By Ron Scott Smith
Walking down Wilshire Boulevard on Sunday night, heading for a late meal and something more, it occurs to me: Who said goodnight to that lady down there? A trembling arm reaches out from beneath a blanket of cardboard, groping for something inside the ragged duffel bag by her side. A deeply weathered face rises slowly from the ground; her eyes are slightly open, and catch mine for an instant. Then she retreats back down into a late summer night slumber. She’s 80 if she’s a year. Her bed is a cold concrete one outside a closed restaurant on Fifth Street, and it’s not likely her bed of choice.
She’ll open her eyes in the morning just like you and I. She’ll be ready to break the fast just like you and I do, except she won’t have the bacon and eggs or hotcakes to go to. She’ll have to wait until the afternoon, for the food offering at the park, and if she has the energy and the legs, she’ll walk over there to get a hot bowl of soup and a piece of bread. Well, excuse her. For living. Barely.
And excuse the City of Santa Monica for giving a damn, for feeding hungry people.
Build them — the food giveaways — and they will come, too many of the homeless will come, so say the well-fed critics among us, and they’ll bring “crime, dirt, filth and anti-social behavior” along with them. But many “homefull” are also known to be the source of similar problems. And aren’t those just some of the unavoidable, not so pleasant by-products of any large group of people living together in what have come to be known as “cities?” Get it? Get over it.
The same critics agonize that hundreds of other more disciplined municipalities have found ways to make it harder for the poor to get fed, so why does Santa Monica find ways to make it easier? Maybe it’s simply because it’s a good city sitting here by this bay doing a good thing. And until somebody figures out a way to get everybody “up and in,” a good city has no choice but to feed the “down and out.” If there are errors in judgment made, let them be on the side of humanity and compassion, coming from our best instincts, not from the lesser ones of fear, elitism and greed.
Santa Monica has strong shoulders, and doesn’t mind some of the weight of the world sitting upon those shoulders. And it is a load to bear, this public food giveaway in the park.
So is rent control, which allows that not only the well-to-do should have the inalienable right to live beside everybody’s ocean; and so is the minimum living wage, which allows that some of the hardest workers among us can supply beds for their families other than the concrete ones on the streets.
It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it. This city has decided it will. The canvas that is Santa Monica is full of dazzling colors, of sunsets, and carousels, of small apartments and large beachfront mansions. Some of the strokes are a little wild, unruly and off-center, but for many of us, they fit in with the controlled ones and only add to the masterpiece being created.
And don’t lose any sleep for the wealthiest — they’ll continue to be just fine. They do lunch inside the establishments whose sidewalks at night serve as bed for those less fortunate or less ambitious. And what’s in their lunches is not in the wildest dreams of the lady sleeping under her cardboard on Fifth Street.
What is she dreaming about? What’s going through that head down there on that cold ground? Does she dream she’s flying, like you and I might, or is she just slipping and falling down. You have that dream?
Possibly, her dream is of Sunday fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and mama’s home-made cherry pie … stuff that’s good enough to die for. (Ron Scott Smith can reached at)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 28, 2002. Read the original PDF.