Month: January 2013

Early this morning (Tuesday Jan 15) a minivan traveling freeway speeds going west on I-8 hit the end of the freeway, went airborne and over the fences and landed into OB’s skateboard park in Robb Field.

The driver was taken away by medics and hospitalized and is expected to be charged for a DUI. And a dog found in the wreckage was led out and handed over to Animal Control officers. It appeared to be okay, covered in oil and cold, but latest reports from the animal shelter state that it is cleaned up and in good condition. was going to be cleaned up at the animal shelter.

The accident occurred around 3:30 a.m. The crash in a concrete pit of the park made the van inaccessible by towtrucks, and the van was stuck for hours.

Matthew Davies is facing years in prison after the Justice Department shut his medical marijuana operation down, which was perfectly legal under California state law.

AlterNet / By Alex Kane

The case of a medical marijuana dispensary owner who is being hounded by the Justice Department is just the latest highlight in America’s absurd and destructive drug war. And as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf points out, the combination of shutting down the business and prosecuting the owner of the company will cost upwards of a million dollars.

One Zephyr too soon –

Editor: Part 1 originally ran November 29th; Part 2 was delayed due to the author’s foot surgery and he sends his apologies.

By JEC 

News item, December 26th, China debuts the longest bullet train in the world. From Beijing to Guangzhou a distance of 1,428 miles, the ‘new’ train will serve 35 cities and cover the distance in under 10 hours, averaging speeds of 186 mph. The old train, the shame of Wuhan took almost 24 hours to cover the 1,428 miles. Hold the phone – the bad old train served the same 35 cities covering the 1,428 miles in less than 24 hours at an average speed of 60 mph. If we only had it so good.

Amtrak’s Premier West Coast train, the Coast Starlight is very similar;…

It doesn’t come as a shock to know that OBceans are divided over the future of the Police Trailer in the OB Pier parking lot.

The OB Rag just ran our weekly poll and with a fairly good number of responses, and our readers tell us that about one-third – 32% – want to keep the trailer where it currently is and want the Police/ City to proceed with the Coastal Development permit.

Just under a third – 31% – want to move the trailer, but about one-sixth of that one-third (or 5% overall) are okay with it in its current location on a temporary basis.

San Diego Mayor Attends ASA Meeting

See Video of Filner’s Remarks (inside)

By Eugene Davidovich / San Diego ASA / January 9, 2013

Last night for the first time in our chapter and city’s history, a sitting mayor attended the monthly chapter meeting. Former Congressman and newly elected Mayor Bob Filner arrived at the La Jolla Brew House around 7:30pm and walked into a packed meeting room where over 100 of you greeted him with cheer and applause. In his initial remarks the Mayor laid out a specific strategy for how to achieve safe access through a three pronged approach. In order to make it possible for the strategy to work, the Mayor called on us stand with him, help organize, educate, and campaign for safe access.

The Mayor’s three pronged strategy included:

Editor: The following are comments to an article published recently at the Voice of San Diego, entitled The Coastal Height Limit’s Legacy, that to us, at least, signals the beginning of the attack on the thirty foot height limit at San Diego’s coast.

Comment from Geoff Page to Citybeat article:

The pro-development comments here sure stand out; I agree with Mr. Wood. The language used, like smart growth, walkability, city of villages, is designed to make increased density sound acceptable. The 30-foot height limit law is perfect example of the difference between what people want and what development interests want. . … (come inside for more)

Coastal Height Limit Protects Public’s Interest

comment posted as article :

Posted: Thursday, January 10, 2013 4:05 pm | Updated: 4:11 pm, Thu Jan 10, 2013.

By David Little |

Your article relative to the 30-foot height limit reminds me of the Vietnam military official who famously said we are going to have to bomb that city to save it. . … (come inside for more )

This will be the first of several Man/ Woman -on-the Street interviews we have with OBceans and others on controversies in and around Ocean Beach. And this is just the very first set of interviews I had on the subject of the Police trailer with OBceans around town – mostly at the Farmers’ Market.

First, I asked folks if they lived in OB. And if they said yes, I asked them – without any prompting from me – what they thought about the trailer over in the Pier parking lot that has been there for the last 14 years. Here’s some of my first man/ woman interviews, from Wednesday, January 9, 2012.

Kip Kruegar, 50-something, long-time resident and activist, former member of the OB Planning Board:

“Been there too long. It’s gotta go.”

Just this past September 1st, Gregg Sullivan opened up his Art and Surf Co. shop on the 4800 block of Voltaire Street in OB. The unassuming part of the shop is painted white – but it’s next to a brightly-painted inviting inner area with some art pieces, plants, and a fire pit.

“I support the arts and push my passion for surfing,” he told me yesterday when I stopped by to check out his spread and asked ‘why?’.

Editor: John Lawrence, a regular writer for San Diego Free Press, has teamed up with Frank Thomas, a nationally-known progressive researcher, to lay out a Cultural Comparison between gun violence in America and Europe, in a three part series, all reposted below.

By John Lawrence and Frank Thomas

Introduction

While US gun crime and all crime levels are slowly but almost imperceptibly declining, they still remain relatively astronomically high compared with Europe. In this article, we compare US and European levels of gun violence and gun control to see if we can make any sense of the gun debate in the wake of the increasing frequency of mass murders as well as the almost mundane everyday killings in urban areas like Chicago and Detroit. Frank is an ex-pat who has lived in Europe for over 30 years. John has lived in San Diego for over 40 years.

National Weather Service says Super Swells to Hit Ocean Beach and Point Loma with nearly 7 feet

NBC San Diego: Some major tides will hit San Diego shorelines beginning Thursday morning, the National Weather Service (NWS) announced.

The super swells – dubbed California “king tides” or “astronomical tides” – strike the coast between two to four times per year when the gravitational forces of the sun, Earth and a full moon are all in alignment.

4300 Volunteers Removed 7600 Pounds of Trash Last Year

Surfrider and Coastkeeper have just released data from their combined beach clean-ups for last year, 2012, and the news is that Ocean Beach has become one of the cleaner beaches. For the past three years, OB was the “dirtiest”. But now we’ve beat out Mission Beach. The new rankings are based on the amount of trash collected per volunteer during the different beach clean-ups.

For three years, the most trash per volunteer was collected at Ocean Beach. This year, Ocean Beach became one of the cleaner beaches, …

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press

Qualcomm Corporation, headquartered in San Diego, has been lobbying Congress for a “tax holiday” that would allow it to “repatriate” millions of dollars held offshore in tax free jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.