Santa Monica operates under a council–manager system where an elected council establishes policies but delegates day-to-day operations to a professional city manager. While meant to ensure stability, this setup has resulted in staff-driven outcomes, weak […]

By CHARLES ANDREWS YOU’VE EITHER STUMBLED IN HERE Or you meant to. Either way, great to see you. Let’s talk music and see who’s playing this week. You may have read the NOTEWORTHY column over […]

Residents of Santa Monica rarely question how their local government works. Debate usually focuses on housing, homelessness, or budgets—not on the machinery producing those outcomes. But the City Council–City Manager system creates a power imbalance: […]

By CHARLES ANDREWS HOWDY! (I grew up in New Mexico, I get to say that.) Welcome back to NOTEWORTHY, my attempt to make sure you don’t miss some great live show that you would have […]

By CHARLES ANDREWS WELCOME, Y’ALL! (I grew up in the West, I get to say that. Plus, Southern-born, so full credentials.) –  to NOTEWORTHY, my attempt to make sure you don’t miss some great live […]

Santa Monica has always possessed a talent for self-presentation. The city markets itself as a peculiar kind of coastal utopia—a place where palm trees grow in neat rows, bicycle paths unfurl like moral imperatives, and […]

By CHARLES ANDREWS WELCOME! If you’ve never come across NOTEWORTHY in the eight years it ran weekly in the Santa Monica Daily Press. They dropped me, but the Mirror wanted me, and they have an […]

By CHARLES ANDREWS HELLO, MUSIC LOVERS – Everyone loves some kind of music, and this is the place to find out if there is a performance this week you would not want to miss. LA […]

When you walk down a street in Santa Monica, you can feel it. That quiet hum of history that lives in the old buildings: the Craftsman bungalows tucked behind flowering jacarandas, the Art Deco storefronts […]

“I’d like to respond to that because I used the word character, and as a brown person, you stating that as someone who has not experienced that…I really resent that comment and take it personally. […]