Letters
• Sister/Brother, Can you Spare a Dime? -
Theresa Hulme
• 35th Anniversary issue
- Shanna Moore
• Playa Vista 2 -
Terence Pearce
Sister/Brother, Can you Spare a
Dime?
by Theresa
Hulme
Dear Beachhead
Reader,
The post holiday season can be
a wicked hangover. Not just financial and physical but also psychological. The
combination of hangovers all work together to create one long, slow, and broke
month known as January. As the U.S. troops in Iraq experience Desert Slog, we,
here in Venice brace for the inevitable Winter Slog.
With the New Year comes the voided
checks from inking the wrong year, the perfunctory pair of new slippers and at
least one picture frame, the decorations that stay up too long, rotting
Christmas trees first in your living room then strewn about sidewalks, gutters,
and streets all over the city for months to come. A good riddance to Christmas
Carols that become, by Christmas Day, akin to a form of psychological terror. By
the way, Thank God, or Santa, that they ended early this year. The predictable
carols promptly start Thanksgiving weekend and usually drone endlessly through
New Years Day on every Clear Channel Station in every elevator, store, mall,
movie theatre, and restaurant in America. A recent Austrian study showed that
incessant Christmas Carols actually incite aggression in people.
Conveniently for retailers, holiday
music also induces subconscious buying which spins into somewhat of a fury for
most Americans thus spiraling us further into a debt that could send Duhbya back
for another white line; After all, its corporate capitalism’s most
profitable time of the year, right next to war season, but that doesn’t
start til spring.
The corporate media
networks prefer the really big terror threats around the Holidays and bomb
dropping in the Spring time. (And you thought Christmas was about that Middle
Eastern guy with the Hispanic name, who some say was gay and homeless.
Personally, after my Spanish classes, I never know if I should pronounce Jesus
with a soft or hard J!)
I wonder how
many Jesus’ the LAPD and Santa Monica Police Department will jail this
year for sleeping on the beach. Maybe in Jesus’ time, it was legal to be a
nomad.
Earthquakes, orange alerts,
bummed out bank accounts, a few extra pounds, the flu, lots of leftover food
& wrapping paper, a drunken party, crowded airports. In one way or another,
every single American must experience personally and collectively, The Holidays.
Even Jesus, ready or not, comes out with the manger, the lights and the garland.
Even the most humble among us can’t escape the fury and circus that is
Christmas, the birthday of the homeless guy mentioned above.
Times were tough for him and times are
tough on us. Here in Beachhead land, circa 2004, A.D., we work all year like
little elves producing some of the best stuff that money can’t buy. You
can’t find it just anywhere.
Every
single month, you just might find the coolest damned rag you’ll never see
in another city or town, anywhere in the world, no matter how hard you looked.
The Beachhead, with all its unique flavor is indigenous to Venice culture and
lifestyle. And, like Jesus, many Beachhead readers are the drifting/ nomad
idealistic types who find comfort in calling this small town by the sea a home.
(Jesus, gulp, wasn’t so lucky. We all know what happened to him when he
started preaching all that peace
stuff!)
And that’s why we need
your help! In Beachhead land, we experience the same opposition that Jesus
himself had moral issues with. Since we won’t accept any racist, sexist,
or otherwise dehumanizing ad campaigns (slumlords included), the Beachhead is
often financially short. We provide you with one of the only absolutely pure
forms of free press left in this unfortunate age of pseudo-journalism that acts
as cheerleaders for corporate profit and promotes wars for entertainment.
Join the nostalgia and ponder over the
pornographic images, penis enlargement and breast augmentation ads you’ll
never see in the Beachhead. Golly, even John Ashcroft would approve! Loathe as
we are to admit it, the Beachhead is a few days late hitting the streets not
because of a shortage of counterculture rants or humorous avant-garde photos but
because we are more than a few dollars short. Not eligible for corporate
welfare, we survive only on donations, fundraisers and our loyal sustainers.
And You, dear reader are in a position
of helping us out. How about a donation, anonymous for all the celebrities (we
know where some of you live) and closeted Republicans (we promise we won’t
tell anyone) out there who WE KNOW are readers? Or a not-so-anonymous donation
and receive the prestige and honor of your name printed on the very first page.
