The Widder Curry Says ‘Thank You’ and Asks for Help in Taking Lovable ‘Charlie’

April 9, 2024 by Judi Curry

By Judi Curry

Once again I want to thank all of the readers from the OB Rag that have contacted me and asked why I haven’t been writing recently.  Your missing me has helped in the recovery process from a TIA (transient ischemic attack), which left me blinded in the left eye.  Gradually my sight is coming back…. It is most disconcerting to not see my dogs…

And, talking about my dogs – this is a problem that I hoping one of you can help me with. … I had a tenant – we will call him “Painful” that was with me for over six months.  He had a delightful German Shepherd female, about 7 years old, that was pretty well trained. 

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Muslim Students Need a Different Vibe

April 9, 2024 by Ernie McCray

by Ernie McCray

Well, it seems
that my friend, Lallia Allali,
a renowned leader in the Muslim community,
is no longer
welcome
to tend to the learning needs
of Arab students in San Diego City Schools
ever again,
in spite of the district’s supposed
restorative justice practices wherein it claims
to be about cultivating relationships that help build and sustain
school cultures
that are positive and welcoming
for students, staff, and families.

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Missed the Wonder of the Eclipse? Catch the Fabulous Butterflies

April 9, 2024 by Source

By Colleen O’Connor

If you missed the excitement of the Eclipse or passed on the Carlsbad flowers this season. Or if you didn’t catch the Women’s National basketball semi-finals, with Caitlin Clark awing the country with record-breaking 3-point shots, don’t despair.

There is still a bit of wonder. Butterflies.

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She Came for the Location, Will Return for the Food – at the OB Surf Lodge

April 9, 2024 by Source

By Sandi Masori / San Diego Jewish World / April 7, 2024

One of the fun things about having friends come in from out of town is that they take you out of your normal travel patterns.  This is exactly how I found myself in Ocean Beach recently, a part of San Diego I have to admit I don’t get to enough.  Since I was there for the company I wasn’t really worried about where we would eat, and agreed that we could meet up and walk around and find something open.  I figured that we would be brunching on mediocre overpriced beach food, but I was oh so wrong.

We chose OB Surf Lodge for the location, It’s right across from the beach and has a great view.  We were there pretty early so we’re quickly seated.

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‘The Estimate to Build the Preferred Design for a New Ocean Beach Pier Is Out of Whack’

April 9, 2024 by Staff

Price Tag Probably Not Based on Standard ‘Design-Build’ Contracting Method

By Geoff Page

The City of San Diego held its fourth OB Pier Renewal Community Workshop, Saturday April 6, during which the public got a look at the design for the new pier. The event was very well attended — perhaps as many as 200 people came to the Liberty Station Conference Center for the workshop.

The public also got a look at the new estimate to build the new pier based on the current design. $175 – $200 million.

My first reaction was that it took less than that to build two highway bridges over the San Diego River. That price tag was $150 million, for two bridges, a far more complicated project. This estimate to build the pier makes it more or less, impractical. Unless the design is changed.

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San Diego’s Soaring Rents Pricing Out Working Class

April 8, 2024 by Source

Locals are bearing the cost of increasing rates, with many spending more than half of their income on rent

By Sasha Abramsky / San Diego Magazine – The Nation / April 4, 2024

Teresa, a 52-year-old with a solidly middle-class job in the healthcare industry, recently separated from her husband. At the time, the couple lived in Encinitas, in a large home they bought in 2010 for $450,000. When interest rates plummeted, they refinanced at less than 2.5 percent with only 13 years of payments left. Each month, the mortgage, the insurance, and the money they set aside for real estate taxes came to $2,900 between them.

But now, the market has shattered Teresa’s financial calculus. Even after she and her husband sold their house and split the profits, affording to buy again seems impossible.

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The Government Isn’t Ready for the Violence Trump Will Unleash

April 8, 2024 by Source

The Biden administration should be preparing for the worst.

