This past week, Q-line asked: What about Santa Monica are you thankful for? Why do you choose to live here? Explain. Here are your responses: ✆ “The only thing that keeps me in Santa Monica for the moment is the inability, at the moment, to make a major change... and some degree of nostalgia for the past, having been a resident for 40 years. But I would leave this very moment if an offer came along. This is not the lovely Santa Monica of yesteryear. It is filthy, bum-ridden, unhealthy, crime-ridden, etc. No thanks for living here, just resignation.” ✆ “Well, I’m thankful living in Southern California. I can go surfing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon and dancing at night. Or at least I could if I knew how to surf, ski or dance. I’m also thankful that “The Simpsons” are on two times a day. I’m thankful that George W. Bush will be out of office pretty soon.” ✆ “Thank God for rent control. Without rent control, there would be a lot more homeless. Even though I’m not under the old rent control laws in the apartment where I live, there is still a little bit of constraint and I’m very, very, very grateful.” ✆ “I am thankful to live in Santa Monica because of the endless voter support for lifetime council members. I am thankful to our council for bringing Santa Monica into the 19th century with bicycle power and helping to rid us of those nasty cars. I am thankful for the many homeless in our town, free meals and sewage draining into the street reminds one of the cholera epidemics. People in this town have a sacred duty to support out-of-town bums, out-of-town non-profits, out-of-town businesses, out-of-town students and planners who are kind enough to bring all the problems of a big city — greed, congestion, cameras, a socialist right to live as cheaply as possible at someone else’s expense. But most of all, after 50 years of living here, I am amazed how East Coast liberals and their cutting-edge ideas have missed and messed up what was once a simple and infinitely more beautiful beach town.” ✆ “I was in the audience when Veronica played her harmonica on the pier in Santa Monica. While I sat in the audience, I smelt a smelt. I must say, I never smelt the smelt like that smelt smelt. Recently, Dick Dale played his steel guitar on the pier in Santa Monica. Again, I was in the audience and smelt the smelt. It must have been the same smelt, because I remember the smelt of the first smelt that I smelt on the pier in Santa Monica. I am thankful for Santa Monica because it is a paradise for smelt smellers.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 25, 2006. Read the original PDF.