Month: January 2017

The Ocean Beach Town Council is kicking off the new year with its first public meeting – Wednesday, January 25th – where community representatives from local elected officials’ offices will be introduced, the winners of the OB Parade will receive their plaques and a discussion of community concerns will be held.

The meeting runs from 7pm to 8:30pm and will be held at the Masonic Center, located at 1711 Sunset Cliffs Blvd in Ocean Beach 92107.

An Open Letter to My Friends Who Support Trump – and the Modern Republican Party

By Scott Stephen

Since the Civil War, there has been no greater political divide than in America today. Keeping a friendship alive with someone in the opposing party is quite challenging. I count many Republicans among my good friends, relatives and business associates. Some of these folks have been extremely loyal to me over the years.

If you’re my friend, I truly love you whether you’re a Democrat, Green, Republican or Libertarian. And I generally avoid political discussion with friends who have opposing views unless I sense those opinions are not deep rooted. Despite my efforts, I have lost a few friends along the way mostly due to Facebook posts which offended some individuals. Many of these same lost friends had themselves posted political articles that often bothered me but it has been my policy not to comment on a friends post unless I agree with it or in cases where the information is false and/or has been debunked.

By Jim Miller

During the halcyon days of the Trump transition period, the Education Committee confirmation hearing of Betsy DeVos stood out as perhaps the most jarring example of the craven cynicism that defines the new regime.

The headlines said it all, with nearly every major media outlet noting DeVos’s scant qualifications and terrible performance with extreme skepticism. The New York Times expressed “Big Worries About Betsy DeVos” while the New Yorker outlined “Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools.”

Tragedy enveloped Sunset Cliffs Saturday night, as one of two women rescued after being swept off rocks and into the foamy rough waters, died in a hospital later that night.

The 23-year-old woman, public identified as Adriana Toro, was the first fatality at the cliffs for the new year.

Witnesses told the media that they observed two women walking on rocks near Santa Cruz Avenue and Bacon Street fully dressed with coats and shoes attempting to get a close look at the waves just after sunset. Suddenly a large wave broke over the cliffs and swept both women into the churning surf.

By Bob Dorn

At 9:30 am on Sunday, January 21st, the No. 7 bus driver stopped for us even though he’d lighted the “Out of Service” banner. He told us with a smile “room for two more.” Passengers were butt to butt and belly to belly. A woman said she loved my hat: I’d cut out the letter N and O, for NO, and taped them to the red baseball cap I hadn’t been wearing lately out of fear I’d be considered a TrumpLump.

By the time we’d arrived at Broadway at the 12th Ave. Transit Center crowds on foot were already heading toward the Civic Center. Cars and buses could only inch along beleaguered Broadway. So we jumped off the bus at 4th Ave. and headed north to B St.

January 21, 2017 was an historic day in San Diego – and around the nation and world – with the Women’s March. According to San Diego Police, the crowd in downtown San Diego at the rallies and the march down Broadway was 40,000 women, men and children of all ages and all hues.

It was definitely one of the largest demonstrations in San Diego’s history – matched probably by the huge immigration march of nearly a decade ago.

Here are photos from yesterday’s march – taken by a number of friends who sent them to us.

For a live blog of San Diego and national inauguration day events and news, go to our associates at San Diego Free Press – today.

One of the editors of SDFP, Barbara Zaragoza, is in DC and is sending back reports, pics and vids.

A group of students from Point Loma High School’s Cinematic Arts class has made a PSA of students voicing their concerns with President Elect Donald Trump.

Please come inside for video

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At the end of January, members of the OB community are hosting the San Diego Yoga Festival, an event that has been in the planning since last summer.

The idea supposedly was initiated by a San Diego Police supervisor, Sgt. Yu, who patrols OB, as a method to clear OB’s parks and waterfront out. He told the San Diego Reader that:

“… I love seeing those people doing their workouts; the more they show up, the more we fill these public spaces with this type of positive energy, the more quickly transient gangs will move on…and I call them transient gangs because they gravitate and congregate in groups of 5, 10, 15 and intimidate people; they are no different than a gang.”

The mission behind the yoga festival has deepened since then, and as Katrina Thomas wrote in the San Diego Entertainer Magazine, the festival organizers are “, inviting teachers and participants from around the country,” and aim to place San Diego on the map in the yoga world.

The OB Warehouse on Newport Ave in OB, part of the Cohn family’s Eatery Empire, is scheduled to close up business in mid-February. This report comes from an online restaurant/ beer tabloid, sandieogville.com .

The OB Warehouse just opened in August of 2014 with a lot of fanfare and was much-heralded for its construction motif with award-winning restrooms. It was the 3rd Cohn Restaurant Group restaurant to open in the Peninsula (Corvette Diner in Liberty Station and Bo-Beau’s on Voltaire Street in northwest OB being the others).