By Juliette Kayyem  / The Atlantic -RSN / April 8, 2024

No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election, because Donald Trump keeps talking as if addressing differences through violence is a normal part of the American political process. The presumptive Republican nominee recently promised forgiveness for the January 6 insurrectionists, posted a video involving a fake image of President Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a truck, and riled up his supporters by claiming that “if we don’t win this election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country.”

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Who Knew What and When About Secret Offer to Build Free Arena for SDSU

April 8, 2024 by Source


La Prensa Offers Time Line to Latest Scandal Affecting Midway Rising and Sports Arena Redevelopment

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa / April 8, 2024

Sometimes it takes time and distance to see more clearly how relationships and interests help explain the actions of others.

We learned that lesson with the 101 Ash building debacle that was exposed by the media more than three years after insiders had worked together to fleece taxpayers and left a $200 million hole in the City’s budget with only a toxic, empty building to show for it.

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New Design for Ocean Beach Pier Unveiled

April 8, 2024 by Staff

The city of San Diego unveiled what a new Ocean Beach Pier might look like. These 3 renderings were put together based on feedback from the public on three preliminary design concepts that were first revealed in September.

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Partial Solar Eclipse Here in San Diego

April 8, 2024 by Staff

In Southern California during today’ total solar eclipse, we’ll see a less dramatic blockage of the sun with about 50 percent totality as the moon slips between the sun and Earth.

Here are the eclipse times to keep in mind on Monday (all times our local times):

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The Beauty of the Snow in Our Local Mountains

April 6, 2024 by Frank Gormlie

Lake Cuyamaca this Saturday morning – 930ish.

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Decision by City Council to Pay Millions to Consultant to Figure How Much to Charge for Trash Collection Met With Laughter

April 5, 2024 by Frank Gormlie

Of all the decisions that the San Diego City Council has made of late, none have suffered the derision and mockery that the go-ahead to spend $4 to $5 million for a consultant to study how much the city should charge for trash pick-up has.

The mid-March decision by a 7 to 1 vote of the council will pay as much as $4.5 million to determine how much single-family homes in the city should be charged for trash and recycling services. And consultant HDR Engineering will be paid to conduct a study.

Councilmember Raul Campillo cast the lone “no” vote and said then he thought the city would be paying too much. “That’s incredibly high. In my opinion, it looks like it’s too much to get a sense of what customers want.”

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In Memory of Herbert Shore — November 18, 1939 – February 12, 2024

April 5, 2024 by Source

Herbert Shore was a founding member of DSA in 1982 and San Diego chapter until he passed in February of 2024

by Mark Sherman and Virginia Franco / Democratic Left / March 29, 2024

In Herb’s own words “I was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York to secular, Jewish, working class parents. My parents were not actually Communist Party members, but our lives revolved around the ‘fellow traveling’ milieu that existed until the mid 1950s. So you might say I was born into the socialist movement; though no one in my family knew Karl Marx from Groucho Marx.” Those roots stayed with Herb throughout his life.

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DOJ Investigation of SANDAG ‘Is Long Overdue’ Says UT Editorial Board

April 5, 2024 by Source

By The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board / April 4, 2024

The recent report that the San Diego Association of Governments is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department said agency officials weren’t exactly sure what prompted the federal probe. That is in its own way a testament to the fact that SANDAG — the main regional transportation planning agency with a huge $1.3 billion annual budget — has been so awful on several fronts that any might trigger an inquiry.

The latest scandal certainly qualifies. Evidence shows SANDAG wrongly charged up to 45,000 drivers for a toll road they did not use, and an internal inquiry found agency officials knew of the bogus charges for more than a year without telling the agency’s Board of Directors. If a private business knowingly and persistently kept charging people for services they didn’t use, the indictments would be swift and public condemnation would be overwhelming.

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Reader Rant: ‘The City Should Buy Back Half of the County Administration Building Instead of Building New City Hall’

April 5, 2024 by Source

Our friend Roger Showley (PLHS 1966]  just had some ideas of how San Diego could handle the “chase [of] the mirage of a new City Hall” that was published in the U-T Letters to the Editor:

Here’s an off-the-wall, back-to-the-future solution: The city buys back the half of the County Administration Center on Pacific Highway that it sold to the county in the 1960s.

