Your Daily Five Photos (Santa Monica Edition)

Hello Bloglandia! It's been awhile, other than playing whackamole with Chinese spammers, there hasn't been much activity hereabouts for the past couple of months. That changes today. I'm going to post five photos each day to Flickr, either taken that day, or the day previous, and post them as a slide show here. Rather than posting everything I shoot at Flickr, I'm going to pick out shots that seem interesting to me.

Also, with the NFL season approaching, I will do my usual shockingly inaccurate season preview, but rather than trying to pick the whole season, I'm going to pick against the over/under lines for season wins for each team. I'll do a post for each division, all to be posted the day after Labor Day.

Below, today's furious five photos. Taken earlier at the recently refurbished and upscale-ified Santa Monica Place. They tore the roof off the sucka! (literally). Seems like it has succeeded as a draw to the area, but the shops themselves aren't getting much in the way of customers. I think they were hoping that RECOVERY SUMMER 2010! would have been a bit more recovered by now. Most of the stores here have other branches in other close by upscale shopping districts, I just don't see the marketplace supporting them over the long run, but time will tell. The roof off gives a nice updated look, gives a better pedestrian flow to the rest of the area, and the new restaurants seem worth checking out (if a bit on the pricey side).