Month: June 2015

By Tony de Garate

Oh no — not another meeting about homelessness?

No doubt that’s what some will say about the panel assembled by the office of District 2 San Diego City Councilor Lorie Zapf for a discussion on the topic at the monthly meeting of the Midway Community Planning Group June 17 at 3 p.m. in Room 205 of the San Diego Community College, West City Campus, 3249 Fordham St.

If anyone should be skeptical about efforts to address homeless issues in the Midway community, it’s Melanie Nickel, the planning group’s longtime chair. No other issue has been as chronic, pervasive and seemingly unsolvable in the 12 years she’s served with the group.

By Ernie McCray

I ran across a graphic on Facebook the other day that broke down “32-take-away-12=20” in two different ways: the “old fashion” way and the “new” way.

The “new” way was seen as “Satanic” and, with a click onto a website, I read that Louis C.K., one of my favorite comedians, was ticked off that his daughters had gone from loving math to crying about it.

I thought, as I looked at the math visual before me and contemplated whatever it was that was going on with an incredibly funny man’s daughters at school, that both the “old fashion” way and the “new” way got to the correct answer rather nicely.

By Susan Taylor

San Diegans get half an inch of rain… and they become mad planters!

Yes, it did rain and everyone rushed to plant more seeds and summer veggies in the refreshed soil. What a good idea! While it rained I browsed yet another article on companion planting. Although we did cover this topic last year I think it bears consideration.

Companion planting means planting certain garden plants together for intended benefits.

It’s OB Time

The Old OB Hippie Claims He Was the First OB Jogger and Says: Concrete Is Not Good for Knees

By the Old OB Hippie

When I left the college campus with a degree, it was during the heady days of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. There had been protests and demonstrations galore against the war for years and they were getting more intense and militant as each year went by. The country was being torn up by the war and how the Pentagon got its way. Students and young people were being turned into radicals. ‘Revolution was in the air.’

Lifeguards Deserve Presumptive Coverage

By Ed Harris / Special to the OB Rag

When a San Diego Firefighter or Police officer is injured or contracts an illness while performing their job, the City provides them with presumptive health coverage. Presumptive coverage includes meningitis, tuberculosis and hepatitis, to name a few.

Since San Diego Lifeguards are part of the San Diego Fire Department, one would think they’d be provided that same presumptive coverage. They are not.

A six-unit apartment on Long Branch – less than a half block from the beach – has been sold for $1.2 million. Built in 1963, the two-story complex at 5163 Long Branch Avenue has 3 studio apartments, one 1-bedroom unit and two 2-bedroom apartments.

The current building is on a 4,000 square foot lot and includes 3,439 square feet of rentable space (assessor’s parcel 448-033-29). The building is vacant as the new owner plans on doing a substantial rehab job.

By Jim Miller

One of the more interesting pieces amidst the glut of ridiculously early pre-primary news stories floating around the Internet and social media was Ruby Cramer’s largely laudatory profile of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook.

Wonder boy Mook, the story tells us, is all about “a ‘new kind of organizing’” that was “going to change politics.”

Report on OB CDC Meeting: The main topic was the Adult Fitness Stations/Children’s Play Area for Saratoga Park. The request has been made to the County Board of Supervisors for a grant, but the outcome is at this time unknown.

What exactly is Saratoga Park? To try to fit this into the overall scheme of things, the city Parks & Rec web-site is not very enlightening. Saratoga Park is not on the list of parks.

It’s true. Former Congressman Jim Bates is making his comeback as the ghost of Paul Revere. Bates is actually re-enacting Revere’s midnight ride this Saturday night, June 13th at – of all times – midnight.

He’ll be on a horse calling for a need for the country to mobilize a large scale effort to get the nation off fossil fuels, a type activists call “a U.S. government World War II-scale Mobilization to transition the U.S. from fossil fuels to conservation and safe, clean wind, water and solar renewable energy.”

By Frank Gormlie

Besides the Chargers stadium, there is no other hotter issue these days in San Diego than that of the issue of vacation rentals. And this is particularly true in the beach and coastal communities of San Diego, like OB, Pacific Beach, Mission Bay.

It is an issue that hits close to home and is a personal one for many San Diegans. A good friend of mine just got married up in the Bay Area. He and his wedding party of 5 found a nice, roomy house in Berkeley with such a nice backyard that they held their ceremony there. They had found the place on Airbnb after another real bed and breakfast had cancelled on them at the last moment.

There are now significant amounts of tar droplets at La Jolla – the Scripps Institute of Oceanography beach just to the north.

We have to ask: has the Santa Barbara oil spill reached San Diego?

The red crabs reached OB yesterday, June 11th.

There’s plenty of them – pelagic red crabs (Pleuroncodes planipes) – that washed up along the high tide line between Ocean Beach and Blacks.

They are usually associated with warmer water temperatures, and perhaps came during the unseasonably warm spring temperatures a few weeks back.