[speeder]

It’s 9 a.m. on a recent Sunday, and at the Malibu Village shopping mall, the barricades have gone up.

Stuck behind the parking-lot blockade, Bill Miller stands on the patio of his Malibu Kitchen restaurant, empty except for two diners having breakfast.

“Believe it or not,” he says, without seeming to believe it himself, “this place used to be full at this hour. This was my busiest time on a Sunday.”

In front of the restaurant, orange cones block four parking places. Miller’s longtime customer Spike Feresten has texted to say he needs those for himself and three others this morning.

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If they can get in.

One is reserved for Jay Leno, who will be arriving in a very rare Porsche 356 4-Cam, which he’ll park next to a similarly rare Porsche Zagato 356 Carrera Coupe driven by Feresten. Nearby, Paul Zuckerman, an attorney and Feresten’s partner in his podcast, “Spike’s Car Radio,” will park his beautifully restored 1961 Mercedes 300SL beside an even more beautiful 1957 Mercedes 300SL driven by Bruce Meyer, co-founder of the Petersen Automotive Museum.

Bruce Meyer, a Beverly Hills retail and real estate magnate, parks his 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster in Malibu.
Bruce Meyer parks his 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster near the Malibu Kitchen.(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
But security officers are manning the gates — keeping out car enthusiasts. Sheriff’s deputies are ticketing drivers for minor infractions, like not having a front license plate. The area feels tense, and drivers seem angry.

Matt Farah, host of the “Smoking Tire” podcast, is angry, too.

“They are selectively enforcing these rules, at a whim, closing off parking lots because of the type of people going there,” he complains when he arrives, shortly before 10 a.m., on a Vespa scooter. Given the difficulty in parking, he’s decided not to bring one of the many exotic cars he’s always testing.

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“On Saturdays, these lots are even more slammed, but with people who have surfboards instead of sports cars. They aren’t keeping them out,” he says.

City officials say the stepped-up enforcement is needed to protect average citizens from a horde of hot-rodders — not the celebrities, but the people who follow them, says Malibu Mayor Paul Grisanti.

A sign warns against "unpermitted pop-up car show events" at the Malibu Village Shopping Mall.
A sign warns against “unpermitted pop-up car show events” at the Malibu Village Shopping Mall.(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“People show up and think that because there are other cars around, they have to do something to show off — drive crazy, rev the engine up a lot, get into an accident, and make all the neighbors upset,” Grisanti says. “But we don’t need people coming to town who think they can get away with racing in traffic on a Sunday.

“They’re going to lose their Malibu privileges.”

It’s a beachfront brouhaha, pitting owners of expensive automobiles against landlords of expensive property in a collision of upper-class ego and entitlement. The fight involves some of the biggest names in the California car scene, including Leno, Jerry Seinfeld and podcasters Feresten and Farah.

For some longtime fanciers of fabulous autos, the controversy is bewildering.

“We’ve been doing this for 15 years,” Zuckerman says when he arrives, “but suddenly we’re like the MS-13 of Malibu.”

::

Paul Zuckerman, left, and Spike Feresten have breakfast at Malibu Country Kitchen as auto enthusiasts arrive and park.
Paul Zuckerman, left, and Spike Feresten have breakfast at Malibu Country Kitchen as auto enthusiasts arrive and park. Impromptu gatherings of car fanciers have grown following social media posts by Feresten about his celebrity friends, including Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld, having breakfast here.(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
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It all started innocently.

Feresten and Seinfeld, who met when the former was a writer for the latter’s eponymous TV show, bonded over their shared love of vintage Porsche sports cars. For years, they had a Sunday ritual: Meet early, drive up Pacific Coast Highway and into the Malibu canyons, then stop for breakfast at Malibu Kitchen, tucked into a corner just off Cross Creek Road.

Periodically, another Porsche-loving friend would ride along or stop for coffee. To Feresten, it was the beginning of a little club.

“Our whole goal was if we could get five or six cars to roll by while we sat here with our coffee,” he said. “But we didn’t want a car show at our personal quiet place.”

