DIRT QUAKE II

Well the second coming of Dirt Quake was a real blast I took an almost coast to coast trip to Kings Lynn Arena via London to sketch and spectate the phenomenon that is Dirt Quake. If you don't already know Sideburn Magazine host an event where they take over a dirt oval and let anyone and everyone enter their motorbike of choice into one of three categories, Street Tracker, Inappropriate Road Bike and Chopper. People enter all sorts of bikes into the event and it is a real blast to watch. 

After last years event the Dirt Track Riders Association have been running a league and they were competing in their third rounds of this years season. It was really impressive to see the level on riding and competitiveness that the Association has achieved. If you haven't seen Flat Track Racing before get yourself along to one of the 3 remaining rounds, you won't be disappointed.

As well as all this flat tracking action there was other attractions including Davros the Compare (with a Vic Reevesesque accent), a milk chugging competition and a huge pie being driven by a chef. Where else other than Dirt Quake would you expect to have such an experience?

Old Blu

(ink and watercolour)

Old Blu is a chopper that was original made in 1968 in the UK, this is a rare beast indeed as not many choppers were around in the UK at that time. It won Belle Vue twice in the 70's. The heart of the current bike, frame, engine, gearbox, tank and rear mudguard, is from the original chopper. It has changed a few times within it's life and is now owned in it's current form by Pete from Eat the Rich who has now owned it twice. The Frame is a '48, engine '60 and gearbox is '52/'53. I had no idea of the history of this bike before I sketched it but I'm glad I did now.

 Dent in the oil tank comes from a previous bike where the exhaust cut through/

 Rear wheel addorned with various stickers including a couple of naughty ones designed by Pete.

Love the decal and patina on the tank.

Rusty Nail Honda

(ink and watercolour)

This custom Honda run by Ross Herrod was flying round the track. I chose it because of it's simplicity, there's something about a bike that is assembled to ride and have fun that is genuine and I really respect that. The donor bike is a1980 honda cg125. The tank is from a honda cb125s the frame was modified to take the tank. The rear of the frame was chopped and the upswept loop added. The motor is a ccm 230cc. Other bits include custom seat, flattrack bars, standard 18" wheels, custom exhaust.

Here are more photos from my adventure at Dirt Quake:

 On route to the Quake I put the van to the test and picked up a friend and his 650 Triumph.

 

It wouldn't be Flat Track without Co-Built

Ross's other ride for the day was this Flat Tracker with Death Spray paint job

A quick jaunt in the car park turned out some great stuff

Corpses From Hell Honda

 Chopped Ford Rod

 Another Ford Rod

 Sorry Couldn't help myself

 This was the beast of the chopper class a Turbo Diesel Engined Chopper

 Piston Broke

 Look closely and you'll see men chugging milk for money along with the pie (stage right) and Davros on the left.

El Solitario's whip for the day

 above and below proves it was anything and everything

 Krazy Horse gave Dimitri Coste a chopper to ride this is what happened

Miscellaneous Monday Morsels

As first reported by celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ Singer Billy Joel has quietly sold his nearly 9,000 square foot Mediterranean Revival style mansion on Miami Beach's swanky La Gorce Island for just under $14,000,000 to Italian billionaire shoe and handbag honcho Diego Della Valle who founded and still owns a controlling interest in the Italian luxury leather goods brand Tods.

listing photo: One Sotheby's International Realty

The long legged blond property gossip at Trulia Luxe Living revealed today that Kristen Stewart's mid-divorce mom, Jules, shelled out $999,000 for a ho-hum house in Sherman Oaks, CA.

listing photo: MLS via Trulia Luxe Living


We first heard it from the beaver busy kids at Curbed that limousine mogul turned restaurateur turned restaurant designer Nico Santucci has hung a publicity ensuring—and quite probably rose tinted—$5,250,000 price tag on Las Vegas's so-called Parisian Palace, a grotesquely meretricious mansion of dubious architectural distinction about five miles off The Strip that he rents out as a party space. Somehow Your Mama thinks Parisians will take justifiable umbrage at Mister Santucci calling the place the Parisian Palace.

