Letters
• Great Job - Bill
Fleeman
• Santa Monica Pier Savior -
Panos Douvos
• What the ARF is Going
On? - Lydia Poncé
• Parking
Problems - DeDe Audet
Great
Job
Dear
Beachhead,
Received the Beachhead with the
morning mail. The Collective did your usual great job, a labor of love I
know.
Soon as I can I’m sending a
donation. Whatever I can send it’ll be too small. The Beachhead does a big
job.
Your article about how to survive the
crash, by the way, excellent, and a scary reminder of things to
come.
Peace in solidarity,
Bill
Fleeman
-------
Santa
Monica Pier Savior
Dear
Beachhead,
A wrong needs to be righted.
A live-wire senior member of the Israel Levin Center on the Venice Boardwalk,
Diana Cherman, is the savior of the Santa Monica Pier, for which she has
received no credit.
In 1973 the Santa Monica
City Council campaigned to tear down the pier. Diana jumped to the rescue,
bolstered by her background in political science at U.C.L.A. She started to
petition for a redress of
grievances.
The current director of the
pier restoration committee (Ben-Franz Knight) recently stated that there was a
save-the-pier campaign in the 70’s. It ousted the City Council, saved the
pier and grew into the Santa Monica for Renters Rights movement. No mention of
Diana. She was not spotlighted for her exceptional civic deed. No remarks on her
spearheading the establishment of the peoples of Santa
Monica.
She started the gathering of stacks
and stacks of signatures only to be hobbled by the council, which challenged the
legality of the petitions because of incorrect forms. She was forced to repeat
the whole process in requisite legal form and thus onto the Save-the-Pier
ballot.
Meanwhile Diana placed
newspaper adds opposing the Terrible - Three GRRs - Councilmen Garille, Reidy
and Rinck, which secured the overwhelming vote against them. They were booted
out of office and the pier was
saved!
Subsequently the Santa Monica
Businessmen’s group offered Diana their full financial backing for a run
at city council office. She was appearing on T.V. channels 2-4-7 and her
prospects were good. To run however, she was required to move from West L.A. to
Santa Monica, and given the lack of support from her husband, this marked the
end of her political career. They later
divorced.
People feel there is no Santa
Monica without the pier, it’s the soul of Santa Monica. Having had to
suffer watching the Venice and Washington street piers being left to
deteriorate, Diana said at the time, “They’re not going to knock
down my pier.”
The citizens of
the Westside are surely the unheralded possessors of many other strong tales to
tell, if only given a tap on the
shoulder.
Right now a city commendation
presented to Diana at the Santa Monica Pier would seem at minimum to be a long
delayed singular honor due to her... BRAVA Diana CHERMAN QUE
VIVA.
Panos
Douvos
------
What
the ARF is Going On?
Dear
Beachhead,
Monday, September 24 –
Two “dog off leash” tickets were given to two offenders at Oakwood
Park. Finally. After 3 weeks of distribution of flyers and warnings given by
Manuel Elorriaga, a police officer with the Department of General
Services.
Ask anyone how long it took
to get this issue taken seriously. Seniors, children, families and other Venice
residents have made several requests in several meetings to get someone to do
something about people running their dogs without leashes- since Ruth Gallanter
days – since Cindy Miscikowski – it’s been too
long!
This fine morning I heard one of
two gentleman exclaiming, “I have been coming here for years!!!” The
second man shouted,”I have to go to court for this?” They both
signed their tickets and left.
Ok, so
the ‘Dogs & Leashes’ signs have been posted for a couple of
years and additional signs were placed throughout Oakwood Park over 10 months
ago. The sign clearly states that your dog must be on a leash. A separate ticket
will be given for those who choose not to pick up after their dogs. So be a
Venice hit; pick up your dog’s
shit.
A thought for the residents who
think this is unfair: just because you paid beaucoup dollars for your house does
not mean you get to change everything around you and instantly you are above the
law. You cannot control your dog when he/she is 10 paces away from
you.
So you say your dog won’t
bite or does not bite? Why take the risk? Why do you have your dog’s leash
around your neck or hanging off your pant loop, but not on the dog? There are
plenty of children in their neighborhood that fear dogs. Dog walkers please show
some concern and respect especially in the early morning hours when plenty of
Venice children are walking to school or to the bus stop. God forbid something
happens and after a court case – you could lose everything just because
you did not want to abide by the law.
FYI- the Dog Park is located at Main
and Westminster. I have a dog and I choose not to take her there because it is
not well taken care of. Have they ever changed the cedar chips? That is the
place to run your dog freely!!!! Oakwood is not a dog park.
Arf!
Lydia
Poncé
-------
Parking
Problems
Dear Beachhead,
Venice is between a rock and a hard
place. I am convinced that officialdom knows that it is Free Venice that draws
hundreds of thousands of visitors to our area. But with the parking getting
tighter and tighter every day, the Venetians are feeling less and less
free.
There is excellent information at
www.sccwrp.org/pubs/annrpt/97/ar16.htm on the net. Please do me a favor and
check out the tables at the end. It shows that California beaches draw 51.9% of
all beach use in the U.S. and that the beaches bring billions of dollars of
revenue to this region. It also shows some bacteria counts of which Heal the Bay
has plenty. But where was the California Coastal Commission (CCC) when Venice
valiantly tried to get Prop O money for planning clean drainage
systems?
Now, because its staff have
been telling us that it is our job to dig up the evidence on pollution, I am
going to call the attention of the CCC when I go down there on the 11th to pay
more attention to cleaning up the ocean per the microbiological samplings and
less attention to micromanaging local parking. What they are doing is to create
a mess. I have made a crude map of the area which shows how Free Venice is
surrounded by areas with restricted parking, all sanctioned by CCC. Of
particular interest is Marina del Rey, which has no public parking on any
street, no night parking of any kind, and no free public parking of any kind,
except during trading hours at local stores. If this isn’t preferential
application of law, then what is it?
George
Mihlsten had it right when he used the term “diffuse authority” in
connection with land use problems. Are all of our boards, commissions, and
committees so obscuring the true facts and making so many rules, regulations,
and policies that they are crossing over each other’s boundaries with no
concern for the interactions?
DeDe
Audet
Posted: Mon - October 1, 2007 at 08:27 PM