Loud Minority and Worrisome Taste

September 8, 2002

Dear Editor:

Casa del Mar General Manager Klaus Mennekes must be joking. He claims in a September 3 letter that his hotel is "straightforward about who we are and what we believe." What a crock. ("Practice What You Preach," August 21)

This, coming from one of the same rich hotels that tried to deceive Santa Monica voters with Prop KK in 2000. That initiative would have gutted the Santa Monica City Council's ability to protect low wage tourism workers in Santa Monica using the veil of a "living wage," a wage that was considerably lower than necessary to lift workers and their families out of poverty.

Mr. Mennekes fails to mention that many hotels continue to pay wages that fail to take workers and their families off of the public dole. That doesn't save any of us money or profit.

Prop JJ -- a REAL living wage Santa Monica voters can be proud of -- WILL help lift these workers out of poverty and provide assurances that wages will not be cut back to the levels they were before the living wage movement began.

Prop JJ is good enough for Congressman Waxman, State Senator Kuehl, and a broad coalition of Santa Monicans. We are sick and tired of the loud minority of wealthy hotel owners spending literally millions of dollars fighting a living wage that could instead be money spent on better wages for the workers they claim to hold in such esteem.

Sincerely,

Todd Flora
Santa Monica

September 4, 2002

Dear Editor,

I agree with several of the points Frank Gruber made in his column ("More Architecture, More French," September 3). Taste -- in architecture, music, art and ice cream flavors -- is subjective. How can anyone expect such a group (the Architectural Review Board) to speak in consort, agree or be consistent?

I have never been to Fort Worth, have only looked at the virtual tour photos on the web, but based on this, I'd say that the Kimbell Museum looks spectacular and functional on the inside... and butt ugly on the outside. To me it resembles a strange marriage between military Quonset huts from WWII and agricultural storage buildings laid sideways.

As museums go, I prefer the unassuming Kroller-Muller in the Netherlands, the D'Orsay in Paris (a former 19th century railway station) or Gehry's sublime Bilbao. Even the National Art Museum in D.C. rates with me.

See? I'm just one person and all by myself I like vastly different styles, I'm not consistent. Taste is a worrisome thing to inflict on others.