Month: January 2013

On New Year’s Eve
as I sat quietly
in my easy chair,
out of thin air
from a place called nowhere,
Maxi, my cat,
skittered across me
in the middle of my ease,
creating a little breeze,
landing on the mantle over the fireplace
with a couple of tip taps of her feet
and I picked up the beat
and patted rhythms on my thighs
and on my knees
and my bongos
and the next thing I know
I’m scatting jazz riffs like a cross
between Lambert Hendricks and Ross
and Satchmo
and humming sounds

Class at Orchard Avenue Site Led by Garden Experts

As part of Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Gardens campaign, the San Diego Chapter will be holding a Garden Assistance Party (GAP) in Ocean Beach on Sunday, January 13 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The event will take place at a Sunset Cliffs residence located at 4895 Orchard Avenue, at the end of Cable Street. Lead by garden experts, Surfrider volunteers will get hands-on experience reworking the home’s landscaping to apply the guiding CPR criteria of the Ocean Friendly Garden program – Conservation, Permeability and Retention.

Ocean Beach and Point Loma residents are familiar with the challenges of storm water flooding, an eroding coastline, and beaches polluted from rainwater runoff, and can help take part in mitigating these problems by incorporating conservation practices at home. The Garden Assistance Party ties into a three-part series addressing the economic, environmental and practical benefits of a garden designed to protect our region’s watersheds and oceans.

Restaurant Review:

Las Olas
3924 West Point Loma Blvd.
Point Loma, CA 92110
619-222-6600

I was very disappointed when one of my favorite restaurants in Point Loma – Embers – closed many months ago. For months, every time I drove by I looked to see if a new establishment was going to open in that spot. About six months ago I noticed that there were workmen inside rehabbing the building and could hardly wait to see what new cuisine would be offered.

Finally, yesterday I noticed a sign that said “Open” on the back of the building fronting Sports Arena Blvd. and quickly called Scot, a friend of mine who reviewed another restaurant with me in early 2012 (it is only a coincidence that Scot is a reporter for the Beacon -which seldom has restaurant reviews!) – and asked him if he wanted to join me in a “taste test.” He quickly said “yes” even though he had been there the week before, just 3 days after it opened. (It has been open for about a week and half.)

The restaurant, Las Olas, one of 3 owned by a Pt. Loma High School graduate – Dave Murphy – and Pete Johnson, a La Jolla High graduate. (The other two restaurants are located in Cardiff and Carlsbad.)

As the Police Trailer and its future in the parking lot of the popular OB Pier is a big issue for a good number of people in Ocean Beach (see our current poll in the sidebar), we thought we’d remove some layers of the ol’ proverbial onion by adding some complexities that surround the trailer issue.

There are three basic positions among OBceans on the trailer itself:

1. those who want to make it “permanent”;
2. those who are okay with it being temporary, but want it moved somewhere else;
3. and those who want to remove it ASAP.

If we examine each of these positions, we’ll find each has strengths and each has basic contradictions that somehow need to be resolved for each to become the dominant one.

For the brief background on the situation (see my report of the OB Planning Board decision on the trailer here), the trailer was installed in 1999 to create a stronger police presence in the parking lot as an agreement between the police and OB merchants;

This was a wonderful year for Christmas lights in my City Heights neighborhood. They cheerfully, often exuberantly, illuminated the night from the day after Thanksgiving until the day after New Year’s. It is sad to see them extinguished, put away, for yet another year, although ours stay up in the house year round. You can never have enough illumination in the darkness…

But that is not to say the seasonal celebrations are over- far from it. Sunday January 6th is the Three Kings Day celebration in Mexico and other Spanish speaking cultures; it is also Orthodox Christmas Eve for those religious traditions based upon the Julian calendar, as opposed to our Gregorian calendar. What that boils down to is that I have to order my rosca de reyes so that I can take it to our Orthodox Christmas Eve dinner.

By Laura Gottesdiener / Alternet

There have been more than 400 guns deaths since the Newtown massacre on December 14, according to a new interactive project between Slate.com and the anonymous twitter user @gundeaths.

By Michael Moore / Reader Supported News / January 7, 2013

I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this weekend about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I’ll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don’t know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

Dear Bill,

The San Diego CityBeat recently ran a post by Alfred Howard about his favorite profession and music store where he currently works: OB’s “Cow” at 5029 Newport Ave.

The Cow is a special place. Where the sidewalk of America ends, the neighborhood regulars congregate to gaze at the vast blue expanse of the Pacific. Nearby stands a museum of sorts—4,000 cassettes on the wall, 8-tracks in the back and vinyl for days. We even have Waterworld on LaserDisc (so help me, God, I will sell that thing). …

He describes his position as clerk:

I feel a weight of importance behind my position—I’m a kind of preservationist.

Editor: This accounting of the recent meeting of the OB Planning Board on the Police Trailer was written for the San Diego Free Press, therefore has a slightly different spin on the issue. And BTW, please let us know how you feel about the trailer by participating in our poll on the trailer in our sidebar.

The meeting room at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center was quickly filling up last Wednesday night, the 2nd of January, as the monthly meeting of the Board was about to begin. No “OB-time” here, as the Chair, Jane Gawronski, gaveled the meeting to order right at 6:00 pm. In the audience was a “who’s-who” of the community’s merchant establishment and friends, and it included the heads of the OB Town Council; the merchants’ group, the Mainstreet Association; the local non-profit OB Community Development Corporation.

Grover Norquist is happy. After the fiscal cliff deal was passed in the House, he pointed out that Obama blinked on his $250,000 line in the sand on taxes and that, by locking in the Bush tax cuts for 98% of Americans, the Democrats’ ability to defend the legacy of the New Deal has been greatly diminished. He’s right.

As David Horsey recently pointed out:

[T]he mandarin of the anti-tax movement, Grover Norquist, is coming out of this showdown with a big smile on his face, which should make Democrats wonder if their “victory” is a bit of an illusion. Norquist has kept Republicans in line for years by making them take his pledge to never, ever raise taxes.

By Laura Gottesdiener / Alternet

It’s payback time—literally. In Florida, hundreds of homeowner and neighborhood associations are foreclosing on banks that have failed to upkeep their repossessed properties, according to—of all things— a CNN Money report.

Florida is one of the states hardest hit by foreclosures, and there are nearly a half-million foreclosed houses now standing vacant and often slowly deteriorating. When a bank forecloses on a house, evicts the family and then repossesses the property, it also assumes responsibility for maintaining the home and yard and paying homeowner or condo association fees.

It was standing room only last night – Wednesday, January 2nd – at the monthly meeting of the Ocean Beach Planning Board. At the peak of the evening, there must have been 30 people – not counting the ten members of the Board itself – , and most had come for the controversy over the Police Trailer in the middle of the OB Pier parking lot. Among those standing about was a ‘who’s-who’ of OB’s merchants and the village establishment.

Jane Gawronski, Chair of the Board, gaveled the meeting to order right around 6pm. After a few reports, she brought the meeting to the Action agenda.