listing photos: Rodney Marullo via YouTube

Several weeks ago Your Mama let the celebrity real estate cat out of the bag about blunt-tongued t.v. judge Judy Sheindlin snatching up a $10.7 million pied-a-terre at the super plush Montage in Beverly Hills and now comes word via the New York Observer that the gavel thumper has sold her two bedroom pied-a-terre at the high fallutin' Sherry Netherland Hotel in New York City for $8.5 million.

floor plan: Corcoran

As first reported by the folks at The Real Deal, ultra high end property developer Christian Candy paid $25.4 million for a 6,300+ square foot triplex apartment at The Plaza in New York City that he did over in signature haute-luxe Candy and Candy style and flipped back on the the open market last week with a stomach churning $59,000,000 price tag...furnishings included.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

Your Mama Hears...

...from a well-connected informant we'll call Charlene Chatterbox that on-again/off-again chat show hostess Rosie O'Donnell has sold her waterfront mansion on Miami Beach's Star Island for $12,675,000 million to an unknown buyer.*

Property records Your Mama peeped reveal the comedienne and actress (Web Therapy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Drop Dead Diva) bought the acre-plus property in March 1999 for $6,750,000. Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the deluxe domicile when Miz O'Donnell first put the posh pad on the (open) market in March 2012 with a $19,500,000 price tag. In March 2013 the price was cut to $17,500,000.

Listing details show the two-story mansion was originally built in 1923 and current listing information shows there are a total of 12 bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms between the 11,104 square foot main house and two separate and private guest houses.

Listing photographs show a full grown adult-sized, taxidermy hammerhead shark hung ominously on the wall above the staircase in the double height foyer. There are also formal living and dining rooms, a den/library/office, media room, and a well-equipped, two-island kitchen that's open to a family room and informal dining area with a huge built-in fish tank. The second floor bedrooms include what listing details describe as a "vast master suite" with sitting room, fireplace, private office, and direct access to a large terrace that overlooks the water.

At the front there's a massive red brick motor court shaded by a massive mangrove tree at its center. At least we think it's a mangrove. Anyways, at the back of the house there's extensive tropical landscaping, a swimming pool, and 203 feet of water frontage with private boat dock.

Other high profile residents/home owners on Star Island include seven-time Grammy winning singer Gloria Estafan, Puff Diddle—or Diddle Fiddle or whatever Sean Combs calls himself nowadays, and hunky Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin who bought his nearly 20,000 square foot Star Island mansion from retired professional basketballer Shaquille O'Neal for $16 million in 2009. Mister Doronin—so the scuttlebutt goes—recently traded famously volatile 43-year old supermodel Naomi Campbell in for a much younger, 25-year old up-and-coming model who—as it turns out—was mentored by Miz Campbell on the first season of the model search reality show The Face. Oh what a tangled romantic web he weaves. But that's really another story for another time and place.

In May 2011, Real Housewives of Miami's Lea Black, married to illustrious Miami-based criminal defense attorney Roy Black, paid $7,107,500—in cash—for a 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom Star Island fixer upper. Last fall (2012), in confusing bankruptcy and foreclosure situation, prominent plastic surgeon Lenny Hochstein and his lavishly plastified wife, Lisa—also a Real Housewives of Miami cast member—acquired a storied Star Island house that's immediately next door to Miz O'Donnell's. The Hochsteins say the mansion has a multitude of crippling issues includes a faulty foundation and would like to tear down and replace the existing house but they face a whole lot of opposition by preservation minded folks who would prefer they restore the existing house rather than tear it down. If we were the betting type—and we're not—we'd put all our dinero on the Hochsteins being granted permission to knock the beotch down. But that too is really another story for another time and place.

Miz O'Donnell's property portfolio includes a 1,391 square foot condo in Midtown Manhattan's Hells Kitchen area that she bought in October 2008 for $2,005,000 and a multi-acre Hudson River-front compound in Nyack, NY that has at least five separate residences and cost her a total of $8,605,000, according to property records and other online resources.

