Let’s start off easy…
…with something that demonstrates a couple of truths. Uncountable wealth, used… unwisely.
To become a better columnist, or anyone presenting their opinions or story out in public, you have to work toward complete honesty. And that ain’t easy. Sometimes you won’t even know what that is yourself. But, you do. That voice inside, if you are open to listening, will call you on it. If it’s difficult, and you hesitate, to write or speak something you know is so, that’s the one you have to reveal.
You will be slammed, often in a personal or even nasty way, by those who disagree or have some stake in the game, and by those who just don’t get it. As precise and expressive as the English language is, not so much its attempted practitioners — it’s so much harder to accurately communicate with words on paper, which are missing vocal inflections and facial expressions. And most people don’t read very carefully, for the actual content and meaning, or listen very well.
Hey, I’m not whining, I knew all that going in. But the complete honesty thing, that creeps up on you as you go along. An opinion presenter has nothing if not their credibility.
So what is this nasty secret I have to confess?
Nothing like that, really. Sorry if I misled you. It’s just this odd hobby I have, which I will now confess to. I like to peruse the big real estate sections in the Los Angeles Times, and get the lay of the land. What can you surmise from that, besides the obvious?
The personal slam I expect is that I have Mansion Envy. All I can say is, I don’t. If I could afford those multi-million dollar, many rooms and bathrooms abodes, I would spend only a fraction of the money, not the tens or even hundreds of millions, and get something comfortable. I don’t want to have to keep 11 bathrooms clean, by hiring a few people just for that, or even remember where the 11 are, and hire more people to maintain a yard the size of Connecticut.
Sure, I would love to not have a neighbor on the other side of my condo wall. I wouldn’t mind a back yard bigger than the postage stamp I have, but I love that back yard. It is a quiet refuge, and a work of art, thanks to my artist wife. I love masses of green growing things and trees and would love to be ensconced in that kind of jungle.
But those things are hard to find in Ocean Park, where I have lived for 38 years, and I love Ocean Park. I don’t even have envy for the modest mansions north of Montana, although I have a few wonderful friends living there, for decades.. I love my neighborhood. It’s slightly funky but with some great old homes, and really interesting people, lots of artists. I sincerely mean what I say at the bottom of each column, about not wanting to live anywhere else in the world.
So why stare at all those homes, and search out the selling price sometimes buried in the ad?
$350,000/mo rental
It’s one measure of our society, but a telling one, I think. In a minute I will quote for you what I pulled from just one section. No surprise, maybe, but week after week still a slight shock to me. In a city, LA, with thousands living on the streets, in a country where children go to bed hungry, in a world where children die from lack of food or clean water, this is obscene. I would be fine with mansions, Maseratis and 200-foot yachts if all the basics were covered for everyone. But they are not. Greed rules, and even a billion dollars is not enough for some. Bernie Sanders still fumes that “nobody needs a billion dollars,” and he’s still right. You can quibble about economic models, Wall Street, free enterprise, the rights and benefits of capitalism, and any number of other self-serving rationalizations, but the truth is, my truth, there is something very wrong with society today, and it is only getting wronger.
Here you go, one weekday of home shopping in LA, for some folks –
$195M Bel Air, $155M Holmby Hills, $85M Beverly Hills, $75M Malibu, $65M BH, $58M BA. $50M Pacific Pal — all on one page, ave price: $97.6M
$150M BA, $90M BH, $73M LA, $48M BH, $46M BA
$88M, $68M, $63M, $55M, $47M, $43M, $38M x2, $37M, $30M, $29M x2, Malibu to Brentwood, all on one page, ave price: $47M
$60M, $55M, $49M, $45M, $43M, $40M, $39M, $35M, all Malibu, all on one page, ave price: $45.8M
Rentals: $200K/mo Malibu, x2, $145K/mo Malibu, $135K/mo Malibu
Rentals: $125K/mo x2, $115K/mo, $100K/mo x3, $85K/mo, $75K/mo., all Malibu, all on same page, ave rent: $103K/mo
I never look for Santa Monica listings, but I did spot two, at $6.6M and $8.6M.
Many, if not most, or all, of the problems facing small cities like ours stem from a completely out of balance wealth inequality. Those aren’t problems you can solve on the local level, and you can’t address them on your own either, to solve as a nation. We go along day to day, wrapped up in our own lives, our own problems, and we briefly give a tsk tsk to news reports of children being bombed in Gaza, or in Alabama. We have the means. To stop war, and feed every person on earth. But we don’t have the political will. Whose fault is that? What is wrong with us?
Seriously – need a revolution? (Not a call for violence, a call for revolutionary political reform.) When does it finally become…enough?
But in the meantime, put your finger in the dike, and vote.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 38 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else.