This past week, Q-line asked: What are the best things about living in Santa Monica? What are we appreciating out there? Here are your responses: ✆ “What brought me to Santa Monica was my husband’s job transfer 40 years ago. I was happy then to find a lovely, clean, safe community; one in which I was happy to settle and anticipate raising our expected child. Sadly, this has all changed for the worse. What keeps me here is my daughter’s living in a nearby community, and for now, the financial inability to make a major change. But give me time — I will be out of here. This city has become a nightmare. Did you want to hear lies?” ✆ “I appreciate that, in the beginning, the creator of the universe created Santa Monica and saw that it was good. Then, man was created, and with man came greed. Then, with greed came landlords. Then, with landlord greed came rent control. Then, the creator again looked down upon Santa Monica and saw that it was good. Amen.” ✆ “Santa Monica by the sea, reeking of homeless pee, our bloated city government sold out to big developments. Rent control keeps rent low. Landlords crying, “It’s an unfair blow.” Lots of tourist bucks brings crowds, cars, crime — makes our town suck. Crazy ‘Commies’ run our city, make it a bureaucratic nightmare... what a pity. But the weather is great, and lots of beautiful gals to date. Seagulls, dolphins and a great sunset, and all the crap we soon forget.” ✆ “Well, Santa Monica has pretty good weather. It’s not as hot as it is in other places. We get the nice weather so we get a lot of sunshine and a lot of pretty girls in miniskirts. We’ve got movie theaters all over the place so we can either see the Hollywood movies or the independent films that usually don’t show any place else, like the Aero theater or the Monica theater. We’ve got pretty good stores, and for comedy relief, we’ve got the City Council.” ✆ “I like your bus system. It’s very reasonable and there’s a bus on almost every street. What’s sorely lacking though are crosstowns. Maybe you could do something about that. And also, besides the reasonable fare, transfers are free. So we should be getting lots more people using it than are now.” ✆ “What makes Santa Monica a great place to live? Well, I’m afraid you don’t want to print this, but you know, the fact is the diversity of the city. I mean, there’s homeless, there’s wealthy, there’s in-between. And that always makes Santa Monica the best place on earth. It’s next to the beach, you’re next to Venice, you’re not far from the Valley, where it’s hotter than heck. That is what makes this city so wonderful — the diversity. And you’ve got Third Street, you’ve got the beach, you’ve got the homeless. I mean, it’s God all around. It’s next to heaven. If it’s not heaven, it’s in the same zip code, babe. I take stock in that.” ✆ “Yes, Santa Monica is a wonderful community. I love living here and I’ve lived here since 1976. And I love the diverse socioeconomic lifestyles and the beautiful oceans and the bike paths. But I do think that you need to be more aware of handicapped people. And I happen to be one now for the last eight years. So please fix up the streets and we’ll make our Santa Monica even more beautiful.” ✆ “I love swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and thanks to the untold millions of taxpayers’ dollars to Heal the Bay, I can swim another 50 years. I also love riding a bicycle.And soon, thanks to our forethinking council members, those pesky cars will only be used by those in the public bureau. I really love going to the mall and seeing the fantastic talent trying to entertain all those tourists from New York. With the massive humanity, not to mention the bums, it must make those tourists feel right at home. It’s socially important to think of other people. I especially like the Pier with its fake Coney Island feel and those free concerts. I’ve learned so much about marginal music. But what I really love about Santa Monica is its new Miami Beach-type feel. It’s great that we’re no longer a little crummy beach town, but West Coast Miami Beach crap.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 29, 2006. Read the original PDF.