*For the record, as of this morning most online listings show Miz O'Donnell's Miami Beach spread is still available at  $17.5 million and Your Mama did not find any record of a recent transfer of ownership so that means this is all, technically, just a bit o' celebrity real estate rumor and gossip.

listing photos: One Sotheby's International Realty

Micheala McManus Lists Bantam Bungalow

SELLERS: Michaela McManus and Mike Daniels
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $849,000
SIZE: 1,315 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Every now and then Your Mama unexpectedly comes across a humbly-sized house in Los Angeles that, as it turns out, is owned by a celebrity, a demi-celebrity, or a "celebrity." Such was the case this week when we stumbled upon a colorful and stylishly quirky 1930s bungalow in L.A.'s hip and trendy Los Feliz area that popped up for sale this week with an $849,000 asking price and is owned, as per property records, by up-and-coming actress Michaela McManus and her up-and-coming writer/producer hubby Mike Daniels.

Miz McManus and Mister Daniels—married in July 2011—aren't Tinseltown superstars in the vein of, say, Tom Cruise or Jennifer Aniston but over the last four or five years they've steadily climbed the often treacherous and sometimes soul crushing Showbiz ladder of fame. Miz McManus has had substantial roles in a handful of top-rated prime time shows including One Tree Hill, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and The Vampire Diaries. She currently shakes her well-formed money maker on a recently picked up program called The Last Ship, a post-apocalypse type drama with Adam Baldwin and Eric Dane. Mister Daniels' short list of high-profile credits include One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, Pan Am, and the acclaimed dark drama Sons of Anarchy.

Property records show the couple purchased the petite pad in July 2010 for $780,000. Current listing details show the dark taupe stucco residence, conveniently located a few blocks off the Vermont and Hillcrest Avenue shopping and dining districts, was built in 1937 and has just two bedrooms in an apartment-sized 1,315 square feet. Charming if not exactly luxurious as this itty bitty bungalow may be with just one bathroom it is clearly not an acceptable situation for a couple of any persuasion who prefer to steer clear of each others toileting habits and issues.

Online marketing materials show the current owners—that would be Miz McManus and Mister Daniels—made numerous updates and improvements over the last three years. The kitchen underwent an cosmetic face lift, including new paint, new hardware and—we regret to inform—a new pot rack hung in front of the window.* A quick comparison to listing photos from the time the couple purchased the property suggests the pint-sized old bathtub appears to Your Mama to still be in residence in the lone bathroom that was otherwise done over just about soup to nuts with new plumbing, electric and tile work. The chimney was entirely overhauled, according to listing information, and the salt water swimming pool heater was replaced with one described as "high end."

A high hedge partially obscures the view from the sidewalk up to the compact covered porch where a baby blue door opens into a puny but proper entry hall. The children will note that Mister Daniels and Miz McManus have, Martha Stewart-like, stenciled the word "hello" over the doorway between the foyer and the living room. It's a bit too cute for Your Mama's particular decorative palette but it's, you know, cute. Medium brown hardwood floors and white-white walls highlight the vaulted ceiling, glossy black fireplace surround and provide a neutral backdrop for the mid century modern-edged mash up of clean lined contemporary and visibly worn vintage furnishings.

The next door dining room isn't particularly large but it certainly packs a giant visual wallop with an over-scaled, in-your-face mustard and ivory colored flower pattern wallpaper set off against gun metal gray walls. The graphic fantasia continues with a dark blue and white, diamond pattern rug and, on either side of the doorway to the kitchen, dozens of framed snapshots hung in a fetchingly cacophonous salon style. Based on intel harvested from a quick spin through Mister Daniels' Twitter Your Mama guesses the sextet of spindle-back chairs were more than likely hand-crafted by fifth generation furniture maker Geoffrey Keating and—in all seriousness—we covet them like no body's bizness. Those, children, are timeless heirlooms in the making. Anyways...

Beyond the dining room, the updated (could be an eat-in) kitchen has boring beige tile floors, crisp white cabinetry, common flecked gray granite counter tops, medium grade stainless steel appliances, and that aforementioned pot rack. The children will note the adjoining but separate laundry room, an out and out luxury in a house of this size.

