Editorials, letters to the editor, and other community opinions about Santa Monica.
This article originally appeared in The Healthy City Local. At its meeting tomorrow evening the Santa Monica City Council will once again consider how to save the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Specifically, it will consider recommendations from the “Civic Working Group”…
This post originally appeared in The Healthy City Local. For about 20 years I’ve commuted by bike from my home in Ocean Park to my office in downtown Santa Monica. My route takes me north on Fourth Street, which means crossing…
This piece originally ran in The Healthy City Local. Good jobs and good housing are the goals of progressive economic policies, and both are on the agenda of the Santa Monica City Council tomorrow night. Good jobs, because the council will…
This piece originally ran on The Healthy City Local. When Fay Wells went national to write, in the Washington Post, about what happened when a neighbor called 9-1-1 on her, she brought the issue of race to the attention of…
This piece originally ran on Frank Gruber’s blog, The Healthy City Local. My intention a month ago when I wrote my fourth installment of “Riel Politics,” my series of posts on the firing of Elizabeth Riel, was to wrap up the…
This piece originally ran on The Healthy City Local. As a member of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) I attended last Sunday’s annual membership meeting during which 11 members of SMRR’s Steering Committee were elected. Since the meeting I…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. It has been modified for timeliness and style. When it comes to the Santa Monica Airport (SMO), what a difference a few years, a lot of community action, and a decisive…
The following is a review of “Save the Pier,” a one-hour play recounting the grassroots fight in the early 1970s to stop the demolition of the Santa Monica Pier. Let me be blunt – I love the Santa Monica Pier.…
This article first appeared in the Healthy City Local. Click on the links for parts one, two, and three. One question people keeping asking about the firing of Elizabeth Riel is why the City Council agreed to pay so much…
The post originally appeared in The Healthy City Local. In the wee hours last Wednesday, after a long City Council meeting dealing mostly with the crucial issue of the minimum wage, the council spent more than an hour agreeing to hire…
This article originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. Lately I’ve been writing about politics qua politics, namely the firing of Elizabeth Riel, but I’m going to take a break from that saga to write about something in the real…
Last week I ended my chronology of the firing of Elizabeth Riel by concluding, “there is no evidence from the record that [City Manager Rod] Gould made his decision [to fire Riel] on orders from [then Mayor Pam] O’Connor or…
This post original appeared in The Healthy City Local. I didn’t plan it, but on a de facto basis I’ve taken a month-long, late summer vacation from the life and times of Santa Monica. I did a little traveling, but…
This article originally appeared on Healthy City Local. [pullquote align=left] [T]here is one boulevard in Santa Monica that is so degraded that even people who rarely accept the idea that Santa Monica might stand to change for the better in…
This article originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. A few weeks ago U.S. Representatives Ted Lieu and Karen Bass organized a meeting in Washington where Santa Monica officials and local residents could express their grievances about Santa Monica Airport to…
