Letters
• Town Hall on the OFW Ordinance - Paul
Carey
• More on the Ordinance - Steve
Schlein
• Venice Women on the Web - Pat
Hartman
• How High the Fence? - Kevin
Maloney
• How High the Fence on Rialto? - Brian
Finney
• Billboard Blues - Grant Gordon
• Letter from Seattle - Tina Morehead &
Steve Effingham
• Immigration - Ron Lowe
Town Hall on the Ocean Front Walk
Ordinance
Dear
Beachhead,
What an evening! I must say
that the dais demonstrated remarkable compassion and tolerance of the
disrespectful behavior on the part of some of the OFW community
members.
It is felt by all the
current state of draft ordinance is
unworkable.
Culturally
disjointed: Zoning OFW is the absolute antithesis of the organic process that
has brought world wide attention to Venice
Beach.
Unenforceable: The existing
ordinance could well be working if it were actually enforced. The NUMBER ONE
CONCERN of the OFW community is the removal of the commercial vendors. If you
did not make it you may not sell it. Please keep these people out thereby
reducing the need for
zoning.
Administrative nightmare:
Zoning OFW as proposed has a fiscal impact that is not acknowledged nor are the
jurisdictions involved prepared to accept the
burden.
Being a musician who must
rely on an amplifier, and an engineer, I have specific issues with the noise
ordinance as discussed at the meeting. The specifications are inconsistent with
the physics.
The ultimate objective
is to harmonize the activities on OFW with the community while nurturing
expression.
While I personally can
not understand why anyone who chose to live at the beach would complain, I do
acknowledge that there are folks that wish the performers had an off switch. For
all the time and energy that is going into this, perhaps we should ask an
architect in the community to comment on the feasibility of a structure to block
the sound.
Lastly, I am dismayed
that criminality is asserted in the ordinance. A workable ordinance will see
enforcement limited to revocation of the permit to occupy a site with an appeal
available subject to a hearing in the same venue that granted the permit. All
criminality shall be judged according to existing municipal
code.
You really need to walk the
boardwalk on Sunday and pick a few people who will participate in crafting a
workable solution.
Thank you for
your commitment to the
process.
Paul
Carey
••••••
More
on the Ordinance
Dear
Beachhead,
The Ocean Front draft
ordinance published in the February 2008 issue of the Beachhead would legalize
75 decibels of sound volume at a distance of twenty-five feet from any source on
the Venice boardwalk.
The Noise Element
(Exhibit H) of the city’s General Land Use Plan places the volume of 75
decibels on a scale between the noise of shouting 3 feet away and the noise of a
vacuum cleaner 10 feet away.
No member of
the public should have to suffer this intolerable volume of noise while walking
on the ocean front, and performer noise cannot legally be allowed inside the
homes of residents who live on or near the ocean
front.
Performer noise far below 75
decibels already invades the homes of Venice
residents.
The noise decibel
criteria in the draft ordinance is the wrong criteria because it will harm the
public welfare and violate the seminal decision of the United States Supreme
Court in Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781
(1989).
In Ward, performers argued
that they have a First Amendment right to perform outdoors even if their noise
enters the homes of nearby residents. The Supreme Court ruled that performers do
not have a right to place their noise inside anyone’s home. The justices
observed:
“… It can no longer
be doubted that government has a substantial interest in protecting its citizens
from unwelcome noise. This interest is perhaps at its greatest when government
seeks to protect the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home
…”
Since performers do
not have a right to put their noise inside the homes of Venice residents, city
government does not have a right to do it for
them.
Instead, government has a
duty to “protect the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the
home” and that means keeping performer noise strictly on the
outside.
Steve
Schlein
•••••
Venice
Women on the Web
Dear
Beachhead,
VirtualVenice.info delights in
showcasing the talents of Venice artists. These women have their own pages:
poets Philomene Long, Kate Braverman, Lynne Bronstein and Wanda Coleman; authors
Laura Shepard Townsend and Rana Ayzeren; and photographers Arielle Haze Tyner
and Helen K. Garber.
I would love to
feature more Venice women. All it takes is: for a visual artist, a few photos of
Venice-related art; for a poet, a few Venice-related poems; for an author, a
book excerpt or substantial review of your Venice-related
book.
Bios and interviews are also
desirable, and it would be great to have women in other areas too, like music
and theater. All I ask is that the examples of your creativity have something to
do with Venice.
Please consider
contacting me for your own page in Virtual
Venice.
Best of all possible
regards,
Pat
Hartman
•••••••
How
High the Fence?
Dear
Beachhead,
It’s not too late to
distance yourself from Fox News. Georgie Gravel went stark, raving mad, putting
such an inaccurate slant on the Venice Neighborhood Council’s Fences and
Hedges meeting that Bill O’Reilly would be proud. Georgie, the only thing
accurate in your article is the title, which, surprisingly, makes a good point.
So why didn’t you expand on it, instead of completely misrepresenting what
actually went on.