The mayor, City Council and key administrators move in and develop a lot more collaboration with the county on a whole range of duties and projects.

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ADUs Are Not Being Built for Low Income San Diegans

April 5, 2024 by Source

Despite incentives from the City, developers are opting to build units for higher income tenants.

By Steve Price / CBS8 / April 4, 2024

Under the City of San Diego’s bonus Accessory Dwelling Unit program, a developer can build more than one ADU on a property as long as every other unit they build on the lot is set aside for affordable rent. But according to city records, the program is not working as city leaders had hoped.

A perfect example can be seen in the College East neighborhood, where six brand new ADUs just went up on a lot that used to have just one single family home.

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San Diego Mayor Proposes 1,000 Bed Homeless Shelter for Kettner Blvd Warehouse

April 5, 2024 by Frank Gormlie

On Thursday, April 4, Mayor Todd Gloria announced that he is seeking to turn a large warehouse on Kettner Blvd into a 65,000 square foot homeless shelter. The building — at 3570 Kettner — is at the corner with Vine Street, just next to the I-5 freeway and near Pacific Highway. Gloria says it will be space for 1,000 people, showers, a kitchen, recreational facilities and counseling services.

If his proposal passes the city council, then he plans to turn the controversial H Barracks site into a parking lot for roughly 200 spaces of designated parking to accommodate people living in vehicles.

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Ocean Beach and Point Loma Events in April

April 5, 2024 by Source

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It’s Hailing in San Diego and Snowing in Local Mountains

April 5, 2024 by Staff

We were warned today would be San Diego’s coldest day of the year and it’s already hailing in parts of the city and county.

And it’s snowing in our local mountains – like at Mt Laguna, Lake Cuyamaca and the town of Julian. These screen captures of the live cams were taken at 10:30 this morning.

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Prosecution Lays Evidence Upside Down in Pacific Beach Riot Case – Jury Hears Opening Statements

April 3, 2024 by Source

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / April 2, 2024

Dressed in fear-inducing “black bloc,” antifa members Jeremy White and Brian Lightfoot Jr. traveled from Los Angeles spoiling for a fight in Pacific Beach, prosecutors said.

Wearing outfits to avoid being doxxed or injured, the defendants aimed to confront far-right Donald Trump fans and protect likeminded counterprotestors three days after the Capitol invasion, their lawyers said.

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John Sinclair, Activist Immortalized in John Lennon Song, Dies at 82

April 3, 2024 by Source

Associated Press – Politico / April 2, 2024

John Sinclair, a poet, music producer and counterculture figure whose lengthy prison sentence after a series of small-time pot busts inspired a John Lennon song and a star-studded 1971 concert to free him, has died. He was 82. Sinclair died Tuesday morning at Detroit Receiving Hospital of congestive heart failure following an illness, his publicist Matt Lee said.

Sinclair drew a 9 1/2-to-10-year prison sentence in 1969 from Detroit Recorder’s Court Judge Robert Colombo for giving two joints to undercover officers. He served 29 months but was released a few days after Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and others performed in front of 15,000 attendees at the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena.

“They gave him 10 for two/What else can Judge Colombo do/We gotta set him free,” Lennon sang in “John Sinclair,” a song the ex-Beatle wrote that immortalized its subject.

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‘Complete Communities’ Is Not a Cure for San Diego’s Affordable Housing Crisis

April 3, 2024 by Source

by Danna Givot / Times of San Diego / April 2, 2024

The Building Industry Association touts the Complete Communities Now program as ramping up production of more affordable homes, but this deserves a closer look. Complete Communities is not a cure-all for San Diego’s housing problems.

[Please see original for important links]

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SDSU Stalls on Requests for Sports Arena Documents

April 3, 2024 by Source

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa San Diego / March 30, 2024

San Diego State University has arbitrarily delayed disclosing documents requested by La Prensa San Diego beyond the timeline allowed by California law.

