Santa Monica Beach

05/23/2004 Posted by aperson

The beach itself is okay. There is a ferris wheel, that costs 4.50 a person to ride. That's its perk. There is nothing else special about this beach, except it's in an upscale neighborhood. I would much rather go to Carlsbad, Oceanside, Camp Penelton, Newport, or other beaches in Southern California. The waves, and water are better. They are cleaner as well.

Pros: Interesting events

Cons: , Overcrowded

05/23/2004 Posted by wjbean

Santa Monica has a facility just east of the beach called S.M.U.R.R.F. This stands for the "Santa Monica Urban Runoff Recycling Facility." The idea is to clean the water from street drains before it gets to the bay. This helps a lot, but the surrounding cities do not do the same sort of thing. Santa Monica has wide beaches of nearly white sand, it's clean with little trash. There are numerous public restrooms and plenty of vollyball nets. There is also a well maintained bike path which is seperate from the equally clean footpath. The shops along the beach are licensed by the City and are also clean an uncluttered unlike Venice (A.K.A. Anarchy) Beach. Along the pier and the beach are numerous restaruants. None of them are dives and most of them serve tasty, reasonbly priced meals. Inland are shops and restaurants galore all of high quality.

Pros: Clean, Scenic, Well maintained

05/22/2004 Posted by les_hommes

Is this a joke? Of all the beaches in California that were left out (Hermosa, Manhattan, Laguna, Dana Point) for Santa Monica to be considered better than any of them is absolutely ridiculous. Let me clarify: it's not a bad beach, but it's definitely not one of the best. Now if you encompass the entire city of Santa Monica, then I can see why you'd think it's such a great beach... lots of restaurants and bars, but overall, the thing that makes a beach a beach, namely, clean water and clean sand, are nonfactors in the case of Santa Monica. It's a great town, but not a great beach.

05/22/2004 Posted by jojodan1

clearly somebody has not done their homework, beaches in california should not even be mentioned in any list of good beaches.as for the best beaches in ca, newport beach in orange county and zuma around the malibu area, are far much beter then santa monica or malibu beach.

Pros: shopping/third st, food/3rd street, amusment

Cons: , lousey sand, crime after dark

05/22/2004 Posted by boywonder99

Santa Monica is nice but best beach is a reach. The water is not terribly attractive. It reminds me of Atlantic City when I was young. A nice diversion if you live nearby, but certainly not a place where you want to make a special trip. I suspect the rating is bolstered by the surrounding attractions - farmers market, restaurants, etc.

Pros: bike path

Cons: , beach

05/22/2004 Posted by tart777

This beach is fantastic. Whenever I'm visiting Los Angeles I make time to go to Santa Monica and go to the beach. The pier is great, the wide sand is amazing, and the people are all very friendly. All of the LA beaches are worth paying a visit to, but Santa Monica Beach will always hold a special place in my heart. I plan to move to LA in the near future, and I can be sure I'm be on the beach a lot.

08/07/2003 Posted by rajramani

Best beach in the world. The sand spread is wide and long, lot's of activities including roller blading, bicycling, beach volley ball with so many nets around, santa monica mountains behind, sunset boulevard and beverley hills just round the corner, perfect weather year long, there is no place better than this.

Pros: Sand spread, Plenty of activities

Cons: No free parking

05/16/2002 Posted by JSchwartz_Citysearch

Over the past few years, the City of Santa Monica has gone to great extents to clean up the Santa Monica Bay. Finally, it's starting to show. I was there recently and was pleasantly surprised; the smell of raw sewage was gone and the water was nearly transparent.