There's only one bathroom between the two bedrooms so we're not sure how exactly one decides which to utilize as the master bedroom. One bedroom—the one used by Mister Daniels and Miz McManus as their master—has windows on two walls for breezy cross ventilation and paned glass door that connects to the spacious deck that runs along the back of the house. The second bedroom doesn't appear to be any larger than the master but it also has direct access the backyard plus a separate study/office nook. The only bathroom has vintage style tiles on the floor and gray-grouted subway tile behind the single-sink vanity, around the tub, and in the separate glassed-in shower stall.

The super-sized deck at the back of the house—accessible from both bedrooms as well as through the laundry room—gives way to a narrow strip of lawn anchored on either end by (what may or may not be) a couple of fruit trees. A slightly elevated concrete plinth pretty much stretches the full width of the lot with a small sunbathing terrace, a plunge-sized swimming pool with an inset spa.

Listing details indicate there is about 1,000 square feet of dry, concrete lined storage space beneath the house where there is also a street-facing two car garage.

Your Mama has no inside intel on where Miz McManus and Mister Daniels might move once they sell their bantam bungalow in Los Feliz but we'd fall over with flabbergast if they didn't decamp to a bigger and more expensive residence that's more reflective of their rising success.

*All the children know that Rule #7 in Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Do's and Don'ts vehemently declares—and we paraphrase—that pot racks are entirely undesirable kitchen accoutrement due to their gleeful dust collection, propensity to snag and grab teased up weaves, and their occasional malicious intent to drop a copper pot on an unsuspecting pooch's tender cranium. In the case of pot racks, anyways, Your Mama whole heartedly agrees with former first lady Nancy Reagan and urges each and every one of the children to "Just Say No!"

listing photos: Val Riolo for Keller Williams

Oprah Bought (Somebody) a House in Nashville.

BUYER: Oprah Winfrey
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $299,0900
SIZE: 3,045 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama heard word from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that, last November (2012), epically powerful cross-platform media maven Oprah Winfrey—through a trust every property gossip on the globe understands to be linked to her—quietly coughed up $299,900 for a well-maintained if perfectly ordinary suburban home in a well-kept if architecturally homogenous development about 7.5 miles from miles northwest of The Main Library in downtown Nashville, TN.

No, puppies, Miz Winfrey did not buy this ho-hum house for herself. At least Your Mama can't fathom she purchased it for herself because this place is a little—uh—middle class compared to how Miz Winfrey rolls when it comes to her personal residences.

The self-made multi-billionaire may have come from severely restricted economic circumstances but, as anybody who's ever picked up a gossip glossy knows, nowadays the lady lives as high on the hog as a person can live. She is, to be sure, a real estate baller of the highest order and she most certainly lives in a money-is-no-object manner commensurate with her nearly three billion dollar-plus fortune. (More about her major real estate holdings in minute.)

Your Mama don't know a camel from a canoe, of course, but we have to presume Miz Winfrey purchased the suburban property for a friend, a staff worker or, most likely, a relative. It could be for her father, long time Nashville resident Vernon Winfrey, or it might just be for Vernon's soon-to-be ex-wife Barbara Winfrey, the two of whom have been engaged in a messy and public divorce that involves scandalous allegations infidelity and attempted murder.

Whatever the case, Miz Winfrey's fat property portfolio now includes a fairly modest house in Northwest Nashville that listing details Your Mama scared up out of the interweb show was built in 2006 on a .27 acre lot that backs up to an undeveloped forested open space. The 3,054 square foot brick-built two-story—uh—transitional-style** residence has four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms according to marketing materials.

A pair of arches separate the central foyer and stair hall from the intimately scaled "formal" dining room. Both the dining room and the foyer open to a living room at the back of the house that has wood floors and a (gas) fireplace surmounted by a flat-screen t.v. and flanked by built-in book cases. Either French or sliding doors—we're not sure which—allow for direct access to the backyard from the living room. The tile floored eat-in kitchen with step-in pantry adjoins the living room and is outfitted with hickory (or hickory-toned) raised panel cabinets, black granite counter tops, and medium grade stainless steel appliances.

