Santa Monica Causeway - Parts III and IV

Excellent reading for anyone interested in SoCal surfing history:

Part III - Swept Away <http://makeashorterlink.com/?B5DE65E26>

Part IV - The Dream Sinks <http://makeashorterlink.com/?G2EE25E26>

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Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net> Tributes to Chris Bystrom (1950-200), Miki Dora (1934-2002) and Bill Cleary (1938-2002): <http://www.surfwriter.net/tributes1.htm> The art & the artists of New Zealand's Tutukaka Coast: <http://www.earthsea.co.nz>

bob, should i beam you up into 2003 my man?

Cleary (1938-2002): <http://www.surfwriter.net/tributes1.htm> <http://www.earthsea.co.nz>

Wow. I just read the whole 4 part thing.

As one who was in diapers when you were stepping up to mobilize the forces of direct democracy to preserve of the mountains that I now work in, THANK YOU BOB FEIGEL!

Jeez- one thing I didn't see there was any estimate of what kind of a hole diggin 94 gazillion cubic yards out of the Santa Monica Mountains would have made. I mean, Holy f***ing shit!!! The artist's conception oblique view shown in part 1 was a picture of the causeway with beautiful, intact, unmpaired Santa Monica Mountains behind them. Sounds like truth would have been more like an endless series of flat, San Diego-style terraced building pads covered with stucco houses where those lovely mountains used to be. The Mother of all Roadcuts. Gak...

My local cultural anthropologist was pretty uninformed about the history of this project. I have forwarded him the whole read.

It's not every day that a CALTRANS proposal actually dies and stays dead. Proposed state highway projects have a way of coming back again and again, wooden stake through the heart or no. I guess one final proof of just how technically ridiculous this proposal was is the fact that one the proponents were forced to stop walking on air, they could never make this turkey fly again.

I think it's safe to say the effects on littoral movement of sand (and the problems created by the same) woul have been considerable. Care to offer an off-the-cuff analysis, Dr. Tim?

Thanks for the history lesson, Bob F. Generations of Santa Monica Bay beachgoers owe you more beers of gratitude than you could drink in a lifetime.

Surfer Bob

<reluctantly snipped;->

Hey other Bob - Thanks for the thanks. Not that I'm in the least bit self-defacing, but I gotta say that I was just a small cog amongst some pretty huge wheels. The guy who deserves *all* our thanks (and all those beers) is Herb Chase. He was the publisher/editor of a small, struggling newspaper called the Santa Monica Independent. In a financial sense, he literally put his ass on the line and suffered some major setbacks because he went up against SM's old boy network and won. A newspaper depends on it's advertising revenue and his all but dried up. He also put heaps of his own money into the committee's running costs. All I did was help get some signatures and lost nothing but my naivete about local politics, greed & the vulnerability of our environment. It was a good lesson and I can thank Herb for that too. bob

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Wax-up and drop-in of Surfing's Golden Years: <http://www.surfwriter.net>