By Paul Kuzniar
So Mayor Feinstein, you’re “sickened and embarrassed” by the Boathouse decision?
Why don’t you try walking down Main Street from Ocean Park to Marine Way any evening if you truly want to be “sickened and embarrassed.”
If you do, you will be aggressively accosted, panhandled, bumped, spat upon, shoved, followed, shouted at, blocked, sworn at and threatened.
I’m not speaking metaphorically. I'm literally referring to public safety and public health dangers.
Public Safety: people are stealing shopping carts, newspapers, coffee, condiments, chairs, food, clothing.
Public Health: people are sleeping in doorways on the sidewalks (to say nothing of sleeping on the beach and on top of the restrooms), spitting, smoking pot, urinating, defecating, copulating and turning over trash receptacles.
Everything I have described to you I have recently witnessed on or near Main Street, Santa Monica. And I am “sickened and embarrassed,” not by the human tragedy on the street but your inability to make our city safe and livable.
Shame on you.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 28, 2002. Read the original PDF.