Month: March 2014

Here is the agenda for the Ocean Beach Planning Board April meeting. The Board meets in the meeting room of the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica, at 6pm sharp.

Editor: In January our Judi Curry warned readers that the City was no longer allowing right turns on red at the intersection of Voltaire Street and Catalina Boulevard. Geoff Page – a former member of the Peninsula Community Planning Board – vowed to get to the bottom of it. So, here is his the result of his research and analysis.

‘No Right Turn On Red’ Signs at Busy Intersection Should Be Removed

By Geoff Page / Special to the OB Rag

It has taken longer than I hoped but I do have the story about the No Right Turn On Red sign installed at Catalina/Famosa and Voltaire last September.

The road to this information was much longer than it should have been, considering the subject matter, and it required patience and aggressive persistence. The shame of it is that this isn’t a scandalous expose; this is information about placement of traffic signs. The signs are on southbound Famosa at Voltaire. Famosa becomes Catalina once you cross Voltaire. The turn restriction is from southbound Famosa to westbound Voltaire.

By K.C. Libman / Phoenix New Times

Few bands remain as succinctly Californian and categorically challenging as San Diego’s Slightly Stoopid. Signed to the late Bradley Nowell’s Skunk Records in 1995, they’re an act that’s been a signed Golden State institution for almost 20 years, carving out their niche by pulling together a variety of genres into a melding that’s all their own. Having been road dogs for the entirety of their career, even after two decades, they still wouldn’t have it any other way, tribulations and personalities aside.

“You can’t be lazy as a touring artist,” says frontman and founding member Miles Doughty.

“So many bands just want that quick success when you need to have longevity. We’ve never been a band that’s exploded on the radio, that had any Top 10 singles, but we’re a band that draws people to shows, and that’s the difference — we can always tour. We strive to have the longevity in being on the road.”

By Kathy Blavatt

Brown Bag Deli
1912 Rosecrans Street
San Diego, CA 92106
http://brownbagsd.com

For a couple years in the 1980s, my husband and I lived in Roseville, and Brown Bag Deli was our favorite deli (besides Pomas). Located on Rosecrans across from NTC, Brown Bag Deli is much like its name, very basic when it come to atmosphere.

What made my early experiences of this deli special was the heavenly smell of fresh baked bread coming out of their large ovens in the early lunch hours.

The sandwiches are delicious, reasonably priced and there is a long menu list to choose from. The large size can easily be split between two people. Also, they have 3-foot and 6-foot sandwiches that can feed large groups and parties.

By Lori Saldaña / San Diego Free Press

As George Santayana famously observed: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But in the case of the Pan-American centennial planning, organizers need to learn from the history of the event to help them re-create its grandeur and appeal, and make the 2015 Balboa Park centennial a celebration of innovation, rooted in the first Exhibition’s origins.

Here’s a brief statement of the original events’ main theme: “The purpose of the Panama-California Exposition is to illustrate the progress and possibility of the human race, not for the exposition only, but for a permanent contribution to the world’s progress.”

By Jim Miller

It’s spring and opening week is here and that makes me very happy. Baseball helps me live. It’s perhaps the best American manifestation of the kind of daily ritual that enables us to achieve a small portion of the balance and harmony we need to provide ballast against the chaos of the world.

Whether it’s playing the game or simply contemplating it, baseball provides one with precisely the kind of focused yet purposeless activity that can take you out to the ballgame and into the heart of the moment.

It’s the stillness at the heart of the game that I love, the empty space out of which motion and grace emerge–the pregnant nothing that gives birth to the artful something. And baseball, like art, is gorgeously useless and inefficiently slow.

Perhaps that slowness is why baseball has given ground to the more brutal, time-driven, managerially efficient game of football. We go from the Taylorized, competitive realm of the corporate world to a gladiatorial weekend on the gridiron that celebrates many of the same values.

OBceans planning on riding from OB

The next CicloSDias is Sunday, March 30, 2014, 10am-3pm. This time it’s about introducing Pacific Beach up to La Jolla to this amazing open streets event. Check out the route above.