The main floor master suite opens directly off the living room and includes a 22-foot long bedroom with a wide bay window, a high tray ceiling, and wall-to-wall carpeting the color of wet sand. The attached bathroom has more raised panel cabinetry topped with some sort of inexpensive looking solid surface material, two sinks, a make-up vanity, and a separate tub and stall shower. In addition to the two upstairs bedrooms that share a single hall bath, there's a decent size den/lounge on the upper floor with angled ceiling, wall to wall carpeting, and a Palladian-esque window.

The backyard isn't particularly big and it lacks any landscaping besides an essentially flat lawn. Although it's private at the rear as it backs up to a dense forested space, the backyard lacks any privacy from the sides where the iron fence shown in listing photos might keep Fido from escaping but it certainly won't stop the neighbors from gawking when The Big O swings by for some sweet tea on the patio.

Miz Winfrey has owned a slew of luxury properties from coast to coast and in many places in between but her primary residential real estate holdings currently include a multi-unit duplex penthouse atop Water Tower Place in Chicago (IL), a 23,000+ square foot mansion on 40+ landscaped acres in Montecito (CA), and a large and growing swathe of farmland near Kula in on the Hawaiian island of Maui.***, ****

By our last calculation of Miz Winfrey's Hawaiian holdings—in June 2012—she then owned more than thirty separate (and not all contiguous) rural parcels that combined encompass nearly 800 acres. She'd shelled out, according to property records and Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, well over $40 million and perhaps as much as sixty million for her sprawling Hawaiian hideaway that has more houses and farm buildings than Your Mama has fingers and toes.

Your Mama can't confirm it but late last year (2012) we heard word from a usually quite reliable source who snitched that Miz Winfrey (allegedly) dropped eight figures on a macmansion sized pied a terre apartment at the high-fallutin' Montage hotel and residences in downtown Beverly Hills, the same exclusive complex where East Coast-based Judge Judy Sheindlin recently dropped $11.7 million for a posh pied a terre of her own.

*There are multiple reports on the internets that Papa and Step Momma Winfrey's LaurelBrooke home was sold but none o' the property record databases Your Mama peeped yet reflect a recent transfer of ownership. Make of that what you will.

**We use the vague term "transitional-style" to describe an otherwise undistinguished and/or indistinguishable architectural vernacular.

***Miz Winfrey recently did a photo shoot—for her essentially eponymous lifestyle magazine O, natch—on her working Hawaiian farm. For one of the photos she donned a wide-brimmed straw hat and pushed a wheelbarrow laden with luscious, leafy greens. Your Mama laughed a day over that nonsense. How often, hunties, do we think Miz Winfrey actually pushes around a damn wheelbarrow laden with a whole bunch of leafy greens? Pleeze.

****Back in 2006 Miz Winfrey had the O photographers over to Hawaii to snap perfectly posed pictures of one of the many residences on the farm for the Summer 2006 issue.

listing photos: Realty Trust Residential

Jim Carrey Quietly Unloads Colony Crib

SELLER: Jim Carrey
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $13,400,000
SIZE: 2,866 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In June 2011 face-pulling comedian and actor Jim Carrey put his ocean front home in Malibu's guard-gated Colony enclave up for sale on the open market with an asking price of $18,000,000.*  The modestly sized residence was de- and re-listed at least three times before it was taken off the market in late 2011.

Your Mama (dissed and) discussed the five bedroom and 5.5 bathroom beach house back in June 2012 when returned to the open market with a significantly lower asking price of $13,950,000. In December (2012) the house was once again de-listed but none-the-less—we first heard from Yolanda Yakketyyak—it remained quietly available and property records reveal it quietly changed hands in late April (2013) for $13,400,000. The buyer's identity remains hidden behind a generically named limited liability corporation.

Property records show Mister Carrey purchased the property in October 2002 for $9,750,000.