Yes, tall fences
violate an existing ordinance that a LOT of people don’t like, some for
very good reasons, some for, well, kinda shaky, embellished, emotional reasons.
Yes, there was some rude shouting. But OVERWHELMINGLY, everyone was willing to
listen to EVERYONE, for or against the law. Georgie Gravel, you are a liar. You
said the meeting was seriously slanted in favor of people wanting to keep their
illegally high fences. The FACT is, more than 90-percent of the people attending
the meeting want illegally high fences. That’s not slanted! That’s
just the way it was! Not only that, Georgie, but the few people with a minority
point of view were graciously allowed to take cuts and speak earlier, so they
wouldn’t have to wait until the end of the meeting. And their points of
view were applauded, too, even by the “other side”. Yes, there were
a few boos and hisses, but my dear Mr. Limbaugh, the meeting was mostly civil,
and ably and democratically handled by the Venice Neighborhood Council. You make
it sound like all opposing viewpoints couldn’t be heard over the din of
self-righteous law-breakers. No, everyone was
heard.
And if you say there are
70-percent of Venice property owners who want the existing law, and that they
should show up at the next meeting, I say right on! Where were they January
29th?
I say to the Beachhead: Your
publication is important. You don’t need to bend and misrepresent the
truth to get your point across. That’s what the other side
does.
Kevin
Maloney
•••••
How
High the Fence on Rialto?
Dear
Beachhead,
In his report on the VNC Board
meeting on Fences and Hedges, George Gravel introduces himself as “an
innocuous-looking gent that [he means, who] observes, asks questions and
listens.” Read further and nothing could be further from the
truth.
He claims that 90 percent of the
200 Venetians attending “were screaming and hollering” their
objections to the proposal to bring down all hedges and fences to a regulation
3’ 6”. While a few speakers qualified for this description, the
majority of the objections from all but four of those attending were expressed
in reasonable and often deeply felt
terms.
George Gravel then asserts
with no evidence that “attendance was seriously slanted to people wanting
to keep their illegally high fences.” To back up his contention he claims
that he drove slowly through Venice and found that only 30 percent of our homes
have high fences. I have done a house to house count of the 400 and 500 blocks
of Rialto Avenue. There is no way you can do an accurate count with a drive-by.
I found that 60 percent of the 400 block and 50 percent of the 500 block had
high fences.
George Gravel
concludes that on his count that means that “70 percent observe the
law.” Apart from rejecting his count, I would point out that several of
the home owners in my block who have low fences nevertheless object to the
proposed attempt to reduce Venice to a uniformity, when Venice represents for
most of us a triumph of diversity - if not outright
eccentricity.
If George Gravel considers
his an impartial and objective piece of journalism, he should apply at once for
a job with Fox News.
Brian
Finney
••••••
Billboard
Blues
Dear
Beachhead,
Could someone please explain
how it is that we got this hip, new, lighted mini-billboard on the corner of
Main and Abbot Kinney?
Driving home from
work the other day, I stopped at the traffic
light.
I glanced over to my right to look
for lurking cyclists/pedestrians and got an eyeful of the new ultra-desirable,
oh-so-hip MacBook Air.
Why is there
suddenly a billboard at that
intersection?
Dangerously placed at eye
level to a driver?
Do I need to find a
new route home to avoid yet another slick pitch, this one so totally
unavoidable?
Perhaps CBS/Decaux will face
a lawsuit after someone gets knocked down because of their pretty but
obstructive billboard.
Isn’t
someone supposed to vet these things? Whose brilliant idea was
this?
Or, is it, as I suspect, acceptable
only if the products advertised therein are in the tragically hip and lovely
category.
I can’t see a poster for
Subway or Ralphs getting the green light, can
you?
Are these the same geniuses that run
the orange lights on the meaningless billboard at the community center all
night.
Yours in total disbelief,
Grant
Gordon
•••••••
Letter
from Seattle
Dear
Beachhead,
Hope all is well with the
collective. We so enjoy our Beachhead – a bit of sunshine each month here
in the Northwest! Here is our sustainer check for $100. Keep up the good
work!
Love, Tina Morehead & Steve
Effingham
••••••
Immigration
Dear
Beachhead,
There goes another bogus claim
of the anti-immigration crowd. A report just released says that immigrants are
far less likely to commit crimes than are native born citizens. People born in
the United States are eight times more likely than immigrants to be
incarcerated.
Go to any cosmopolitan
city, New York, Miami, San Francisco, and you will hear a wide diversity of
languages from around the world. So much for the “speak English”
only spiel of talk radio hosts.
As far as
the assimilation argument goes, I see multitudes of Mexicans and Latinos and
their children and they’re working, speaking English and assimilating
quite well, thank you.
Every day the
bigotry, intolerance and prejudice that drives the anti-immigration movement
becomes more apparent.
Ron Lowe
Posted: Sat - March 1, 2008 at 04:26 PM
