Film Review: The Oscar Landscape 2024
FILM REVIEWTHE OSCAR LANDSCAPE 2024A Look at the Choices – Academy Awards – March 10, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. on ABC I believe there should never be contests for art, as a huge part of […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Five Saving Historic Santa Monica
Our beloved City is surrounded by many threats, from sea level rise to homelessness, to housing affordability, to cancerous overdevelopment, to crime, to the four apocalyptic collapses: water supply, school population, municipal finances, and mobility […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Gelson’s Looms Large
Our guest column this week is by SMCLC (the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City). SMCLC is a well-established group of concerned residents that have successfully been involved for many years in addressing and […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Top Toady Town
Throughout history, from the ancient Romans and Assyrians to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, siege warfare has served as an effective weapon against municipalities resistant to conquest. Even with complete capitulation, conquered cities are subject […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: The Sunset of Home Ownership
We are watching the sunset of our historical and cultural American dream of home ownership as we now are crossing over what was a welcome mat of opportunity to a lifetime of indentured tenancy for […]
SMa.r.t. Column: B(U)Y RIGHT
“By Right” state housing laws that give developers, in certain projects, the ability to ignore codes ‘by right.’ Well, that is the lovable jargon developers have jumped in bed with at the State level to […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Serf City
Homelessness is a problem in California, and nowhere is this more evident than in our fair city, where the unhoused population has skyrocketed with the completion of the Expo Metro Line that tacitly offers free […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Bond Fatigue
Last week’s SMart article, described two critical problems faced by our Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD): the declining enrollment and the tendency to inexorably increase the bond debt burden on the City’s businesses […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: Peace on Earth
We are all, by now, saturated with jingles, holiday cards, “ho ho ho’s,” countless commercial advertisements, and exhortations to feel the holiday spirit. But with the world the way it is today, this is easier […]
S.M.a.r.t Column: On the Clock with Mayor Brock
I became Santa Monica’s Mayor on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, following a simple “switch of the chairs” transition with outgoing Mayor Gleam Davis during the first hour of last Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. I […]