Thursday, December 13, 2007

Matthew Fox Tells Manhattan Beach to Get Lost

SELLER: Matthew Fox
LOCATION: Alma, Manhattan Beach, CA
PRICE: $2,275,000
SIZE: 2,491 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Ocean view classic Spanish home in sand section Manhattan Beach. Over sized street to alley lot. Fireplaces in master bedroom and family room. Lovely formal dining room. Enclosed patio off family room, great for entertaining. Originally built as 4 bedrooms, 2 baths currently used as 3 bedrooms and an office. 2 Bedrooms have built-in Murphy beds. Over sized master suite has panoramic ocean views and a full surround sound movie theatre. Big walk in closet with custom master bath. Large ocean view deck off master. Original hand painted tiles from Portugal used throughout. Hardwood floors throughout.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Unlike most of his cast mates, former Party of Five hottie Matthew Fox has managed to parlay his success on that sappy and sickeningly saccharine show into an honest to goodness television career. The last three years have found Mister Matthew in the tropical environs of Hawaii filming the cult favorite television program Lost, a show that quite frankly, is lost on Your Mama. Too many people and too many competing story lines for our gin soaked mind to keep sorted out after 7pm in the evening.

Anyhoo, property records reveal that back in April of 1999, just as Party of Five was wrapping up, Mister Matthew and his wifey Margherita purchased this Manhattan Beach house for $880,000. Located just six short blocks from the wide sandy beach and five blocks south of a gigantic and scary looking Chevron oil refinery, the somewhat Spanish style home measures 2,491 square feet with four bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

Thanks to a friendly tipster we'll call Talkative Tim, Your Mama has learned that Mister Matthew has put his Manhattan Beach crib on the market for $2,275,000, which oughtta net the man over a million clams when it sells. Your Mama presumes, but can not say with any certainty because contrary to popular opinion we do not know Mister Fox, that since Lost is scheduled to run until 2010, a house in Manhattan Beach is no longer necessary for him or the other Foxes in his family.

In fact, two additional sources, both virtually omniscient when it comes to the residences of the rich and/or famous, tell us that Mister Fox and family have long vacated this house which would indicate that the rather lackluster and depressing beige furnishings belong to a tenant rather than the homeowner.

So rather than shred the coma inducing beige sofa or get too worked up over the upsetting patchwork bedspread that surely belongs to the tenant, Your Mama will stick to the bones of this house which technically still belong to the Matthew the Fox.

Fortunately for the tenant and owner, listing information indicates that the property features 4 parking spaces out front because parking can get a little hairy in this neighborhood on warm summer days when all the Inland Empire denizens drive over in their too big SUVs. Additionally, there is another parking spot in back where listing information indicates the 2 car garage has been converted to a 1 car garage. We have no idea what the other garage space is actually used for, but given Mister Fox's celebrity status, we would not be surprised to learn there was one of those Soloflex contraptions out there he used to beef up his guns when he lived stateside.

Inside we can appreciate the two corner fireplaces to take the chill off the salty seaside air. And the deck off the master bedroom that looks over the roof tops to the freezing cold Pacific Ocean looks like a fine place to ponder the nothingness. We can tolerate the all cement backyard that would look so much nicer and more inviting with randomly shaped flagstone and potted lavendar bushes and a little tomato garden, and we can just about cope with the kitchen because it is nicely sized and layed out even if it does look utterly worn out in the photo.

But children, those "original hand painted tiles from Portugal" in the master bathroom are giving Your Mama's a serious migraine not to mention raising the hair on the back of our neck. Listen, puppies, Your Mama actually has a good dose of Portuguese ancestry running through our booze diluted veins, but even still, we simply could not relax or concentrate deeply enough to do our durty bizness up in this bathroom with all that tile work shrieking and vying for attention. All due respect to our people in Portugal, but that shit would need to go. And fast.

Your Mama assumes that Mister Fox and the Fox family currently reside in Hawaii where Lost is filmed. However, a cursory search of Hawaiian records did not turn up any properties owned by Mister Fox, and of course, everyone knows the stoopid adage about what happens when one assumes. But we are simply too run down and headachy from all that complex tile pattern to delve any deeper into Mister Fox's real estate doings today, so assume we do. Perhaps our compatriot over at Big Time Listings can locate the scruffy stud's digs in Hawaii.

UPDATE: Talkative Tim once again contacted Your Mama with additional information about Mister Fox's whereabouts in Hawaii. Turns out a slightly more extensive search of records suggests that Mister Fox currently leases a 4,650 square foot residence on the Windward side of Oahu. Property records reveal that the ocean front residence on fancy pants Kailuana Loop, which features 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, shares the same stretch of exclusive sandy beach as pair of houses comprising a large estate which sold in mid 2006 for a record $24,000,000.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

ohhhh I'm first!

Anonymous said...

Are the "great ocean views" really great when you have to look over the roof of a house. I don't like this house save the cooky bathroom. I like those tiles Mama!

Anonymous said...

That's quite an "ocean view." You can almost smell the salty air... oh, wait, no, that's oil from the refinery five blocks away. I love California. From where I live near Chicago I have an "ocean view" too; I just can't see it very well. Like this house.

Anonymous said...

ohhhhh! I am 4th!

Anonymous said...

Oh, Mama, you are too right about those tiles; they make me dizzy. One would be in danger of falling right off that nasty terlit.

Please pass me one of your nerve pills.

Anonymous said...

Hideous! Like Bette Davis would have said "what a dump!"

Good for Matthew Fox though for making some cash on the place. Hopefully that'll be enough to get him, the wife and kids a nice pad in Maui. Aloha!

