YOU’D BETTER READ GUMBEL
Feb. 03, 2021 at 6:00 am
ANDREW GUMBEL HAS IT EASY
He’s writing about possible corruption in Santa Monica in the 21st century. Easy peasy. Nobody’s getting beat up or bumped off here. Like the city, the corruption has also gentrified.
When detective novelist Raymond Chandler wrote about crime and corruption in the ‘30s and ‘40s, using Bay Cities as the alias for Santa Monica, it was hard boiled stuff.
You had a fleet of water taxis taking gamblers and their hangers-on from the Pier to a fleet of floating casino ships anchored just far enough off the coast to skirt the law. None of the authorities could find a legal remedy until California Attorney General Earl Warren (later CA Governor, then U.S. Supreme Court Chief justice) declared them a “nuisance,” which the state had a right to regulate.