Decorate yourself, decorate your bike and join us for the first ever CicloSDias Bike Parade!

When: 11:30am, March 30th.

Where: Cass and Garnet HUB

A friendly panel of judges will determine the winners. Top 3 in store for some great prizes!

See you on the 30th for a Car Free PB!

Folks from OB will be congregating at the Robb Field Skate Board Park.

5 Bike-share locations where customers able to check out 3-speed bicycles

By Tony de Grata

The locations of the five stations in Ocean Beach where bike-share customers will be able to check out a comfortable, easy-to-ride three-speed should be revealed by the end of the month, according to Brian Genovese, senior engineer in the city’s Transportation and Stormwater Department.

The Ocean Beach stations will be among the 180 to be installed under a 10-year agreement between the city and Florida-based DecoBike, the company that won the contract last year to run a bike-share program in San Diego. The system should be up and running sometime this year, according to DecoBike press releases.

Lorie Zapf a ‘No-Show’ After Town Council Tries to Re-schedule Forum

There was a hundred people in the audience at last night’s “debate” between the candidates for the District 2 council seat hosted by the OB Town Council. It wasn’t so much an actual debate inside the Masonic Center as it was an opportunity for residents of the district to ask questions of the candidates.

Three of the four candidates did show up; Sarah Boot, Jim Morrison and Mark Schwartz. Lorie Zapf couldn’t make it so sent her campaign manager, Sara Kamjab, to give a brief introduction. Kamjab explained that Zapf had committed long ago to being the speaker at a major Mira Mesa community fundraiser, however Town Council president Gretchen Newsom commented that the Council had offered an alternative date for the debate, but that the Zapf campaign declined to accept that one also.

By Marc Snelling

The Story of How Ocean Beach Took on Starbucks

Part 2

The building being leased by Starbucks at 4994 Newport, like the Strand also had historical significance. Built in 1927 as a branch office for the Bank of Italy, it incorporated graceful interior features including antique mahogany furniture, chrome iron tellers windows, and marble. Ocean Beach Historical Society president Carol Bowers contacted Starbucks asking them to preserve the unique features of the building.

She was told that a “design team” would contact her to address her concerns. While she was waiting for the call that never came she walked by the site and saw that the arched windows and loft that had housed the former vault had already been walled off. Trees that had been growing int he parking lot had been removed. “So much for Starbucks touted community involvement” she wrote in a May 24th editorial for the Beacon.

Shameful immigration policies separate loved ones

By Brent E. Beltrán / San Diego Free Press

Love doesn’t recognize borders. It doesn’t know if the person you love has papers or if they have done time for youthful indiscretions. None of that matters to love because love transcends all. My cousin Alma, who grew up on 29^th St. near K St. in Grant Hill, knows about this kind of love. She and her children live it every day.

My cousin fell in love with, and eventually married, her husband Juan. Him not having legal status to live in the US didn’t bother her whatsoever. She was in love and her heart didn’t care if the man she wanted to be with was allowed to be in this country legally or not. Juan and Alma in love.

By Barb Dunsmore / Special to the OB Rag

When it comes to impassioned feelings about Sea World, most readers of the OB Rag are well aware that much has recently been written, discussed, filmed, and documented. The world began to take notice with the release of Gabriella Cowperthwaite’s documentary Blackfish. It started with ripples of awareness that have now become waves of deep concern. The worldwide anger the movie unleashed is nearly impossible to ignore.

While SeaWorld was celebrating their 50th anniversary last Friday, everyday citizens, myself included, were standing on Sea World Drive protesting 50 years of inhumane captivity, drawing attention to what we, and a growing number of people around the world see as a new vision for SeaWorld: the recently proposed California Captive Orca Welfare and Safety Act – AB 2140. A new vision that could be a win-win for the orcas and SeaWorld alike, where the orcas would finally be free from the confines and cruel control inflicted upon them daily.

Who are we that protest you ask?