Anonymous said...

It's California. We don't have the salt smell in the air.

You can't tell the topography from most aerial maps on the internet. Manhattan Beach is basically divided by a ridge parelleling the ocean. The houses on the ocean side of the ridge are stacked going up a hill. So unless you own the house right on the beach (called The Strand), you are looking over the houses lower on the hill between you and the beach. On the inland side of the ridge is the "tree section", which is a cool neighborhood in it's own right but does not have ocean views.

Rosecrans Ave runs along a ridge to the north. The refinery is in El Segundo below the ridge. You don't get any smell and don't even see it unless you go look for it.
Aerial maps don't tell the whole story. The refinery (which is in El Segundo, BTW) isn't visible

Anonymous said...

6:29
I'm hard pressed to believe you know the Ca coast. Not being harsh. Just doesn't make sense.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sandpiper. I'm only in the South Bay occasionally, but it sounds to me like 6:26 (I think that's the commenter you mean) gave a really good explanation of Manhattan Beach. If you go to zillow.com, you can use the bird's eye view to see what s/he means by a gentle uphill slope from the beach for several blocks, a ridge and a non-view area behind. Also, I've used Rosecrans to get in/out and I had no idea there was a refinery right there -- just looks like a regular parkway.

Like I said, I'm only a casual visitor to the area, but everything 6:26 said fits what I've seen. I'm curious to know what you think s/he got wrong.

Anonymous said...

So Sandpiper, where do you live?

Anonymous said...

It never fails to boggle my mind what people will do based on a belief that something is "authentic".

Ugly is ugly, and I don't care where those tiles originated.

Miss Lucy, being as WASPish as they come, doesn't have an ounce of Porgtugese blood, but her parents spent some time there, and none of the ceramics they schlepped home looks like this....ugly.

Anonymous said...

Ohh, please don't yell. It was 6:29's opening line: "It's California. We don't have the salt smell in the air."

If you've lived on the beach, you know the ocean air is an omnipresent gift. Incredible.

I'm not disputing 6:29's ability to describe topography. And there are better reference sources than zillow if that't the aim.

I'm not hiding behind an anon tag. I think it's great that we can challenge, agree to disagree, whatever, all in the sense of good clean fun.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sandpiper. In that case, I've got a follow-up question: Where in Southern California do you smell salt? Because I live on the water in Newport Beach and the breeze is refreshing but remarkably salt-free. Every once in a while I catch a whiff of salt in a strong wind and I always wish it weren't so fleeting.

Anonymous said...

As has been pointed out many, many times, typing a nickname in the box doesn't make you any less anonymous so stop pissing and moaning that other people are anonymous when you won't even answer whether you live on the west coast. I could type "sandpiper" if I so chose.

The "salt air" smell is fleeting at best along the Pacific. Go to the east coast and you will know the difference. You can smell the Atlantic and especially the Gulf as soon as you get within a mile or two. As someone born on that coast but having lived most of my life on this one, I don't consider the Pacific to have a salt air smell.

Anonymous said...

Hey PCH, Neuro linguistics? How fun. Degrees of salt air intensity? I probably just notice it more, and never notice absence of it -- anywhere on CA coast, incl. my specific point of reference. Interesting.

And 9:32, Chill already. Your getting way too worked up. I'm sure you're a nice person but you can't have my address.

Unknown said...

This house is really cool compared to the vanilla all around MB. I wrote it up on my local RE blog last month:

http://tinyurl.com/39nf6l

The other garage is an office with a murphy bed. Also features a shrine of sorts to M Fox - movie posters, memorabilia, etc, which makes you think he knows the tenants really well.

Anonymous said...

Sandpiper, no one asked for your address. A general response of "Chicago", "New York", "Northern California" would have been an easy answer but that doesn't feed the troll in you does it?

Of one thing I am certain, it isn't the South Bay because you've obviously never been there.

Anonymous said...

as someone who grew up on the jersey shore and now live in SF after having lived in so cal also, i can say that the briney salty smell does exist here, but only intermittently.

there must be a confluence of things that make it happen, i just can't say what. on the east coast beaches that great tang is always there.

to paraphrase a film, it might have something to do with time and tide, but maybe too seaweed or sumpthin?

Anonymous said...

maybe the heavier air, as in humidity contributes to the salt aroma, just a thought, shoot me.

Anonymous said...

Caveman...
I'm certainly not qualified to take this topic that deep, but based on how my hair freaks out in florida, humidity sure makes sense!

Anonymous said...

I'd give my eye teeth to lick his poopatorium floor and scoop-up some curly hairs.

Anonymous said...

Scoop is after wrapping up Lost in 2010, Mr. Fox will be looking at taking up residence in Wisconsin (I believe he may be originally from there). Quite a change from CA and Hawaii!

Anonymous said...

Wisconsin? Are you sure you don't mean Wyoming? That's where he grew up and where he has purchased land.

Anonymous said...

I live in MB and can confirm the intermittent salt air smell and that the house is on a slope (basically a huge sand dune). The refinery os to the north in El Segundo and the breeze blows in off teh ocean from the west so you dont smell the refinery, plus you cant see it becasue it is pretty well hidden.

I used to 2 houses down from Mathew so I am familier with the house. The couple he bought it from was an old margaritaville kind of partying couple, they remodeled the house and added all the gawdy tile. That couple divorced and the guy went to live on his sailboat.

One of the cars I have seen there recently, (classic stang) I used to see when Mat lived there. I believe he said it was a relatives car, so maybe that is who is living there now?! Mathew was kind of a quite guy but always willing to talk about cars, he is a huge auto enthusiast.