Above: Musician Jason Mraz appears in a television commercial promoting travel to California. He's posing in front of a San Diego fire pit. Credit: CATourism
by FOX 5 News / May 11, 2011
SAN DIEGO — The 186 fire pits at city beaches and Mission Bay will burn for at least one more year, thanks to money raised from private donors, city officials said Wednesday, May 11.
Mayor Jerry Sanders cut maintenance for the cement fire rings from next year’s budget, something he has done several times in recent years, but private donations have always kept the popular concrete rings or squares in operation.
Officials will officially announce Thursday that private donations will keep the pits along the shoreline. It’s estimated that maintenance will cost at least $120,000 in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
Sanders and Councilman Kevin Faulconer — who has been trying to save the rings — will make the announcement along with the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Hotel-Motel Association, the San Diego Foundation and La Jolla Foundation.
Some of the same groups contributed to saving the rings when they were about to be axed last year. An anonymous donor saved them three years ago.
Tourism industry officials feared the loss of the fire rings would take away one of San Diego’s best selling points, the chance for normally landlocked visitors to experience a beach bonfire.
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Good. It’s getting around that time to go to the beach and have a bond fire
The U.S. Navy ought to take an interest in keeping the fire rings happening so the sailors would have a place to hang out. Or do they still warn them of the evils of the beach and its denziens. Maybe we could put coin boxes with tickets,like some parks, onto the side of the ring. You know some bulls#$t like this is what they’d love to do. Plenty reason to mess with the guys the Black don’t like. When they panhandle these blood suckers could charge these folks the spare change they just bummed.
OH yea, nothing better that setting around a OB fire pit with Kevin Faulconer and Carrie Nation, sipping a cold glass of NON-ADULT beverage.