Paul
On Oct 17, 2004, at 2:45 PM, Keith Whaley wrote:
Paul Stenquist wrote:
Have you spent much time in California? There are many reasons why you see so many homeless in California, but two of them are prominent: the weather is well suited to being homeless and they are well taken care of in many California cities. For example, In Santa Monica the homeless are fed in the park on a regular basis and are allowed to sleep there or on the beach.
Factions in Santa Monica have, for years, tried to get sleeping in the park outlawed.
I thought they had succeeded a few years ago... but then, I try to avoid that area after dark, on purpose ~ so I wouldn't know.
Come late afternoon, however, the indigent and otherwise indisposed are rolling in their pilfered shopping carts, placing them in doorways of businesses that are closed for the day, and by dark, most entrances are filled with reposing bundled up figures of one kind or another.
The same is probably true in some of the more liberal bay area cities. The bottom of society is there in part because the people who live there are tolerant of the bottom of society.
Sort of. Not entirely. One can't stop in a coffee shop near Ocean Blvd (parallels the ocean bluffs) without being inundated with panhandlers, looking for a quarter or a cuppa. Bloody pests is what they are...
By night-time they fill every park north and south, and inland for a mile or two.
"Fill" is a bit excessive, perhaps, but "populate" is no less accurate.
I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's nowhere near as black and white as you make it sound.>Paul
Well, it isn't, but... you do need to think about it a bit, to tell how far off he might be.
There are a lot of dregs that populate the beach areas and parks nearby. There are a lot of mentally disturbed wandering around, too.
Fact is, there could be a lot more problems than there are. Perhaps because there's a huge tourist/visitor population among them all, and typically, tourists mostly look, not touch or get involved. In many ways, they dilute the responses that might otherwise occur.
The only time I go there anymore is to go to one of the numerous restaurants, day or night. Give my car to the valet, retrieve it when i'm done...
The "old days" of "walking around town" in the evening are long gone. Not in Santa Monica, thank you...
As much as the place is being built up year by year and carnivalized to bring in the tourist bucks, it's also pretty seedy under the glitter... mainly because they don't want the flack they'd certainly be exposed to if they did much kicking around of the human trash that thrives in the beach communities...
keith whaley
On Oct 17, 2004, at 1:45 PM, Graywolf wrote:It does do better in the larger size.
OTOH the photo bothers me profoundly. To me it epitomizes California, that and the Holywood tinsel seems to be all there is out there. The bottom of society and the fake. It says too much too clearly, and at the same time leaves me feeling helpless to do anything about it. Our society sucks and the most a photo like yours does is let some do-gooders punish people like those in the photo because it makes them feel just like it does me, but they are not honest enough to admit that they helped make the problems, we all did.
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