By Michael Pardridge Santa Monica
Readers might remember me from my Dec. 23, 2006 letter regarding the high-profile clamp-down on crime amid all those jaywalking scofflaws in front of the Main Post Office on Fifth Street. Here’s an update on the situation and something to think about on another front for our city’s finest: Not one single time since my citation for jaywalking have I gone to the post office and not seen somebody jaywalk. No sir, not once. Postal patrons do it all day long, recklessly taking their lives into their own hands. Drivers make dramatic and heart-stopping, five-mile-per-hour U-turns, too, to secure a suddenly open parking spot. I should tell them about my citation from a couple years back for that one.
But Fifth Street is amateur hour compared to the vehicular mischief happening at the intersection of Lincoln (Boulevard) and Broadway. Surely, readers have shopped at Vons and then left the parking lot, only to find themselves in another one. Head’s up to the Revenue Enhancement folks downtown: During rush-hour (you know, all day long), drivers going south on Lincoln must be color-blind because they routinely run the red light to block the intersection at Broadway in their uniquely Westside-me-first/you-whenever desire to inch toward the freeway about a million miles down the road.
P.S. — I’m e-mailing this Letter to the Editor. I can’t trust myself to drive to the post office. I might, you know, “sin” again. Hey, is there rehab for jaywalkers and intersection hogs?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 24, 2007. Read the original PDF.