By Jack Susleck Mid-City
I have lived in Mid-City for the past six years and I must take issue with Mikey (Tittinger’s) piece about it (“Cartographer shrugged: Mid-City full of maybes,” Oct. 17).
I moved to Ocean Park almost 30 years ago, when it was a neighborhood with neighborhood services like barbershops, dry cleaners, bodegas and funky affordable places to eat and drink (Circle Bar R.I.P.) lining Main Street. Now it’s a sterile strip of Starbucks and revolving boutiques with the lifespans of fruit flies. After the invasion of the frappuccino-swilling cell phone addicts was complete, I fled for higher ground.
Now I live within short walking distance of a Co-Op, cleaner, barber, bodega, local bar, movie theaters, grocery store, pharmacy, plenty of little restaurants and downtown — for whenever I want that increasingly empty Santa Monica “experience.” Outside of business trips, I rarely have to drive my car... not bad for the center of nowhere.
With development looming all around, I just hope this ground is high enough.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.