Topanga Canyon

Known for its colorful history of bohemians and rockers, the annual country fair, funky cabins and the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, Topanga also has cool modern architecture on its list of attributes. Like the hawks that take wing above the canyon, Jim Hawkins and Lara Parker's modern hilltop estate off Old Topanga Canyon Road evokes a bird taking flight. Or, to some, the sweep of the surrounding hills.

TONY MORRIS isn't the kind of dude you are likely to see whooping it up at a party. No wild and crazy guy rocking and rolling for attention in the center of a dance floor. If he's at the party at all, he's more likely to be off to one side monologuing in his deep basso about something, well, important. There is nothing frivolous about the man. Morris, a 65-year-old Yale graduate, takes life seriously.

It's a treacherous, serpentine stretch of Topanga Canyon Boulevard dubbed the Narrows, and it's the bane of cyclists and runners alike. Bounded by a sandstone bluff on one side and a sheer drop into the Topanga Canyon Creek on the other, the Narrows is infamous for washouts, landslides and fallen rocks that frequently paralyze long lines of commuters traveling between the Valley and the Westside.

A particularly hot and early fire season has arrived this year. Time to clear brush, make a family plan and, if you're a Topanga Canyon resident, perhaps prepare for company. Under a plan implemented last year, 38 privately owned properties in the unincorporated community have been designated "neighborhood survival areas" -- last-resort refuges for residents unable to evacuate or get to predetermined public safety zones within the canyon.

Hayne House Topanga, a sophisticated bohemian retreat, is on the market, but to Oingo Boingo fans, it will forever belong to Danny Elfman. Elfman, the composer of scores for TV shows ("The Simpsons," "Desperate Housewives") and movies ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Spider-Man"), was lead singer-guitarist-composer of the rock band for 11 of the 16 years he owned the home. He bought it in 1984 and, a year later, scored "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," his first commercially successful film.

In "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy, protagonist John Grady Cole says that he wants to stay at the Hacienda La Purisima horse ranch for "about a hundred years." That's probably only because no one showed him Hacienda Libelula in Topanga Canyon. Yeah, it's \o7that\f7 fabulous. Hacienda Libelula was built in 1998, but it evokes a centuries-old feel.

Equestrian ranch Location: Mesa area of Topanga Canyon Size: There are five bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms in 4,700 square feet of living space. The lot is 6.5 acres. Published on: Oct. 8, 2006 Listed then for: $5.85 million Relisted for: $4,199,000 this April Price reduction: 28.2% Listing agents: Anthony Marguleas and Jaime Estes of Amalfi Estates, Pacific Palisades, (310) 573-4245, Ext. 100 Home as sculpture Location: 2441 Cross Creek Lane, Escondido 92025 Size: There are three bedrooms and 3 1/2 bathrooms in about 4,088 square feet.

Ian Ellery Brodie, 72, a British journalist who covered the United States from the 1960s to the end of the century and, for a time, lived in Topanga Canyon and ran the local newspaper, died of a stroke May 8 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. Working for the Daily Telegraph and later the Times of London, Brodie reported on the 1968 assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and years later on "hanging chads" in the...

When it's open, it unites the Valley with the sea. When it's closed, it splits Topanga Canyon right down the middle. That's the effect that partially severed Topanga Canyon Boulevard is having on residents of the mountain hamlet between the San Fernando Valley and Malibu. An 80-foot washout has forced the off-again, on-again closure of the heavily used route since Jan. 10. And now state highway officials say a 17-hour-per-day shutdown will likely continue through the end of March.

Employees at a Topanga Canyon dump found a work boot containing a recently severed foot in dirt that was dropped off Monday from a construction site at Fox Studios in Century City, sheriff's officials said. After the 9:30 a.m. discovery, sheriff's and Los Angeles police detectives scoured the dump and the construction site at Avenue of the Stars and Pico Boulevard looking for other body parts, sheriff's homicide Capt. Ray Peavy said.