Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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The photos you see here were taken on the same day, Sunday January 21, a mere 40 minutes and about 25 miles apart. The $5.79 "high water mark" was the Chevron on Cloverfield; the low water mark, my favorite Sinclair station in North Long Beach. My absolute fave station, it even offers same price, cash or credit; and, no, I don't make a special trip down there to buy gas. But when I'm passing through on the way back from points south, I take a very short detour and fill up. A fill up of my...
These Observer pages have long chronicled decades of mismanagement by Santa Methica's governing bodies, the accumulated misdirection and incompetence having led the city to the death spiral in which it currently finds itself. However, there is likely agreement among not only Observer regulars, but, residents and tourists alike, that there is at least one thing in which Santa Methica has always excelled: terrorizing all who dare to drive a car here, by handing out very expensive tickets for expir...
In Early November, I had an illuminating conversation about Santa Monica on American 2916 heading west from LaGuardia to Dallas/Ft. Worth. The middle seat on the Airbus was empty and the 60ish gentleman sitting in the aisle seat was well groomed and well dressed. Quiet at first, he began to chat somewhere over Kentucky. Introduced himself as Paul K., a lifetime New Yorker, proud of his humble southern Italian origins and subsequent success in the restaurant/food business. He three years ago...
I'm always thinking about the next topics to address in my periodic submissions to the Observer. Upcoming candidates include the insanity of the road diet, the hulking, creepy "The People Concern" campus on Cloverfield, and the ridiculous and unacceptable amount of emergency vehicle siren/air horns noise in Mid City. Look for those submissions soon. Monday night, Sept. 18, I took a walk downtown for the first time in weeks. Those walks commonly provide me with ideas to be explored. Monday night...
For quite some time---maybe, even, years---I've been working out in my head a piece dealing with a curse that arrived in Santa Monica at 9:49 AM on May 20, 2016. At that moment---cheered on by people who had had a hand in its gestation and birth, including (now convicted felon) Mark Ridley-Thomas, the now conveniently exiled hapless Eric Garcetti, and last but not least, the now blessedly-disappeared Pam O'Connor, Sheila Kuehl, and Kevin McKeown---the first train from downtown L.A. pulled into t...
Back in September 2005 I was walking down the main drag of Auckland, New Zealand, when I spotted a travel agency's breathless window ad for a dream package trip to "glamorous" Los Angeles-Hollywood-Santa Monica (!!!). The ad featured a composite photo of both the Hollywood sign and SM Ferris wheel. I chuckled, feeling smug. This little window sign served to confirm my growing confidence that the 1996 timing of my departure from Marin County/San Francisco, in favor of sunny Santa Monica, was...
"Too Much and Never Enough"---Mary Trump, July 14, 2020 "Just Say NO"---Nancy Reagan, Sept. 14, 1986 October 14, 2022 - The above statements by Mary Trump and Nancy Reagan summarize perfectly my feelings on Measure SMC. The statements should also summarize YOUR feelings. Measure SMC is Santa Monica College's LATEST attempt to pick your pocket, for a whopping $375 million---one of a seemingly endless stream of bond measures both passed and proposed by this fire-breathing dragon down on Pico. SMC...
A few weeks ago I submitted a story about the desperate situation in front of the Mar Vista Library at Venice Blvd. and Inglewood, complete with images of the depravity that no civilized society should tolerate. Last week I returned to the area. I am happy to report that things have changed dramatically. The filthy encampments and their entitled flipping-you-the-bird "residents" are gone, replaced by a clean, normal sidewalk and large galvanized metal planters weighing hundreds of pounds, which...
If you shudder, as you pass the infamous, filthy, dangerous, druggie-filled "Boninville" camp under the freeway at Venice and Sepulveda, or the countless homeless vagrant encampments in Hollywood, or, indeed, that horrible homeless mess under the Pico/Centinela bridge as close as Santa Monica's eastern border with West Los Angeles, well, don't take comfort by telling yourself that that can't happen here in Santa Monica. Actually, it can, and IS already happening. And it all seems to be...
