Month: November 2013

By Matthew Wood

Growing up in the Ocean Beach area, Ryan Ybarra had a dream in life: To become a fire fighter at the OB Fire House No. 15. He waited for his opportunity, even enduring a hellacious commute from a job at a fire department the Los Angeles area back to his wife and kids in OB.

Finally, about two years ago, a position opened up at the OB station on Voltaire and Ebers and Ybarra grabbed it. Didn’t matter to him that he lost the seniority he had built up. Or that he had to go through training and the department’s probation program. He knew he was home.

“And I’ll probably finish here,” he said with a smile. “As a kid, I always wanted to work in OB. That commute (from L.A.) just about killed me. But it was definitely worth it.”

Ybarra is an engineer on the 12-man crew at OB fire house. The guys were nice enough to give me access to their daily routine, and even ride along in the fire truck to their daily workout regimen.

Here’s a bit about how it works:

“Pure Thai”
3704 Voltaire St.
San Diego, CA 92107
619-542-9499
www.purethaisd.com

So many people have recommended the restaurant “Pure Thai” to me in the past few weeks that I can’t begin to tell you how many there were. People that were upset with my review of another Thai restaurant in the Pt. Loma/Ocean Beach area have actually called and asked me to do a review of this new restaurant. Before I do that, I would like to have you read what the owner of the restaurant has posted on his own web page:

“Pure Thai is a new Thai restaurant in Point Loma that was founded on the dream of Apisith Dischan, who grew up in a family that is accustomed to Thai food. His Father was a manager of Food and Beverage for over 30 years at the 5 star Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok. His mother also owned a Thai restaurant in Bangkok. He started cooking as an apprentice cook helper for his mom.

The Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board meets today – Wednesday, November 20th – at 6 pm sharp at the OB Recreation Center, located at 4726 Santa Monica Ave.

There are two projects up for review by the sub-c0mmittee.

The owner applicants of two one-story single family homes at 4706 Del Mar Avenue want to demolish them and construct two two-story residences on the 7,000 square foot lot. The two new units would be, if approved and built, 2836 and 2117 square feet respectively.

OB Historical Society Presents:

Landscapes Rediscovered

Featuring John DeBeck

—Thurs., Nov. 21st at 7PM

at P.L. United Methodist Church,

1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

John DeBeck, former long-time School Board Member will present a program on the recovered San Diego Unified School District art collection, an extraordinary project he accomplished that benefits historians, school children and all San Diegans.

OB Bike Advocate Rode Across Country

By Rob Greenfeld / Special to the OB Rag

This spring I left my comfortable beachside home in sleepy Ocean Beach to wake America up. On April 16th I hopped into a van with a stranger from a Craigslist.com rideshare board, stopped in Santa Cruz to pick up a bamboo bike, and arrived in San Francisco a with a few days to prepare for a 4,700 mile bike ride across the USA.

The journey, coined Off the Grid Across America, was designed to inspire Americans to start living a more earth-friendly lifestyle for themselves, their community, and the earth.

To lead by example I followed a set of rigorous ground rules:

Who will Ocean Beach vote for?

Today’s the day that San Diego voters go to the polls to elect a new mayor in the Special Election.

Just whom will the mainly liberal voters of OB vote for? Will OBceans turn out in sufficient numbers today to offset their conservative relatives up in Point Loma? Will the middle-of-the-road voters overwhelm both sides of the political spectrum?

The four main candidates are, of course, Mike Aguirre, David Alvarez, Kevin Faulconer, and Nathan Fletcher.

Our sisters and brothers over at the San Diego Free Press have put together a number of articles to assist voters in deciphering just which candidate suites them.

November 19 – Today – Is Deadline for Comments to City Planner

Today is the deadline for OBceans to get their comments, recommendations, suggestions and ideas about the new Update OB Community Plan to the City planner responsible for OB’s plan.

Here is Teresa Millette: tmillette@sandiego.gov

And here are the OB Rag’s comments (presented at the Nov. 13th Town Hall meeting):

• The new Plan calls for a 6% increase in residential units by 2030 – that’s 850 new residents. The City anticipates these new residents will be housed in the 3 community commercial districts along Voltaire, Newport and Point Loma Avenue. These figures are based on SANDAG estimates – which are often wrong.

• The City is trying to place parts of OB into the “City of Villages” concept, but …
  

An artist by the name of Lincoln Cushing once live in Ocean Beach, over on the 4900 block of Brighton Avenue back in the Seventies. In those days, the houses that activists lived in had names, and his was “Vegetable House” – presumably because everyone there was a vegetarian. (This was during the era of “Red House”, “Animal House”, “Cape May Barracks”, etc.)

Lincoln was well known locally for producing politically-charged progressive poster art. He eventually moved to the Bay Area and found kindred spirits in an Oakland print shop that was a workers’ co-op.

Just recently, a poster that Cushing created while living in OB was chosen by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta for an exhibition about public health.

Crosswalk Coming to the Mid-Block on Santa Monica Avenue – Eventually

By Matthew Wood

The city is putting in a much-needed crosswalk on Santa Monica Avenue outside Ocean Beach Elementary School, just not as soon as teachers and parents were hoping. In the meantime, a group of concerned fathers have taken up the cause to ensure safety for kids going to and from school.

According to John Ly, a council representative and policy advisor for Councilmember Kevin Faulconer’s office, funding has been secured and the project is set to be completed by the end of the fiscal year, which is June 2014. He said part of the holdup comes from

By Matthew Wood

A longtime Ocean Beach resident is facing up to 16 months in jail and $3,300 fine for a felony vandalism charge he says stems from a simple case of trimming nearby bushes. Problem is, the bushes are on City property – property on strips of land right next to and near the OB Pier.

Vince Adame, who owns three different properties near the end of Niagara Avenue – a couple of cottages from the Pier, says he has been trimming the New Zealand Christmas Bushes and cleaning up the area across the street on property along with a neighbor, who lives in New York. A lot of what Adame does is pick up the debris and garbage left by homeless people who sleep in the canopies provided by the larger bushes. [Ed.: original post erroneously cited Adame as believing property belonged to a neighbor; Adame has known it was city property.]

“Solare”
Liberty Station
2820 Roosevelt Rd.,
San Diego, CA 92106
Phone: 619-270-9670

When a person is given a clean bill of health after months of severe pain, worry, and surgery, the time is ripe to celebrate that freedom, and Mary and I did just that the other night. There were many different restaurants that we could choose from, but the noise level on all of them was just not conducive to a celebratory meal. (Why do restaurants have to be so noisy nowadays? .

By Frank Gormlie

This may not be a surprise to hardcore corporate media watchers, but CNN has joined the ranks of those establishment outlets that are continuing the cover-up of the assassination of John F Kennedy. The news station has jumped on the bandwagon that is making a lot of noise these days due to the 50th anniversary of the President’s murder.

It was a real disappointment however, in viewing CNN’s “The Assassination of President Kennedy” because one of my favorite actors, Tom Hanks, was one of the producers and I was looking for some truth. Alas, it did not come through.