Since the mid-1990s Mister Carrey's main residence has been a sprawling, solar-equipped multi-wing ranch residence with five bedrooms and nine bathrooms in 8,029 square feet on two park-like parcels that encompass more than two gated and high-hedged acres on one of Brentwood's better streets. In addition to the main house there's a substantial guest house between the swimming pool and the tennis court. Your Mama's research shows Mister Carrey acquired the first piece of his Brentwood bedsit in July 1994 for $3,800,000 and bought the adjacent vacant parcel in early 2000 for $1,700,000.

Of course Your Mama don't know a spelling bee from a hog trot so we don't know what Mister Carrey's future real estate plans may be. However, the West Coast-based comedian has been on a long and well-documented search for a New York City residence and he seems to be smitten with very contemporary urban spaces. Several years ago Mister Carrey shelled out a pretty penny to lease an fishbowl-like apartment at the glassy, Richard Meier-designed tower at 176 Perry Street where—so the scuttlebutt goes—unsuccessfully attempted to purchase a full floor spread that was not listed on the open market.

Back in October 2011 there were scads of reports that Mister Carrey visited a three bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, and two terrace duplex penthouse in TriBeCa's Zinc Building, then priced at $5,950,000 and now priced at $6.1 million (down from its original price tag of $7.25 million).

A few months later the quirky Tinseltown jokester went for a much publicized look see around a 25-foot wide townhouse in the art gallery-filled Chelsea neighborhood. The six floor townhouse was originally built in 1824 but recently underwent a full-scale renovation that left with six bedrooms and six full and four half bathrooms in more than 7,000 square feet of of sleek and modern interior space that include a penthouse level solarium with a mostly glass roof and access to two terraces. At the time the townhouse was listed at $13.65 million but the price dropped precipitously to $8,999,000 before it was, a few weeks ago, put into contract with an unknown buyer for an unknown amount.

More recently—well, a year ago—Mister Carrey was reported in the New York gossip columns to have toured the idiosyncratic and much ballyhooed quadruplex penthouse pad at the Clock Tower building in Brooklyn's expensively arty-fart DUMBO** 'hood. The apartment—also toured, they say, by professional basketballer LeBron James, fashion world icon Ralph Lauren and His Hip-Hop Highness Jay-Z—has 6,813 square feet on four floors with three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, four exposures, and voluminous triple height ceiling over the dining room. It would appear Mister Carrey didn't cotton to the quirky crib since it's currently listed for $18 million.

*Listen, butter beans, Your Mama's boozy brain sort recalls it was listed for $19.5 million but we failed to find any evidence to support that on the interweb so we went with the $18 million because we found digital listings from September 2011 with that figure. Anyways...

**That stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, in case you didn't know.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty

Rent Steven Spielberg's Beach House

OWNERS: Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $125,000/month
SIZE: 7,237 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It has come to Your Mama's attention via a covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air (OFGBA) that Hollywood honcho Steven Spielberg has quietly put his Craftsman-style beach front compound on celebrity lined (and quickly disappearing) Broad Beach in Malibu (CA) up for lease for the 2013 summer season at $125,000 per month.*

Your Mama's brief and unscientific research on the internets indicates the three time Oscar winner (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List) acquired the larger of the two parcels that comprise the ocean front estate in October 1989 for $3,375,000. Property records show he picked up the adjacent property in April 2002 for $3,191,000. A couple of quick and rudimentary calculations on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows Mister Spielberg coughed up a total of $6,566,000 for both properties that combined encompass 1.08 acres with more than 150 feet of quickly dwindling beach frontage.**

Listing details kindly provided by OFGBA shows the main house measures 7,237 square feet with a total of seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms. There are four bedrooms on the ground floor and three more on the second floor, as per listing details, including a spacious, ocean-view master suite complete with private study/library and a massage room.  Additional living space is accommodated in a detached two bedroom guest house and a flexi-use "bonus space" that could be used as an art studio, fitness room or meditation lounge.

