Month: April 2016

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Is it all coming together,
or all falling apart?
I can’t tell anymore.
I came with love,
but can’t find your heart.

I tried to explain how we could help get people off their streets,
by providing basic shelter in supportive communities.
We’d carefully thought out the plan,
Laid it out for them in ways they could understand,
how this would make life better for everyone.

But they came armed with one practiced phrase:
“Not in my backyard!”

Can it all come together?
Or is it already falling apart?
It’s impossible to tell
When we say we want peace,
but we’re fighting an uphill battle from the start.

This is directed at the Creative OB and San Diego Arts Community:

According to Stu Schreiber, the sublease on the beautiful Ocean Beach Playhouse ends May 31st. Due to many personal challenges, he and his were really never able to get it off the ground as they had intended, and are now actively looking for serious contenders to purchase (the equipment and furnishings), the theatre, and start a new lease for the space with the landlords on June 1st.

If they do not find those people this month, they will need to begin the unfortunate process of dismantling on May 1st, Stu told the OB Rag.

Today- Saturday, April 16th, there will be a meeting held at the OB Playhouse from 4-6 pm …

Originally published April 15, 2016

The Ocean Beach Planning Board, like other neighborhood planning groups around San Diego, is often plagued by low turnouts at its annual Board elections. It’s not uncommon for candidates to receive votes that total in the single digits. This year was no different.

The low audience numbers at the Board’s monthly meetings say something. Plus the fact that the OB Board currently has a 36% vacancy rate – there’s 5 seats vacant on a 14-member Board.

So, I have a few friendly suggestions to make for the OB Planning Board – a good chunk of them aimed at increasing the community’s participation at and with the Board. In addition, My background quickly: 3 years on the OB Board, one year as Chair.

“We’re here to comfort those who are disturbed and disturb those who are comfortable.”

By Barbara Zaragoza

The Sister’s of Perpetual Indulgence, San Diego Chapter came into existence in April 2005. Fourteen San Diegans went up to Los Angeles and talked to their SPI about starting an order. Thereafter, the San Diego Sisters established their SPI chapter and called it the “Asylum of the Tortured Heart, Inc.,” devoting themselves to outreach for those on the edges.

Eleven years later, the Sisters still use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry and complacency.

Thousands of OB Residents, Property and Business Owners Took Part in Historic Election of May 4, 1976

There are a lot of important anniversaries these days, it seems, like the 50th anniversary of the Ocean Beach Pier, and like the 50th Re-Union of the Point Loma High School Class of 1966.

But there’s one significant anniversary for Ocean Beach that has as of yet been highlighted for its deserved respect and celebration.

And that’s the 40th Anniversary of the popular vote on March 4, 1976 that established both the Ocean Beach Planning Board and the first OB Community Plan (then called the “Precise Plan”).

By Herman Baca

If the so-called U.S. immigration issue is a historical labor issue as Chicano/Mexicanos activists, historians, scholars & academicians claim, what then has been the historical role of the U.S. Border Patrol (BP)?

To answer that question one has to study the U.S.’s historical addiction to free and cheap labor. That started when white supremacists created the Afro-American slave labor system in Jamestown, West Virginia in 1619. A town named after King James I of England who organized the slave trade in America, and translated the King James Bible?

Today, those white supremacists are represented by Republican party presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and his Know-Nothing let’s make America great again supporters.

There are currently 5 vacancies on the Ocean Beach Planning Board, a Board made up of 14 members, two each from OB’s 7 planning districts. The recent annual election in early March only seated one new board member, and at the same time, 3 members left the board. Two were termed out and 1 is moving out of OB.

Which means that there are vacancies in District 1, District 2, District 3, District 5 and District 7.

It is anticipated that the 2 termed out members will be applying to be appointed to vacant seats in the near future. In fact, one has already collected his signatures, and expects to be appointed at the May board meeting.

Often in situations like this, the Board makes appointments of eligible members to the vacant seats, even though those appointed do not live or own property or a business in the districts they are appointed to.

Editor: Here is indeed an interesting look back at Terriers’ – the TV series filmed in Ocean Beach. The show ran for 13 episodes on FX in 2010.

By Phil McCausland / A.V. Club / April 12, 2016

Terriers’ perfect one-season run defied description, marketability

FX needed a comeback in 2010.

In September 2009 FX made an unprecedented move, going six-for-six with pilot-to-series orders. Four of those shows came to define the network: Louie, Justified, Archer, and The League. A fifth, Lights Out, had promise but no audience.

The sixth was the lowest-rated program FX ever produced, and one of its most poorly named: Terriers.

By Ernie McCray

Obama first sold young people
on “Change we can Believe In”
and now Bernie
has them thinking along those lines again
in deeper ways
and I love watching their faces
at his rallies when he says to them
“Change comes from the bottom to the top.”
Their faces light up
as he teaches them how
they might best proceed
as they strive to meet
their world’s desperate needs.

By John Lawrence

On Saturday, April 2, the Chargers published a whole section of the San Diego Union-Tribune devoted to their proposal to build a football stadium for the Chargers combined with a non-contiguous expansion of the Convention Center.

The title of this section was “Notice of Intent to Circulate Petition.” Right off the bat I found several things wrong with this proposal. But before I go into that I want to discuss the MAJOR thing wrong with this proposal.

You see the Chargers think combining a Convention Center Expansion with a new stadium will make it more palatable to San Diego voters especially if the tax that will be raised to pay for it will be a tax on visitors not on locals.

By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants’ Rights Project, ACLU

In the federal criminal bail system, judges are required to consider someone’s financial ability to pay a bond and determine if alternative conditions of supervision — check-ins, travel restrictions — are enough to get the person to show up for court.

But such protections don’t apply to immigrants locked up in detention centers. The result is that people like Cesar Matias, a gay man from Honduras, end up jailed simply because they’re poor.

“Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease.”

In the “Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease” Department, the OB Rag has just been informed that because of concerns expressed by local OBceans on the encroachment into public space by The Joint restaurant on Newport Avenue, the City did a site inspection which resulted in the eatery’s owner being given a “correction notice”.

OBceans have for weeks been complaining to the City, via the OB Rag, through a poll we conducted, and through calls to Lorie Zapf’s office, that the recent installation of a gated outside railing by The Joint was encroaching too much into the space for the public sidewalk. Some thought it created a dangerous situation, especially on crowded days such as the weekly Farmers Market.

Apparently, on Wednesday, April 6th, a site visit was performed by the City’s Development Services inspection team with the restaurant’s owner, Mr. Lowe, present. Measurements were taken and at least a few of them “were found to be inconsistent with the approved and community plans,” ….