Santa Monica Ca

The city of Santa Monica is poised to further tighten the screws on outdoor smokers by going after the bar and restaurant owners who enable them. City attorneys this week held an informational meeting for business owners in regard to proposed penalties for proprietors who allow patrons to smoke on outdoor patios in defiance of municipal law.

Santa Monica activist Jerry Rubin took to the streets again this week, marching not against the war in Iraq, global warming or pollution, but against what he considers a more immediate threat -- city plans to remove 54 aging ficus trees. "We don't relocate senior citizens from their apartments just to bring in new young families," Rubin said, allowing that the ficus are not people, "but if they were, they'd probably be shouting 'Don't relocate us, don't get rid of us before our time!'

Protesters obtained a restraining order Friday to stop the destruction of a stand of ficus trees in downtown Santa Monica that the city had planned to remove starting Monday as part of an $8-million downtown development project. Local activist Jerry Rubin got the order approved by a judge on behalf of Santa Monica Treesavers. The order prevents the city from removing 54 ficus trees on 4th and 2nd streets unless they pose a danger to the public.

To drive along the winding canyon roads of Los Angeles just west of Santa Monica is to glimpse neighborhoods that are in the city but not of the city -- at least not the realm of asphalt and grit known to most Angelenos. Instead of mini-malls and graffiti, there is a collage of funky and fancy houses inhabited by a diverse bunch -- tattooed bikers, retirees, artists, lawyers and screenwriters. They revel in their proximity to the beach and the occasional flash of surf glancing through the trees.

Victims of the 2003 farmers market tragedy can sue the city of Santa Monica over the traffic catastrophe, which left 10 people dead and 63 injured, a state appeals court has ruled. The court reinstated allegations that the city had failed to adequately shield marketgoers from motorist George Russell Weller, who was 86 when he crashed his car through barricades and into crowds of pedestrians at the popular open-air market on July 16.

Ever since developers began talking about demolishing Santa Monica's municipal pier and other meritorious structures in the mid-1970s, the city has exhibited a strong preservationist bent, naming scores of landmarks that include the home of cosmetics czarina Merle Norman and an 1875 saloon that served as the first town hall. Santa Monica designated its first -- and, so far, only -- historic district, the Third Street Neighborhood Historic District, in 1990.

It's not at all typical for a 27-year-old man to enlist Buster the Bunny and Peter the Penguin to facilitate conversations with his mother. But Jan Kyas can tell his plush go-betweens things he finds it hard to say directly to people. His mother, Jirina Kyas, has embraced this communion; she talks to them as well when speaking right to her son doesn't work.

Found: geeks on the beach. Google Inc. has spread out like a beach towel in Santa Monica. What started in 2003 with a few dozen employees has grown into the company's fourth-largest office and fourth-largest engineering center in the U.S., with 300-plus employees in three buildings. "We have the best weather of any office in Google," said Thomas Williams, the engineering director who heads the office.

Yahoo Inc. is trying to engineer a comeback in Santa Monica, the hub of its media and entertainment operations. The Internet giant has consolidated virtually all of its Southern California-based projects under Scott Moore, a senior vice president, in a move to streamline Yahoo's business and increase collaboration. Moore is the de facto successor to Lloyd Braun, the former ABC executive and Hollywood heavyweight who left Yahoo a year ago.

A federal appeals court Monday rejected a constitutional challenge to rent control in Santa Monica. A group of landlords had argued that eviction curbs adopted in 2002 were an "irrational response" to the city's housing difficulties and that the only legitimate policy would have been to limit rent ceilings to poor tenants. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S.