 1923, which might have operated out of their cabin, because big
waves destroyed both in 1926. Spere had predicted the disaster when he caught
three giant lobsters, believing that a great storm had driven them towards shore.
(His neighbor, “Greek George” Conios, had drowned on another high-surf day in
1920.)
The Greeks rebuilt their fish market,
and re-opened with the help of two more friends: Lambros Hagis (b.1886) and
Christ Yianulis (b.1895).
One day in 1929, while fishing two
miles offshore, Spere, Mike, and Christ caught a 20-foot basking shark. After a
four-hour fight, which nearly sank their boat, they managed to drag the shark
onto the beach. Hundreds of motorists stopped to gawk at the monster, which was
really a plankton eater with tiny teeth, and a photo made the Los Angeles Times.
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| Aristides “Harry” Marinos wasn’t from Greece, but from Turkey’s ancient Greek villages, 1938. Photo c/o Ancestry.com. |
Aristides “Harry” Marinos (1880-1947),
a Greek grocer living in downtown Los Angeles, opened Marinos’ fish market at
Topanga Beach in 1933, perhaps taking over the older business. Like several of
his fellow expatriates, he wasn’t from Greece, but from Turkey’s ancient Greek
villages, and had fled, with his wife Anna (1887-1977), at the beginning of the
Ottoman Empire’s Greek Genocide in 1914. The Armenian Genocide was part of this
ethnic cleansing.
The Marinos family belonged to the
Greek Orthodox Church on San Julian St. in downtown. Anna was the sister of
Helen Flesuros, a former president of the Greek American Progressive
Association (GAPA), which helps Greeks integrate into American life without
sacrificing their traditions.
Harry fished for his market from
Topanga Beach with his two sons, Harry Jr. (1915-1985) and Chris (1916-1987).
His daughter Mary (b.1918) taught at the Topanga Beach Bible School, located
behind the fish market, at the home of Grace McFarland on Topanga Lane. In
1935, the Bible School produced a Christmas play there, with music by the
Topanga String Orchestra.
A small fire, caused while smoking
fish, closed Marinos’ in 1937. When it reopened in 1938, Harry Jr. took over
the fish market, while Chris oversaw a restaurant that had been added.
Harry died in 1947 after a “brief
illness.” Shocked, Anna had to recover in a convalescent home before moving in
with Harry Jr.
Later that year, the sons added a
liquor store to Marinos’. And in 1948, they painted Marinos’ green (“a definite
improvement”), created a cocktail lounge called “The Living Room” with rattan
furniture and “shiny new decorations inside and out,” and hired a popular
bartender from The Malibu Inn named Harry Davis.
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| Marinos' seafood restaurant, c. 1954. Photo c/o Barry O. Balin Historical Archives. |
In 1954, Chris sold Marinos’ to two
chefs, Earl Holbert and Lionel LeBourget. Earl had worked at the Las Flores
Inn, Malibu’s oldest restaurant, under Greek owner Christ Georgeopolos
(1888-1986). Chris Polos (for short) wasn’t a fisherman, but that same year he
turned his Inn into The Sea Lion seafood restaurant. Since 1996, it has been
Duke’s Malibu. Earl and Lionel planned to keep Marinos’ the same, but there
might have been “too many cooks in the kitchen,” because they soon lost the
business.
In 1956, the restaurant became The Ebb
Tide, under Elizabeth Ryder, a painter who belonged to the Malibu Artists
Association. Staying open until 2:00 a.m., The Ebb Tide featured Jeannie Lee at
a piano bar, and Southern chef Pel Hicks cooking “just good food.” Pel had once
been the personal chef of Duke Ellington. Within a year, the District Attorney
shut down the restaurant because it was a “hangout for homosexuals.”
The Mexican restaurant Caracol came
next, in 1958. Run by a gay couple, owner George W. Evinger (1920-2003) and
manager David Jimenes (1929-2008), with Frank Campo as “cuisinero,”
it stayed open until an astonishing 3:00 a.m. Local surfers remember fending
off advances from the waiters, who plied them with free drinks and games of
pool, but Caracol didn’t get shut down.
The Raft brought back seafood in 1963,
under Jack Dorfman and Jim McDonald. Ralph O’Hara was a bartender. The dark
dining room had sawdust floors, and tables made from the hatch covers of ships,
covered with resin-embedded coins and shells. Specialties included freshly
baked bread and abalone (one of the last places to serve the endangered
mollusc). A patio nightclub, called The Zoo, burned in a fire of unknown origin
in 1979, leading to The Raft’s demolition. Jim went on to open The Sand Castle
restaurant at Paradise Cove.
For the next seven years, small
businesses popped up in the empty space like Gigi Wisdom’s nursery Discount
Pottery, Bob Purvey’s Graphlite Surfboards, and Henri-Philippe de Lignieres’s
T-shirt business French Kiss Printing.
In 1986, brothers Lance and Warren
Roberts built The Reel Inn seafood restaurant we know today.
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| The Point’s veranda, c. 1950. Photo c/o Pepperdine University. |
Although Marinos’ closed in the 1950s,
it had actually split into two restaurants. In 1949, Harry Jr. opened a more
casual version called The Marinos’ Point, where the Tides Cafe had burned at
the east end of Topanga Beach. The Point’s neon sign was shaped like an
artist’s palette, a veranda overlooked the beach, and a jukebox played songs
like Russ Morgan’s “Close Your Pretty Eyes.” Retired General Harvey S. Burwell
(1890-1955), who lived across the street in The Rodeo Grounds, spent so much
time there that Harry Jr. made him the honorary manager.
Between 1965 and 1967, The Point was
repeatedly robbed. Harry Jr. also lost a son, who suffocated in a sand tunnel
while digging under the family home on Carbon Beach in 1966. These misfortunes seem
to have brought about the restaurant’s end.
An eatery called The Hut, which had
shared space with The Point for a year, took over in 1968, offering sandwiches,
tacos, and milkshakes. In 1970, the restaurant was torn down to make room for a
steak-house chain, The Chart House, followed by another one in 2014, Mastro’s
Ocean Club.
And yet, the Malibu Greeks’ biggest
legacy may not have been their restaurants.
In 1924, The Los Angeles Athletic Club
(LAAC) bought Topanga Beach with the dream of turning it into a yacht harbor;
but, after long delays, they found it difficult to evict the renters who had
built houses. In 1953, a Greek named James Lambrinos (1889-1959) sued the LAAC
for abusing the rights of homeowners in order to clear the land. He won a stay
for the beach houses that ultimately lasted until 1979, and for the houses
across the street that lasted until 2006.
The LAAC never got to build their yacht
harbor, and the residents enjoyed living at Topanga Beach for decades longer.
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Pablo Capra is the Archivist for the Topanga Historical Society and author of Topanga Beach: A History 1820s-1920s (2020).