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Malibu has long been a weekend destination for auto and motorcycle enthusiasts. Manufacturers often introduce their new machines by leading the motoring media on drives through the Malibu hills, along Mulholland Highway and the roads connecting Topanga Canyon, Malibu Canyon and Kanan Dume Road.

The city of Malibu appeared sanguine. For years, the city tolerated “Cars and Coffee” events in the Trancas Country Market and in the parking lot at Paradise Cove. There has even been an on-again, off-again car meet-up, licensed and sanctioned by the city, at the Malibu Bluffs Park across PCH from Pepperdine University.

“It used to be beautiful,” says Steven Schulman, who drives a Porsche GT2RS. “Until two years ago, it was like a secret. You could drive up and see your buddies,” he says, surveying the scene as he drinks coffee at Malibu Kitchen.

Like many similar stories in Southern California, popularity — helped along in this case by the COVID-19 pandemic — put an end to that.

Santa Monica, Calif. -- Wednesday, June 9, 2021: Senior class president Christian Adera speaks during graduation ceremony for the class of 2021 at Santa Monica High School in Santa Monica, Calif., on June 9, 2021. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
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By March 2020, other Malibu-area shows had closed down — at least one because of citizen outrage over noise and traffic — and so had everything else. Indoor gatherings were verboten. Parks and even beaches were closed. Golf courses, tennis courts and hiking trails were off limits.

With little else to distract them, car folks started gathering in the Malibu Village parking lots near Malibu Kitchen.

“Spike Feresten and I invented driving to Malibu Kitchen in a cool car to get coffee 20 years ago,” says Seinfeld, who later created a web series around the idea of comedians in cars getting coffee. “I’m not surprised the idea has taken over the entire city.”

In time, Feresten’s four- or five-car meet-up became a scene, with 200 to 300 cars rolling in on busy Sundays.

Then the city stepped in.

MALIBU, CA - AUGUST 08: Beach goers on La Costa Beach on Sunday, Aug. 8, 2021 in Malibu, CA. This is a story about La Costa Beach in Malibu. After more than 50 years with a sliver of the beach fenced off to the public, local government agencies in May tore down a new illegal fence constructed by Malibu homeowners and opened a short stretch of the beach to the public. The California Coastal Act allows such a move. But after decades of the beach being closed the opening is creating tension with adjacent homeowners. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
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“I was asked to look into it by the mayor,” says Lt. James Braden, the veteran Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officer who watches over Malibu. Braden called Feresten, Farah and other perceived leaders of the car scene and either warned or threatened them, depending on who is telling the story.

Braden says he warned them that “if they were organizing car shows,” and the resulting traffic was costing the city a lot of money, “it is going to come back to you.”

“It was that kind of thing,” he says.

Sheriff’s motor patrols started showing up. Malibu Village landlords hired private security, who erected barricades, which stay up from 7 a.m. until 10 or 11.

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The unintended result: Rather than go away, car enthusiasts started arriving later in the day. The fancy-car frenzy that once started at 8 a.m. and fizzled out by 10 now began at 10 and went on well into midday.

“It’s stupid,” Miller says. “They’ve actually created the problem they said they were trying to solve.”

The parking lot at Malibu Village Shopping Mall is filled to capacity with car enthusiasts and customers vying for spots.
The parking lot at Malibu Village Shopping Mall is filled to capacity with car enthusiasts and customers vying for spots. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
City and law enforcement officials have blamed the car gathering and its leaders for increases in traffic tie-ups, accidents and fatalities — despite protestations from the targets that they weren’t hosting a car show, weren’t inviting anyone to Malibu and had no power to make the car folks stay home or go elsewhere.

“There is no show! We’re just a few elderly men who like to go for a Sunday drive and stop for coffee and a bagel,” says Feresten, who is 57. “The more we tell people to stay away, the more they show up.”

::

At 10 a.m. the barricades come down. It’s like a dam breaking. The parking lot, almost empty at 9:45, is full by 10:10. A rush of remarkable cars — hot rods, vintage European sports cars, souped-up Japanese “tuners” and more — stream off PCH, angling for the best parking places.

The quickest and some of the gaudiest grab spaces near the front of Malibu Kitchen. A few motorists swing open their driver and passenger doors to block adjacent spaces and reserve them for their friends.