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The Santa Monica Convention & Visitors Bureau held its fourth annual Travel and Tourism Summit last week during which they released figures that showed tourists and the hotels they stay in pumped $1.5 billion into the local economy in 2012. Of that, $48.4 million went directly into City Hall’s General Fund, which supports basic city services. This week, Q-Line asked: A handful of hotels are being planned for Downtown, but some residents are working to put a stop [...]
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Opinion Qline
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MALIBU — There are over 90 existing conditions targeted as potential safety concerns along Pacific Coast Highway that the city of Malibu should address, according to a months-long, $375,000 engineering study of Malibu’s 27 miles of PCH. While some of the possible safety issues were “pervasive,” meaning they occur along the entire corridor of PCH in Malibu, other problems were location-specific. Areas of particular concern included the intersections of Las Flores Canyon Road, the Malibu Pier and Paradise Cove Road, [...]
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Featured News Transportation
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DOWNTOWN Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) fired off a letter Friday to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood asking him to investigate delays in the construction of the Interstate-405 Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project. The project, which had previously been scheduled to be completed by spring 2013, won’t be finished until fall 2014, according to reports. “I am asking Secretary LaHood to investigate the delays and do everything in his power to speed completion of the project,” Waxman said. The $317 million [...]
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Briefs Featured News
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BOSTON — The longtime girlfriend of reputed gangster James “Whitey” Bulger lost her bid to reduce the eight-year prison sentence she received for helping Bulger during his 16 years as a fugitive. A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that it found no basis to change the sentence that Catherine Greig received after she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud and conspiracy to commit identity fraud. The panel included retired [...]
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Crime Featured News
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It probably came as a surprise to many locals when Renee’s Courtyard Cafe closed its doors for good a couple of months back. But then again Santa Monica’s landscape is undergoing some serious transformations. With the exception of Chez Jay, it seems like no place is safe from new development or trendier competition. Renee’s did sadly seem antiquated when pitted against some of the hot new bars and restaurants hitting the Santa Monica scene. And one eatery that exemplifies this [...]
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Featured Food Life Tour de Feast
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Are food companies to blame for the rise in obesity in America by creating specially formulated junk food that is addictive? According to the Feb. 20 article in the New York Times, food companies are being compared to tobacco companies. They are advertising and marketing to children, they hire food scientists and psychologists to formulate a more physically and psychologically addictive food and they target the poor and uneducated. The last statement I have a moral issue with; food companies [...]
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Featured Food The Better Option
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Editor: The Torrance, Calif. man’s rebuke (“Obama gets a free pass,” Letters to the Editor, May 15) to Jack Neworth’s column “Bush painted U.S. into corner,” May 3, Laughing Matters, is an example of someone whose head has been stuck in the sand and can’t — or won’t — see the obvious. Mr. Neworth’s column simply pointed out the deficiencies in the Bush administration. I should think it would be obvious to everyone. It is appalling that the barrages of [...]
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Letters Opinion
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If you don’t have any young kids, you better go out and borrow a couple for Sunday. If they’re younger than 2, even better because you might feel a little conspicuous going by yourself to McCabe’s at the far east end of Pico Boulevard, from 11 a.m. to noon, to catch the kids’ matinee show with the Masanga Marimba Ensemble. But if you don’t, you’ll be missing something good. I caught this colorfully costumed “waka waka” large band enlivening the [...]
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A Curious City Columns Curious City Opinion
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SAMOHI — Santa Monica baseball hasn’t won in the postseason since the 2008-09 season, where they defeated Knight to advance to the second round. For the past three years, the Vikings have been sent packing in the first round, a fact they hoped to fix Thursday in round one of the CIF-Southern Section Division 3 playoffs at home. But, unfortunately, Samohi’s championship dreams were dashed in an 8-3 loss to that same Knight team. Samohi starting pitcher Alex Gironda displayed [...]
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High School Sports
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FOURTH STREET — They’re everywhere, they’re dangerous and the Santa Monica Police Department is making it a priority to take them off the road. SMPD officers ran a sting operation Thursday morning targeting distracted drivers, specifically those caught talking or texting on cell phones. The operation is part of a three-month push by the Traffic Division to crack down on drivers using their cell phones without hands-free devices, conduct that became illegal in the state in 2008. Officers netted 46 [...]
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Crime Featured News Transportation
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CITY HALL — The City Council unanimously gave the green light Tuesday to a scaled-down version of a project that aims to convert the westernmost section of Colorado Avenue into the southern gateway to the Downtown and Santa Monica Pier. The Colorado Esplanade, as it’s called, is first and foremost a street project that will make Colorado Avenue one-way between Fourth Street and Ocean Avenue to provide more space for pedestrians and bicyclists disembarking from the Exposition Light Rail line, [...]
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City Council Featured News Transportation
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Crime Watch is a weekly series culled from reports provided by the Santa Monica Police Department. These are arrests only. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Friday, May 10, at 10:40 p.m., Santa Monica police officers responded to the 100 block of Colorado Avenue regarding a report of a man who was beaten by a homeless beggar after he refused to give the man any money. Police said the alleged victim had just [...]
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Crime Featured News
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Paddy Chayefsky died in 1981 but still remains one of my writing heroes. He’s the only writer to win three solo Oscars. (Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder all shared with co-writers). But my admiration for Chayefsky plummeted after I saw “Network” which he wrote. “Network” starred William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch and Robert Duval. (Not a bad cast, eh?) It was about a TV network cynically exploiting a deranged TV anchor. (No, not Glenn [...]
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Columns Laughing Matters Opinion
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Editor: It comes as absolutely no surprise that the Santa Monica City Council is anti-business, so its recent vote to endorse taking away the constitutional rights of mom-and-pop business owners is consistent with the city’s other hostile actions toward the business community (”Council calls for end to corporate protections,” May 16, page 1). But I want to know, where was the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce in advocating for business owners, especially the small business owners which make up a [...]
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Letters Opinion
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SMC — Officers arrested a self-described suicidal Santa Monica College student connected to threats at both SMC and East L.A. College following a lockdown on Thursday morning, according to police. The Santa Monica Police Department received a threat of a possibly-armed man at SMC at approximately 8 a.m., prompting the lockdown at the college, John Adams Middle School and Will Rogers Elementary School. Police established a perimeter around the campus, but the 19-year-old suspect turned himself into the college’s health [...]
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Crime Featured News
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DOWNTOWN L.A. — Juliana Redding, a 21-year old aspiring actress and model, had dreams of making it big in Hollywood. Instead she spent her final minutes fighting for her life, prosecutors said Wednesday in a Downtown Los Angeles courtroom. The jury trial began in the case of Kelly Soo Park, the woman accused of strangling Redding to death in her Santa Monica apartment in 2008. Park, who has been out on $3.5 million bail, appeared in court wearing a white [...]
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Crime Featured News
