This past week, Q-line asked: What do you think are the best thing about the beach and what can be improved upon? Here are your responses: ✆ “The best things about the beach are the ocean itself and the sand to recline and recreate on. Stop cluttering this very special area up with the so-called artwork and whatever nutty plans the city administration is trying to dream up. Clean up the polluted water and sand, and then leave it alone. It’s perfect, or should be, just as it is. Please.” ✆ “Santa Monica is spatial due to four major highways and the 10 freeway offering an easily accessible route to the beach front from east Los Angeles. After sharing parking and packing a lunch, folks can wander around on the pier, the beach front and sit in the sand for free. Such a deal.” ✆ “To improve beaches they should do something about water quality problems, find out the source of all the pollutants and do something about that. Whether it’s people dumping chemicals or bums using the alleys as toilets... The other thing they could do is have more scenery to look at the beach, more women in bikinis or even less. Yeah, that’d be nice, have a topless beach.” ✆ “A beach in itself for people in downtown Los Angeles is very, very good as far as Santa Monica is concerned. If anything is biased it’s the community of Los Angeles, I think that the Santa Monica beach is it. What can be improved upon is water quality. As far as run-off from drains that could be treated to improve the quality of the ocean so there are no poor days for people to swim in. As far as drunken bums or addicted bums, they should have a little bum jail like they do at Disneyland and put them there forever as far as I’m concerned as soon as they sober up. There should be zero tolerance for gangs... If it’s kids from high school just doing something stupid they should just be warned and scared. But if it’s gangs, they make it a habit to intimidate and be stupid, they shouldn’t be justified. The government of Santa Monica and the City Council should be more concerned with the quality of life here than being progressive.” ✆ “I don’t know what the city officials in Santa Monica are racking their brains for about the beach. I think it’s absolutely beautiful, and they should just leave it alone. It doesn’t need anything to happen to it. It’s fine just as it is. It’s a beautiful beach area. The lavatories are fine. Everything is great down there. Leave it alone.” ✆ “The best thing about the beach is that between Labor Day and Memorial Day nobody goes down there. A person can find peace and quiet among nature’s elements and temporarily ignore the travesty our city has become. Having irreversibly destroyed the town’s quality of life, above the cliffs, Santa Monica city planners now have set their sights to enhance the beach. Their solution? More beach programs, more people. Public clubs, hotels, cars and man-made diversions do not enhance the sun, the ocean, the sand and the sky.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 23, 2006. Read the original PDF.