Just think, you could revel in the
satisfaction of contributing not more to the Pentagon budget but living out the
creed of ‘Thinking Globally, Acting Locally.’ COME ON, all you aged
and coming-of-age hippies, Greens, Reds, freaks, geeks, drunks and skunks,
housed and unhoused, homeys and homos, dig a little deeper, past the lint and
soft gum and kick us some of that declining dollar. Hell, we’ll even
accept the Euro!
How about something
to let us know you’re out there, believing in us, laughing with us and/or
at us.
And we promise we won’t spend it
all in one place. Or tell anyone. Maybe just Jesus. He would probably smile.
Peace. Thanks for reading and Happy
New Year from all of us at the Beachhead Collective.
***********
35th
Anniversary issue
Hey Im with
you...Ill never forget a cop named Gerson who took me and another young lady way
the hell across town and told us to get out and walk back to Venice
hah we called a cab and stopped at the
Venice police station told him we were gettin gerson to pay and we went out the
other door, 1959
my name is
shanna I used to write poetry and painted. Me and James Ryan Morris Tony
Scibella and little annie all lived together in the cellar.....(at the Dungeon
aka, The Morrison-ed.) I worked at the Gas House (art
director)
–Shanna
Moore
***********
Playa
Vista 2
Dear Beachhead,
I wrote the following letter to
various officials in LA concerning the latest attempt to ram Phase 2 of the
Playa Vista monstrosity through. If you could include it in your letters section
if you have room. Thanks so much for your great paper and all your efforts to
shine a little light in the present
darkness:
I am deeply concerned and
frustrated at the continuing push to implement the Phase 2 development of the
Ballona Wetlands area. So many of the residents speak to me or are overheard by
me on the subject of Ballona.
It's
already more than enough that we local residents have had the specter of the
Playa Vista urban-blight monstrosity rammed down our throats in the face of
obvious dissent & disapproval by the great majority.
My small son, a toddler, is already
breathing the heightened toxicity of the air caused by the increased traffic
flow from this development and, like all the other young innocents in the area,
must suffer for the overwhelming greed of those who have pushed Playa Vista
through, and suffer yet more if the building continues.
It is more than enough that the
opportunity for a park for public use, in a city notorious for it's lack of
green spaces, has been tossed away so negligently, gutted at the altar of
corporate greed, so that a few may increase their bank accounts at the expense
of the many.
It is more than enough
that this development has been bulldozed through the courts and governmental
bodies of this state by the power of vested interests and corporate wealth in
direct contravention of a whole slew of laws.
It is more than enough that the
unfortunate and misled residents of this eyesore are to be put at serious risk
to lives and health from a long list of dangers including earthquake
liquefaction, cancer clusters from gas seepage, and the distinct likelihood of
enormous gas explosions.
After all
this has been heaped upon us, we the taxpayers of this city, and not the
rapacious developers of Playa Vista, are to be held financially liable in the
future for the untold millions to pay for the damage and loss of life should the
gas mitigation systems at Playa Vista fail and a massive explosion ensue.
It is nothing short of a direct slap
in the face of the hard-working public, already spat upon by those who are
supposed to represent and protect us in collusion with those who just
don’t care for anything but an extra buck. It is much too much to bear.
Eventually this betrayal of the
electorate's trust will come back to haunt politically, perhaps, for some, even
in terms of conscience, whoever backs this superannuated madness. To those in
positions of authority who are attempting to stop this we give our thanks and
best wishes.
To those who would
bring further threat and suffering upon our children we ask, “When will
enough be enough?” Will you look back on this watershed issue and say,
“Yes, I was there, I had the power & I did nothing to stop it!”
Do the right thing, or just the smart
thing if you value the public’s perception of you & hence your
political future. Let this destructive development go no further! Will you
ever be able to look your children or family members in the eyes if you do not
make a personal stand now against the poisonous creed of greed that is pushing
us all towards a degraded society in a destroyed environment?
And yes, I am angry! It seems to be
somehow unfashionable to be angry in the present political climate, as if anger
somehow equalled delusion or disloyalty. What right-thinking sane person would
not be angry at what is being perpetrated here and at least have the tiny
bravery to let one's voice be heard?
Yours sincerely,
Terence Pearce
Posted: Thu - January 1, 2004 at 07:38 PM