Ocean Park Distress: A Report from a Neighborhood Near the Beach in Santa Monica

This afternoon I walked one street over to get a bottle of wine for dinner.

The small store looked very different. Its former glass walls and door had been replaced with wood. So had a window set in a small side wall.

“Are you redoing the store? I asked the clerk.

“No,” he said. “Some crooks came by in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago and broke the door open.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Then it happened again a week later, and they broke all the rest of the glass. The funny thing is, they stole all our cheapest whiskey.”

This had happened enough time ago to clean up the mess inside and to restock what stock remained to be put on the shelves.

As I paid for my bottle, he added this: “The owner is in the process of selling the store.” Understandable.

The clerk mentioned that another store just across the street had had similar problems. So I walked over.

That store sells secondhand clothes, mostly inexpensive stuff but also pricey handbags with four-figure price tags and flashy, unworn men’s shoes.

I asked about its experience with thieves. The cashier pointed to the spot near the cash register where a window was missing and had been replaced with plywood.

He pointed to the far end of the store’s street frontage, which had the same look. “The second time, they broke the window down there,” he said.

“I’m very sorry,” I said.

Then I walked back past the wine store to another public establishment that also had been mentioned.

“Yes, they broke a window,” said the saleswoman who worked there. The glass that was busted during the break-in must have been a standard size and easy to replace because there was no sign of burglary. Still — “They stole the safe and the cash register,” she told me.

She also said there were reports of break-ins at other spots farther north on Main Street.

Then she pointed out another store across the street. “Someone set fire to that place,” she said. “You probably can still see the burn marks.” I walked over to the store, which was closed.

“Yes, someone set a fire there,” said a clerk in the store next door. “We don’t know when it’s going to open again.”

“I hope your store is safe,” I said to the clerk.

“Thank you. I do too,” she said.

All this happened over a couple months on two short blocks of a not-major shopping street in Santa Monica.