I WAS ASSAULTED LAST WEDNESDAY
I’m pretty sure that is the accurate legal description.
Broad daylight, busy boulevard, people around (though not at that moment), almost across the street from my Ocean Park home of 36 years.
I’m alright. Even though I was smacked in the face from behind by a muscular young man with an angry expression, I suffered no visible physical damage.
He was apparently trying to knock my glasses off my face, and succeeded. And nearly destroyed them in the process. They went flying onto Ocean Park Blvd, where I finally spotted them in the street debris, thoroughly smashed and bent, metal detached, one lens out. But I thought he snatched them, and was walking off with them, and that I would never see them again, and that pissed me off and momentarily panicked me. I had to do something immediately or they were gone forever, I thought.
GETTING A LITTLE TOO EMOTIONAL?
Over a pair of glasses, was I? Maybe. But early the next morning we were leaving for a family wedding up north for four days, and I can tell you now, I’m very glad I could clearly see the alpine majesty of Graeagle, CA (north of Lake Tahoe, west of Reno), surrounded by national forests with skyscraping pine trees magnificently blanketing hills and valleys as far as you could see. Without my glasses it would have been just a blurred green blotch. That’s a long drive for a blurred blotch. I would have had to drink a lot more wedding wine and whiskey to get me through that disappointment.
The other emotional factor was, well, I do love those glasses. Had them as long as I’ve had my wife and they may be the reason she married me. (I can’t think of many other reasons.) Dakota Smith discontinued the antique pewter “Navajo” a couple years after I bought them. You cannot find a pair now, I’ve looked. I spent nearly half my life in New Mexico and that culture is part of me, and the glasses frames with their tiny Southwestern iconography remind me of that every day.
SO I ALMOST DID SOMETHING STUPID
I leapt to my feet from an “art installation” chair at 6th and Ocean Park, as he casually kept walking toward the ocean, stepping into the street, never looking back. I think I yelled “Hey!” as I moved quickly towards him, and reached out my left hand to give him a shove that I hoped might jostle him into dropping them.
Yeah, and then what?
Two things stopped me from perhaps escalating a face slapping into a brutal beat down. As my hand reached out to shove his shirtless shoulder I instantly observed two things: how well muscled he was (and about one-third my age), and a patch of crusty light brown… something, on his right shoulder, a rash or growth about the size of a fist. My brain sent a quick memo: just don’t go there.
My neighbor Neil, after hearing my description of the guy, said “Oh yeah, I saw him earlier, just up the street, sitting at the bus stop. His vibe was so dangerous I crossed the street to avoid getting near him.” In my defense, I was on the phone with a friend, with a number of people passing by on the sidewalk. I happened to look up as he approached (a little voice?) but he was already just a few feet from me. When he took a step to go behind me, for no apparent reason, I had no time to react.
I WAS LUCKY
It sure could have been worse. He could have sucker punched me instead of a slap. A broken jaw or nose. The voices in his head might have whispered, “Strangle him.” Or, rip an ear off. Gouge an eye out. He could have had a knife to back up that angry look on his face.
Am I going too far here? If you live in Santa Monica, sadly you know I’m not. Thank you Ronnie Raygun for emptying the asylums, and for every governor since for not correcting that huge mistake. And thank you this City Council and your predecessors for wasting time and money on ineffective, sometimes downright stupid measures to address this huge problem. Some folks in City government are now trying to do better, but it’s pretty hard to do much about a tsunami once it’s already here.
What can you do? Run for the hills? We all know of some, even longtime residents, who have decided Santa Monica is hopeless and too dangerous and have packed their bags. Safewise.com released a survey a couple months ago that found “Santa Monica ranks with Oakland, San Bernardino, and Compton among the least safe cities in California.” That’s a bit misleading, as most surveys and statistics can be. The FBI says the crime rate here has gone down from last year. We rank better than the national average for crimes of violence, but horribly for property crimes, and thus the bad ranking. But perception is everything, and it only takes one scary incident close to home to make you feel unsafe.
I understand. I’m in the club now that no one wants to be in, but I was no innocent before. Within a week of the train coming in, my friend Neil was mugged for his phone by someone on foot. Another former resident at our condo complex, a big strapping guy, was beaten fairly badly by four guys as he took the recycling out. A really out of it guy approached my wife and I at 6 a.m. almost 20 years ago, as I was driving us to her surgery, and when we didn’t give him a handout he lay down under my back wheels hoping I guess, for a big insurance settlement if backing over him didn’t quite kill him. (Fortunately I had a feeling and stopped backing up the car to get out to see where he had disappeared to. He would not move so we left him there and took the other car. When he did get up, he picked up a huge rock and threw it through our back window.)
Yes, things have gotten much worse. But Santa Monica is such a gem of a small city, with an amazing history, character and location, and it is worth saving. While I may no longer be tough enough to take on a scowling street stalker, I am tough enough to not turn tail, to stick it out. And to try in my own way, to help get us back on track. I am not an expert in homelessness, or crime, or policing, but that’s not my calling. I am an observer with passion for my town, and a platform to report, what we are all seeing take place here.
I may not have magic solutions to tough, complicated problems, to make things right again, but I sure know, like all of you, when things are not right, and the first step to making things better is to recognize and call out what’s off, and not make BS rationales that serve some personal agendas but not the well-being of the residents of this city. As Booker T. & the MGs told us, “Time is Tight.” As War sang, we’re “Slipping into Darkness.” BS “solutions” for the benefit of the few shove us backward and we don’t have time for that, not in a rapidly deteriorating Santa Monica, or on the mothership Planet Earth. People need to demand radical solutions and those entrusted with governing need to be bold enough to lead, even at the risk of their political careers.
When you can’t safely walk down the street, or climate change ocean rise is giving me beachfront property on 6th Street, we’ll wish we had moved sooner and more boldly. The time is now. Santa Monica is worth fighting for.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 36 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com.
