www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/columns/Fr -
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Published on: 1/31/2005
Last Visited: 9/24/2007
It's an important project, important enough, as former mayor Dennis Zane said, to attract three former mayors to speak.
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Then there was former mayor Zane.He and Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights had opposed the project.Mr. Zane told the Council that the project would be the antithesis of the "egalitarian" and "diverse" values of the Third Street Promenade and Santa Monica itself, and that it would instead be "exclusive" and "upscale."
Anti-egalitarian.Anti-diversity.Exclusive and upscale.Sounds bad.Surely Mr. Zane was standing up for all the ungentrified.But wait a minute: didn't Mr. Zane oppose Target four years ago?In our culture, U.S.A 2005, what is more egalitarian, diverse, and non-exclusive than a Target?
But Mr. Zane's hauteur is what Santa Monica is all about: "luxury" condos are too upscale while Target is too downscale.
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In Mr. Zane's fantasy, real, ungentrified Santa Monicans are Jeffersonian yeomen, independent of the vulgarity of the global economy and full of contempt and disdain for the fripperies of the vain and debauched rich. (Meanwhile, a lot of Santa Monicans make their living in the entertainment business, the most globalized, culturally imperialistic, and full of fripperies industry of all, but that's another story.)