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# Readers say Santa Monica is soulless
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/readers-say-santa-monica-is-soulless/
- Published: 2002-08-02T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:35:03.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Real Estate & Housing, Promenade, #archive-import, Homeless

Since many long-time businesses in Santa Monica continue to disappear, Q-line asked: “Is Santa Monica losing its soul? Why or why not?”

Here are the answers from the public. ■ “Santa Monica’s soul is not lost. City fathers gave it to the homeless a long time ago. It now resides in a shopping cart along side a bottle of Wild Turkey in an alley near you.” ■ “Yes, it has. It was done by the city council by allowing the rich fat cats to come into the city and rip its heart out. How did the rich fat cats do this? 1\. They ripped the very heart and soul from Santa Monica Pier 2\. They erected apartment buildings and tacked on rents that not even a hard working man could afford.

“Where are the rent control people when we need them? Money, money and more money is the problem. Give the fat cats their way, and they would rip the heart out of the devil. I hate to use the devil’s name and rich fat cats in the same sentence, but I guess they are one in the same so it does not matter.” ■ “I think Santa Monica lost its soul a long time ago. A soul symbolically represents that which is fair, balancing out rights and wrongs. A good soul sees issues and dilemmas through neutral eyes. It does not compromise fairness because of cultural, racial, economic or political bias. Santa Monica used to have a better soul. It used to have leaders who were chosen at large for their abilities, their personalities, not their political affiliation. Now we have SMRR. Almost every department and almost every meaningful position from city council to school board is seated by someone who is there only with the blessing of this political machine. All of Santa Monica’s regulatory power from traffic patterns to quality of education, homeless issues, housing controls are left to this twenty-plus-year-old soul of Santa Monica called SMRR. We need a change.” ■ “Not really because if you check any history books you will find that Santa Monica used to have a railroad through it all the way to the pier. We also had back houses. It’s like a plant, like nature. Plants die, and they grow anew. I feel like Santa Monica has just grown a new soul.” ■ “Santa Monica lost its soul when it sold itself to the highest bidding developers. Walking in Santa Monica used to be charming. Now it’s difficult to see open sky because of all the five-and six-story buildings that replaced more modest two-and three-story buildings. It lost its soul when it allowed the police to hassle street performers and young punks to intimidate the homeless on the Third Street Promenade. There are still good things about Santa Monica, but I won’t bring them up for fear that the powers that be will screw them up, too.” ■ “The rent is so high that nobody can do anything here anymore. It’s hard to get the rent when you’ve got the condition you’ve got now in Santa Monica. What needs to happen here is the residents should go down to City Hall and do something with those fat cats that sit there giggling every other Tuesday night. It’s going to be just like Westwood. Give it another year, it will be dead here. With the homeless and the panhandlers nobody wants to go down here. How many tourists have you seen this summer? Fat cats never walk around to see what going on. They just sit there giggling every other Tuesday night.” ■ “Santa Monica is losing its soul. The name of the villain is GREED. Greed by the private property owners. Greed by the landlords that own the businesses. Greed by the City of Santa Monica. They should be ashamed of themselves. They themselves have to blame for running these businesses out of town. I can remember Santa Monica in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. It was nothing like it is now. They’ve made a mess out of the Promenade. Now it’s just a place for the homeless to sit around and smoke dope and urinate. I’ve never seen anything like it.” ■ “Yes! Santa Monica HAS lost its soul. Not IS losing its soul. How? It’s losing all of its long-term residents, property owners, renters. It’s lost all of its old family owned businesses. It’s getting dirtier. It invites outsiders rather than a bedroom community it’s turned completely into commercial. Not good.” ■ “I was born and raised in Santa Monica. Now I am moving out of Santa Monica after being here my whole life because I feel it is losing its soul. When I see these places closing up, a lot of my history is closing with them, and it makes me very sad. I think that Santa Monica politics are encouraging the wrong people to come to town, and the price of land has just become outrageous. Yes, we are Beverly Hills-by-the-sea.” ■ “YES! Because America is. What is happening in Santa Monica is simply a micro-cosmic version of what’s happening in the nation as a whole. Namely the destruction of the middle class. Kevin Phillips new book, ‘Wealth and Democracy,’ includes a pair of charts that show from 1947 to 1979 the incomes of Americans in all segments of the population increased in comparable fashions. From 1980 to the present, that is during the tax cutting, anti-government regulation era that started with the election of Ronald Reagan and continued through the Republican revolution of the ‘90s, the incomes of the wealthiest one percent of Americans have increased by 72 percent, while the incomes of most other groups have increased only minimally or have declined. As more and more middle class, stagnating income people have been forced to leave Santa Monica to afford a home, Santa Monica is increasingly becoming a dichotomous community of rich and poor.” ■ “Santa Monica has not only lost its soul, but its charm and atmosphere that once made it the pride and envy of the west side. The powers that be have turned this idealistic city into a cold, concrete, traffic latent mess with no regard to the residents that have made up this populous. The city has sold out to the highest bidder. With it has come its new image that they seem to have wanted along with an increase in vagrants, panhandlers. One used to be able to safely walk in the evening to many quaint restaurants along Wilshire Boulevard that welcomed your patronage. This has ended along with the warmth that attracted so many people in the past. It’s a tragic shame what has happened to Santa Monica.” ■ “I think Santa Monica is definitely losing its soul. I don’t know why, but it’s sad. Hot Dog On A Stick’s rent is being raised from around $500.00 a month to $2,200.00 a month. I don’t think that they will be around much longer.” ■ “Santa Monica has sold its soul, no! It actually paid to get rid of it! When the city did away with the official city seal without a public vote that was criminal! To me that is like changing the American Flag! Everything in the seal meant something from the fertile mermaid to ‘populus felix in urbe felici’ to the official state colors of blue, yellow and gold. I'm a native of SM and somewhat dissatisfied of the movie set it has become literally with the city politics stuck in line at Fantasyland, dreaming of Tinkerbell. Reality is that Tinkerbell can't fly in SM due to insurance costs. My opinion is that SM has BECOME a CITY with a very political voice that I don't always agree with! I'll be sad the day they change the name due to religious equality! I always love the soil under my feet! Hopefully that won't be taken away!”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 2, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080202.pdf?ref=smdp.com)