Month: February 2014

Don’t expect a major turnaround from the GOP on cannabis, just electoral pain across America.

By CJ Werleman / AlterNet

As the movement to expand access to marijuana grows across the country, the Republican Party, with the exception of its kooky libertarian wing, has a bad case of reefer madness. Gov. Rick Perry, who’s no stranger to moments of mental madness, equated marijuana use to murder, while Gov. Chris Christie has more or less said he’d prefer dead kids to stoned kids. During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney promised to “fight tooth and nail” against pro-marijuana legalization.

John P. Anderson is an occasional contributor both to the OB Rag and the San Diego Free Press. Just recently, Anderson has joined up with other enthusiasts to start what they hope will be an annual trek through our city’s bike-friendly neighborhoods combined with visits to craft brewers along the way.

They’ve dubbed it Bikes & Beers SD, plotting out a 26-mile bicycling course taking participants through many of San Diego’s most dynamic urban neighborhoods and to some of the region’s most beautiful natural sights. The inaugural event will take place …

The Ocean Beach Town Council is hosting what they hope will be a community dialogue on bike advocacy and planning and they are presenting a panel of experts to kick start this dialogue this Wednesday, Feb. 26th, at the Masonic Center.

The meeting of the Town Council starts at 7:00pm and the Masonic Center located at 1711 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

Tackling a range of regional and local bicycle issues, the panel of experts includes:

By Jim Miller

In my first novel, Drift, there is a passage where the main character, Joe, is driving through City Heights pondering the poetry of the streets.

He notes the “funky majesty” of a store front church sandwiched between a pharmacy and a liquor store and revels in the cacophony of signs in Vietnamese, Spanish, English, and more while he loses himself in the street life passing by as “everything bled together seamlessly in the twilight and became part of the mystic fabric of impending night.”

By Judi Curry

At the risk of alienating a lot of people, I am absolutely incensed by the City Council naming a day after Peggy Shannon for the “harassment suffered by the mayor of San Diego.” A day in her honor? For what? What did she do that was so honorable? Stop a thief? Adopt orphan children; Save people from a burning building? Fund a scholarship for children that can’t afford to go to college?

She is having a “day of honor” so that the city does not have to pay out any money from the harassment of the former mayor? She is having a “day of honor” because she told the world about the mayor’s flirting with her? She is having a “day of honor” because she “. . . had butterflies in her stomach because she didn’t know what was going to happen the next time the mayor came to her desk”?

Tonight – Friday, Feb 21

6 pm

The OB Playhouse & Arts Center

4944 Newport Ave

We have an update on the opening date for OB Warehouse, the new spot on Newport Avenue from the Cohn Restaurant Group.

Apparently Tim Spann’s estimate of “a couple weeks” that we reported was a bit optimistic.

“We don’t have a definitive opening date,” said Kelly Brown, a publicist with the Cohn Group. “It’s going to be in the next couple of months.”

Editor: As we continue in our series looking at the different districts within the Ocean Beach Planning Area, today we settle in District 4 – the Hub of OB. (Here’s a look at District 1, District 2 and District 3. Here’s why it’s important.)

District 4 – The Center of the Village – the Hub of OB

It’s easy to see why District 4 is indeed the center and hub of the community of Ocean Beach. Just look at a map and you’ll see that the business district and the main beach are both in this district.

Downtown OB – the 3 commercial blocks of Newport Avenue and the adjacent side streets – is certainly the center of the community, no matter how you measure it. Traffic, pedestrians, events, happenings, music, food – and of course drink – it all happens right there.

Full Board to Take Up Project on March 5th

Last night, Feb. 19th, the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board met to check out a project proposed at 4766 Brighton Avenue. And after extensive questions and comments by board members, the applicant and audience members, the reviewers voted to send the project to the full board without approving or denying it. Without making a decision on the controversial project, they punted it to next month – entirely in their right to do so.

The full board next meets on Wednesday, March 5th. Whereupon, the applicant – Yale Jallos – will presumably return with promised changes to the design of the buildings and their placement.

Jallos is proposing to …

Rumors of Pat’s Liquor Being Sold Premature

We had heard from a good source that Pat’s Liquor had been sold, but it ain’t so, joe. Our reporter contacted those in the know and said nope.

OB Planners to Begin Review of 4766 Brighton Proposed Project

At their Wed, Feb 19 meeting the OB Planning Board will begin its formal review of a proposed project at 4766 Brighton Avenue. The review committee meets at 6pm at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica. The proposed development is to demolish an older single-family home and put up two 2-story houses.

It is official. Gretchen Newsom, the president of the Ocean Beach Town Council, is in the race to be appointed the interim councilperson for the San Diego City Council seat being vacated by Mayor-elect Kevin Faulconer.

After receiving encouragement from a number of community leaders and resources, including the OB Rag, Gretchen decided to throw her proverbial hat in the ring for the appointment. She already has the endorsement of the advocacy group Run Women Run and she told the OB Rag that she anticipates the endorsement of the Point Loma Democratic Club.

The Project Review Committee, a sub-committee of the OB Planning Board, will be reviewing a project on the 4700 block of Brighton Avenue at their meeting Wed., Feb. 19th.

Taking up the only item on the agenda, the unnamed applicant is seeking approval from the Planning Board for a project located at 4766 Brighton Avenue: to take down an older one story house on a large lot and construct two 2-story houses.

This is the first step in a 2-step process, where the applicant first appears at the review committee, which takes a vote of approval or denial; the project then goes before the full Board for a final decision. The next full Board meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 5.