Before a single note was played, Hurricane Marie reshaped Santa Monica's cultural ambitions as thoroughly as it reshaped its coastline. The city's inaugural Ocean Way music festival — a carefully assembled debut featuring The Killers, Jack White, and Olivia Dean — was canceled in September 2026 after the storm's coastal erosion rendered Santa Monica Beach structurally unsafe for a large gathering. It is a quiet reminder that the grandest human plans are always in conversation with the natural world, and that coastal communities build their futures on ground that the sea may yet reclaim.