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# Last trip down Tony Street
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/last-trip-down-tony-street-editor/
- Published: 2003-06-04T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T02:17:06.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import, Homeless

Top 10 things I won’t miss about Santa Monica: 10.) Cars that try to kill me when I’m crossing at Montana and 15th; 9.) Downtown traffic and parking congestion created by our oh-so-competent city planners; 8.) The guy who lives in the rent-controlled apartment towers on Ocean Avenue that complained to the City Council that one of his two Mercedes would have to be parked on the street because of the 1999 “de-rent control” laws (as seen on CityTV); 7.) The City Council that didn’t even flinch (let alone question) why a guy with two Mercedes is living under rent control; 6.) The middle-to-upper-income people living in rent-controlled apartments who posture that they’re “down with the little people” while displacing those very same people; 5.) The parking enforcement; 4.) Anyone who claims to be “from the streets” year after year after year after year, wearing it as if it were a badge of honor instead of doing something to change their situation; 3.) The bums, vagrants, drug addicts and criminals (AKA “homeless”) who take advantage of Santa Monica’s overly generous, white-guilt-sixties-hippie-driven social programs while giving nothing back to the community; 2.) SMRR and their hypocritical politics; 1.) The people who long for the mythological “good ol’ days” in Santa Monica when rich and poor, black, brown and white homeowners and homeless all lived together in perfect, socialist harmony.

Arrivederci Santa Monica! I look forward to returning in a few years when complete, natural, market-driven gen-trification has taken place. Don’t worry though, I’ll be watching you from afar thanks to the SMDP’s web access. And I’ll be back.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 4, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/060403.pdf?ref=smdp.com)