Welcome to 2014! The Santa Monica Next team spent our two week holiday hiatus reloading for 2014. You can expect more voices, more coverage and an overall improved website from where we were when we launched last August. In addition…
Recognizing her role both as a local and regional leader on environmental and transportation issues, Streetsblog Los Angeles awarded Pam O’Connor the “Politician of the Year” Streetsie Award for 2013. Southern California Streets Initiative Board Chair Juan Matute* on Streetsblog…
While Phase II of the Expo Line isn’t expected to be completed until 2015, with revenue operations beginning in 2016, construction of Santa Monica’s first light rail project is well underway. Last week, I had a chance to tour some…
Friends, First, thank you all so much for reading and contributing to Santa Monica Next. The website is off to a great start, but thanks to a donation from the Vida Feliz Foundation, we’ll be able to expand the website…
Any discussion of how to get millennials more involved in civic decision making has to recognize one simple fact. The current generation of twenty somethings (and some early thirty somethings) is the first generation to grow up surrounded by digital…
Earlier this month, UNITE HERE Local 11, a non-profit representing hotel workers, struck a deal with a South Carolina’s OTO Development that will allow staff at two new mid-priced hotels to organize a union once construction is completed. In return,…
How can Santa Monica grow into a city of the future, if so many of its decisions are made by and informed by an older populace? This question is becoming a louder and louder one even as the City of Santa…
Last week, I had the chance to interview Juan Matute, a transportation researcher with the UCLA Luskin Center, Santa Monica resident, and Chair of the Southern California Streets Initiative’s Board of Directors. (SCSI publishes Streetsblog Los Angeles and Santa Monica…
Just a quick note. Alert readers will note a change to the top bar with a new link. The new link points to a page full of information about ty of Santa Monica v United States of America, Federal Aviation Administration…
I know James Rojas pretty well. I first met him over six years ago, when I first moved to Los Angeles in his old office at Metro’s headquarters in Downtown Los Angeles. Since then, we’ve gotten together a couple of…
We’ve spent a lot of time talking Tongva Park since our launch in August, so we thought we’d turn over the coverage of this weekend’s celebration to all of you. [View the story “Your coverage of the Tongva Park Celebration”…
While researching the Streetsblog Los Angeles story concerning the new regional push for bike share, I had a chance to talk with Santa Monica Mayor Pam O’Connor about what role Santa Monica has in the regional effort. As Gary Kavanagh…
As we approach the two month anniversary of the launch of Santa Monica Next, we wanted to take a moment to ask you, our readers, how we’re doing. We are proud of the work we’ve done bring event previews and…
I listened to the wup-wup-wup-wup of the helicopter’s flying overhead, I cursed inwardly and got up to double-check the front door was locked. Usually sirens and helicopters mean there’s a criminal on the loose, and better safe than sorry. The…
Thanks everyone who came out to our Santa Monica fundraiser at Juan and Sirinya Matute’s. We raised nearly $1,000 (in addition to the over $2000 from the KickStarter campaign) making it a successful event. Plus the view was amazing, the…