The requested documents are related to discussions in 2022 between SDSU officials and a Denver-based development company to build a new sports and entertainment arena as part of SDSU West in Mission Valley.

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‘The OB Planning Board Is There for You, Ocean Beach’

April 2, 2024 by Staff

By Geoff Page

The Ocean Beach Planning Board is feeling a little like Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect,” or like Ol’ Lonely, the Maytag repair man no one ever called because the machines never broke down. Choose your own character, the theme being a group that deserves attention but is not getting it.

The OBPB held an election last month and hardly anyone showed. The board is supposed to consist of 12 people, according to the board’s by-laws. The election resulted in a total of nine sitting members, not 12. This reflects a continued sad lack of interest. The Rag had an account of the 2023 election and things have not improved.

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April 2024 Events from the Ocean Beach Green Center

April 2, 2024 by Source

Ongoing events

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings April 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th.  Keep up-to-date on climate issues and Climate Action events. To register email Jon Findley at  jon@climatemobsd.org.  More info: https://www.facebook.com/SDClimateMobilization/

Every Saturday 12 pm – 1 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine: Advocate for Peace and Justice in Gaza and Everywhere Join CODEPINK SD, San Diego Veterans for Peace, and Palestine Pals every Saturday at 12:00 pm on the plaza corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd. and W. Point Loma Blvd., entry to Ocean Beach, San Diego. Wear pink and bring a peace-related poster if you have one! Contact: Nathanael · nathandw@riseup.net

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Reader Rant: Ocean Beach Public Restrooms Are a Disgraceful Reflection on the City

April 2, 2024 by Source

By Judy Miller

On Friday, I was at Ocean Beach. Sunny day, gentle breeze, new grass on the lawn, crowds of happy visitors spending money during spring vacation.

Then I had to use the restroom. The public restrooms at the O.B. lifeguard station are so run-down that I was embarrassed for my city, just looking at them.

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Does America Now Have a Record Number of Bees?

April 2, 2024 by Source

by Andrew Van Dam / Washington Post / March 29, 2024 

Where in the unholy heck did all these bees come from?!

After almost two decades of relentless colony collapse coverage and years of grieving suspiciously clean windshields, we were stunned to run the numbers on the new Census of Agriculture (otherwise known as that wonderful time every five years where the government counts all the llamas): America’s honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high.

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San Diego Should Return to Tarring to Fix Our Streets

April 2, 2024 by Source

By Mark Doering / SD U-T Op-Ed / April 1, 2024 

While in plain sight, the root cause for why potholes are forming rapidly is not visible to most. I am a native San Diegan and licensed engineer who for years has seen our city streets deteriorate from what they once were — beautiful and smooth — to what they are now, potholed and dangerous. The cause of the deterioration of our streets is very apparent if you know what to look for and know a little of San Diego’s road maintenance history.

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Future Design of OB Pier to Be Unveiled at Community Workshop — Saturday, April 6

April 1, 2024 by Frank Gormlie

The City of San Diego is set to show the public what a replacement design for the OB Pier may look like, and is prepping for the unveiling of a final, preferred design concept at a community workshop on Saturday, April 6.

Three potential design concepts for a replacement pier were presented in September of 2023, and the city has been collecting feedback from San Diegans ever since on what they want to see in the new pier. And now city officials are saying the preferred design is an amalgamation of the three concepts, using the public input received to combine preferred features from each design.

The session will be held 2 to 5 p.m. April 6 at the Liberty Station Conference Center, 2600 Laning Road.

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It’s César Chávez Day in California — Here’s His Life History

April 1, 2024 by Source

In San Diego, City, county and local offices will be closed today, Monday for César Chávez Day along with courts, public health clinics, family resource centers, libraries and animal shelters. County parks, campgrounds, and neighborhood day-use parks will largely remain open, though county officials said certain facilities will be closed Monday.

There will be mail delivery because César Chávez Day is a federal commemorative holiday, first proclaimed by then-President Barack Obama in 2014, and not a federal holiday.

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