No, Beach Nation hasn’t been washed away.
Yes, it is closed for now. But the popular outdoor restaurant and coffee bar on the northeast corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sweetzer will be back at it in a few months.
Michael Berman of Schoos Design, an owner of Beach Nation, said the City of West Hollywood has approved its plans for building out a full kitchen and adding an outdoor eating counter.
Beach Nation opened on that desolate lot in May 2014. A story published in WEHOville at the time described it as the opposite of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, which was Joni Mitchell’s famous description of what happened to Alla Nazimov’s Garden of Allah at 8152 Sunset Blvd. at Crescent Heights.
Beach Nation opened with a front yard filled with white sand, creating a beach-like atmosphere that allowed visitors to closed their eyes and imagine they were on the shore in Santa Monica (if they could the traffic sounds as crashing waves).
Later that year Beach Nation got permission to incorporate the Irv’s Burgers building next door into its site, which provided a small kitchen for preparing food on site.
Stop perpetuating the claim that “paving paradise” line from “Big Yellow Taxi” alluded to the Garden of Allah. Joni Mitchell has noted on several occasions that song was inspired by a location in Hawaii!
C’mon, Hank. Everyone knows you cannot be on the ‘shore’ in Santa Monica or the entire Pacific coast for that matter. In California, you can only sit on the beach, on the coast, even on a boardwalk or a strand or two. You east coasters need to learn to speak the language