The main house wraps around a wind-protected courtyard with multi-level decks and a small swimming pool and spa. Other amenities, according to marketing materials, include a screening room—natch, two fireplaces (living room and master bedroom), a three car garage, and a top-flight security system.

It might seem strange that someone with pockets as deep as Mister Spielberg might choose to lease out one of his luxurious homes but it might be that he's looking to recoup some of the excessive fuel costs he'll surely incur this summer while he takes his $200 million yacht, the 282-foot long blue hulled Seven Seas, on an around the world cruise with stops in exotic locales such as Shanghai, Sri Lanka and Hawaii.***

Despite its ever-shrinking beach, Broad Beach is lined with homes owned by entertainment industry movers and shakers. The Spielberg-Capshaw beach estate is just a couple doors down from the double-lot spread owned by Pierce Brosnan and listed last summer for least at $250,000 per month. Other Showbiz homeowners on Broad Beach include Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Steve Levitan, Dustin Hoffman, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, Ray Romano, Avi Arad, Jami Gertz, and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gourmet—here they are putting their special spin on Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun.

Award show super-producer Ken Ehrlich, who bought his East Coast-y beach front Cape Cod in early 2010 from investor (and Milwaukee Brewers owner) Mark Attanasio and, as it turns out, has it up for lease at $100,000 per month for the 2013 summer season. Other big business types who maintain homes on Broad Beach include Chicago-based real estate magnate George Novogroder and tool and die tycoon—and big-time real estate baller—Eric Smidt. The late insurance mogul Burton Borman's Frank Gehry-designed domicile popped up on the open market last week with a—uh—hopeful $57,500,000 price tag.

Make no mistake, chickens, despite their low-key, of-the-people image Mister Spielberg and Miz Capshaw are red-blooded real estate baller with a fat portfolio of pricey, high-maintenance properties. In addition to their deluxe digs in Malibu their Los Angeles holdings include a 5+ acre multi-residence hillside compound on a hillside in the ritzy upper Riviera area of Pacific Palisades and an expensively equipped multi-acre equestrian facility tucked back into rustic Sullivan Canyon below Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner's Pacific Palisades estate.

Mister and Missus Spielberg-Capshaw also have a solid real estate foothold on the east coast. As far as Your Mama knows—thanks to a heads up by one of the helpful children—they still own a 6,000 square foot, two unit Gwathmey Siegel-designed combo coop at the star studded San Remo building on Central Park West where other high profile residents/owners include Demi Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Donna Karan, Steve Martin, and Paul Hewson—the rock star otherwise known as the unimonikered Bono.

And finally, they maintain Quelle Farm, a nearly 10-acre Gwathmey Siegel-designed compound on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, NY, with extensive equestrian facilities. The property is close enough for the Spielberg's scullery maid to borrow sugar from Time Warner widow and philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross who recently heaved Cody House—a 5.42 acre pond-front spread on Georgica Pond—on the open market with a tongue wagging $75,000,000 asking price. Mister Spielberg also owns three vacant lots directly opposite Quelle Farm. Your Mama assumes he bought the lots in order to preserve his view. A couple years ago he donated conservation easements the three lots that come to almost 7.5 acres to the Peconic Land Trust, a tax benefitting maneuver that will protect the land from development in perpetuity.

Property records indicate that in late 2007/early 2008 the redonkulously rich couple dropped $20,000,000 on a 3.3 acre Georgica Pond fronting estate that's located on the same swanky lane as their compound but isn't contiguous. We're not sure what their long term plans for the property are but it appears to Your Mama they've already razed the early 20th century singled cottage that stood on the property when they bought it.

*listing details suggest a longer term rental may be possible.

**Since 2008 when storms damaged a number of homes in Malibu, radical and expensive measures, including a 4,100 foot long revetment and towering walls of sandbags, have been taken over the years to protect the multi-million dollar homes on Broad Beach.

***Those with the dough can charter Mister Spielberg's super-luxe yacht that comfortably accommodates 12 in seven staterooms and is staffed by two dozen crew. In 2011 the ship sized boat was available at a skin peeling $1.3 million a week. 

listing photos: The Partners Trust