In 2008, billionaire venture capitalist and real selfish bastard Vinod Khosla paid $32.5 million for an 89-acre beachfront property in California. Now, he’s asking for $30 million just to let the public use the beach.

“There were many decades when there would have been no reflexive analogies to be made between East Hampton and whatever might be on offer at a city beach. As the aesthetic of wealth has become ever more dominant, so too has the upscaling of public recreation space.”

There is, among a particular cohort of New York City transplants, a belief that we hold dear. It is entirely based on our collective upbringing in a coastal city, small town, or neighborhood not named Manhattan, Brooklyn, or whatever other boroughs make up this fair metropolis. This belief: New York City-area beaches are not real beaches.

The war-torn coastal African nation of Somalia is not just "The most failed state on earth" and "The worst country on Earth" and "The world's worst hellhole"—it is also a great investment opportunity.

Health officials in Florida today issued new warnings about high levels of a flesh-eating bacterium in the ocean and other recreational waters in the state. The state says that bacterium, Vibrio vulnificus, causes ulceration and rapid skin decay and is fatal in about 50 percent of people who get it in their bloodstreams.

A Florida man celebrating the Fourth of July with his friends and family on New Smyrna Beach noticed two middle-aged women trying to make off with his tent canopy, beach chairs, boogie boards, and kids' toys. So he confronted them, with a cameraphone, and got an unexpected fireworks show.

In 1992, KRS-One famously threw P.M. Dawn off the stage at a show in New York. In 2013, here is KRS-One sitting pensively on the beach in a flowing, billowy white garment, discussing politics as the wind whispers gently through his hair.

In August, a finback whale that curled up to die on a shore in the Hamptons was buried in the sand; in 1964, a whale found in the Hudson, off of 79th street, was towed out to sea and detonated with 500 pounds of explosives. For the last 24 hours, a 60-foot finback whale has lain mute and emaciated on the shore outside the burned husk of Breezy Point, Queens, slowly suffocating under the weight of its own, no-longer-buoyant body. This morning, it stopped breathing, and biologists from the National Marine Fisheries Service declared it dead.

After an extended soggy winter, it's finally beach needle season in New York. Four New Yorkers stepped on beach needles in the past few weeks. Where were most of them, I wonder? Specifically? "Three incidents happened within the last three weeks on Staten Island."

San Diego's San Onofre State Beach has long been a mecca for nudists looking for a genital-scorching day by the sea. But state park rangers have been cracking down on them lately, and the Camp Pendleton Marines Corps that leases the land to the state — and uses the neighboring Gold's Beach to train recruits in amphibious assault — has found itself dragged into the dispute, the LA Times reports.

Germany's largest building is a six-story, four-kilometer Nazi-built resort called Prora, located on an island in the Baltic Sea. Originally called "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength Through Joy), it's big enough to house 20,000 people. It was supposed to be even bigger, but World War II disrupted its construction. The building languished mostly unused until three and a half years ago, when a youth hostel moved in. I sense a Hostel sequel coming on.

The sun-kissed people of Newport Beach, California, are riled and swollen with anger because some of their town's 13 lifeguards make more than $200,000 a year. That's more than what some of America's hard-working business executives make!

Rainstorms have caused 14 Hawaiian sewer pipes to overflow, at least four of which spilled into the waterway where the Obamas are vacationing. Hawaii has issued a "brown water warning." Will Barack Obama "man up" and swim in this poopwater?

[Wish you lived in this photo? This beach—perhaps not coincidentally—is called Orange Beach, and it's in Alabama. Was the sunset this nice where you were? Photo via AP.]

[A woman in Surf City, North Carolina, watches the waves being whipped up by Hurricane Earl, which has the potential to ruin countless Labor Day weekend travel plans as it travels up the eastern seaboard. Image via AP]

[A lifeguard hides from the hot sun under his brightly-colored umbrella on the beach at Coney Island today. Image via Getty]

Today in hallucinations turned real: A one-antlered deer ran through two stores in Laguna Beach, was hit by a car, ran to the beach, and swam to a cave. A police officer gave it CPR, and then it died.

[Sunbathers on Flamengo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Being at work on Monday morning is almost as good as this! Pic via AP.]

City officials in San Diego, tired of drunk frat boys littering their pristine coast, in 2007 banned drinking on the beach. But there's a loophole: "If you're floating, you're good," according to police. So thousands get wasted on rafts, brah.

Why remove the oil beneath the sand along Gulf beaches when you can just let it sit there forever? It's not hurting anyone. That's the thinking of some "experts," at least. What you can't see won't hurt you!