Month: December 2014

Photo Gallery of Event Inside

Last Saturday, December 13th, San Diego joined the national day of protests held nation-wide against police violence. The largest demonstrations were in New York City and Washington DC.

Three hundred people gathered at the large fountain in Balboa Park during the late morning for a rally, die-in and march. A couple dozen curious tourists were nearby, snapping photos. It was a very mixed crowd, and as Doug Porter reports (below) some of the speakers were exceptionally passionate and persuasive.

The various speakers did decry police shootings of Black men – including in San Diego, and other themes such as the lack of justice, the systematic racism of the system, white privilege, the need to come together, to love one another, to meet at the Malcolm X Library as part of a coalition, how reforms are not good, to not just come to a rally but take the struggle home, and more.

This Christmas, put your money to better use than thoughtless gift-giving.

By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

‘Tis the season for mindless consumerism.

I love giving gifts when they’re from the heart. But I hate giving or receiving presents if they’re things nobody needs, given out of a sense of obligation.

Here’s a story that illustrates what I mean. Back in college, a friend of mine approached me and said, “I just want to give you a heads up, my new girlfriend bought you a gift.”

Uh-oh, I thought. I didn’t even get him a gift,

Dear Councilwoman Zapf:

When you were elected to the San Diego City Council 4 years ago, to represent my Clairemont neighborhood, I was willing to give you a chance.

After all, you claimed to be sensitive to working class issues, as asmall business owner. And you have mentioned having Mexican-American family members, which made me hopeful you would find common ground with the growing Latino community in my native Clairemont.

But this week, your staff’s comments about how she “wanted to shoot” the “… idiot” protesters at a City Council event displayed a shocking lack of awareness about public safety, civil disobedience, efforts to achieve social justice, and the constitutional right of Americans to use peaceful protest to communicate with elected officials.

And what makes this latest situation even worse: it was the SECOND time a member of your staff displayed this tone deaf, cavalier disrespect towards public protest.

The Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board is scheduled to review a demolition / construction project on the 4900 block of Saratoga Avenue at their monthly meeting this Wednesday, Dec. 17th.

The one-item agenda of the Committee, chaired by John Ambert, begins at 6 pm at the OB Recreation Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue. The Project Review Committee holds a semi-hearing on each project that is to come before the Planning Board and then it usually makes a recommendation to the full Board, that most times considers the project at their next monthly meeting.

The project up for consideration this week is an application for a Coastal Development Permit at 4950 and 4956 Saratoga Avenue. The application is to demolish 2 existing residences and build 4 dwelling units – on a 2 lot plot of 0.16 acres.

By Annie Lane

The 1999 Columbine High School shooting jolted me. I was 15 at the time. That is, I was still immortal and arrogant in the way that only a teen can be. Despite this, I remember being jolted by the violence of it, and the permanence. The kids killed were my age; they were essentially moments away from entering into the adult world, however unprepared, just like me.

The black-and-white cafeteria footage that ran on a seemingly endless loop across news stations nationwide was spell-binding. It was simultaneously real while perfectly mimicking Hollywood violence – or was it the other way around?

Columbine’s Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were outcasts, no doubt. But I distinctly remember gawking at the idea of that being their motive. Really? I was a Thespian for Heaven’s sake. If your adolescent goal is to receive near-constant ridicule, join the theatre.

Vacation rental property owners targeted for missing tax payments

By John P. Anderson / San Diego Free Press

I have a small cottage that I rent out to visitors via the vacation rental website Airbnb. The cottage is on the same property as my home and I did not think that vacation rental taxes in San Diego applied to my situation.

The taxes in San Diego for vacation rentals are the transient occupancy tax (TOT) and tourism marketing district (TMD) assessment. The rates for a property like mine from these taxes total 11.05% of gross rent – 10.5% TOT and .55% TMD, there is also a higher 1.45% TMD rate that applies to lodging businesses with 30 or more units.

By Jim Miller

A couple of weeks ago I evoked Joseph Conrad’s classic critique of colonialism when discussing the disposability of black and brown lives in the wake of Ferguson and our collective ability to dehumanize or “thingify” black and brown people at home and abroad.

As I observed then, “in Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness we are taken on a journey into the core of the European colonial enterprise. And while the naïve reader may expect an adventure in the ‘savage’ world of Africa, what one quickly discovers is that it is the ‘hollow men’ of Europe bent on the ruthless exploitation of the land and the people who are the real savages, whose moral emptiness and desire to ‘exterminate the brutes’ is the actual horror.”

A community representative of newly-sworn in Councilwoman Lori Zapf called protesters at Zapf’s inaugural “fucking idiots” and then said “I wanted to shoot them!”

Shirley Owen, an aide to Zapf, called the protesters “fucking idiots with their hands up” and said “I wanted to shoot them.” The protesters were there to protest police violence and brutality, and had rallied outside the Golden Hall inauguration in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Dec. 10th. They were chanting “hands up, don’t shoot!”, and then went inside and had a silent protest and a “die-in”.

By Matthew Wood

Bone Appetit Ocean Beach Pet Supply owner Kelly Patri is looking for a few good cat owners. But be warned: She won’t give up her rescue kitties to just anyone.

“We have an application process,” Patri says about her cat adoption center in the back of the store on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. “We’ve definitely turned people away.”

The adoption center is approved by San Diego County, meaning it has passed their requirements as an “approved adoption facility.”

Coinciding with a national march against police violence in Washington, DC, organizers have planned a march here in San Diego on the same day.

The national march is being organized by the National Action Network in response to the recent shootings by police of unarmed Black men and the failure of grand juries to indict the cops involved. Protest have erupted across the country on a daily basis since the most recent failure to indict last week by a New York grand jury.

The solidarity action in San Diego is on Saturday, December 13th, and begins at the Balboa Park Big Fountain at 10:30 am. Speakers are planned, as well as a “Die-In” and a march.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Part 1 can be found here

We are lucky to have advanced to a stage that scientists can determine the relationship between the rate of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions into the atmosphere, the absolute value in tons of CO₂ already in and projected to be in the atmosphere, the rate of increase of CO₂ emissions and the relationship between amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface temperatures.

If we didn’t have this science, we might go right ahead destroying the earth’s environment to the point of extinction of human life without even understanding what was happening to us.

A four-unit complex on the 4900 block of Coronado Avenue in Ocean Beach has just been sold for $1.5 Million. The complex at 4947-4951½ Coronado Ave. consists of a main house with 4-bedrooms and 2 baths, plus one 2-bedroom, 2 bath house, and then a pair of one-bedroom units. “The Coronado Avenue Apartments”, built in 1951, at assessor’s parcel 448-161-09, is a 7,000-square-foot lot.

Of course, it’s not known what the new owner plans to do with this large lot close to beautiful Sunset Cliffs. Will the nearly 65 year-old buildings be rehabbed, or will they be demolished and replaced with a 3-story gargantuan? This property is in District 5 of the OB Planning Area, and Board members Jane Gawronski and Michael Nieto represent the district.
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