Month: January 2017

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego

Let’s cut to the chase. San Diego must have a new football stadium for five good reasons.

1. We have already solved the problem of homelessness.

The mayor has made it his priority this year; so that is fixed. Forget that the official count of those on the streets is now 8,700 — an increase of almost 3 percent from last year.

The city can and does just move them out of sight (so if you can’t see them, they don’t exist). Move them from downtown to Hillcrest. From Mission Hills canyons to the bridges and overhangs near Fuller Liquor and along the San Diego River. Ocean Beach doesn’t count because everyone there looks almost homeless.

No need to waste precious money on the homeless. Build a stadium. Let the homeless sleep in the old one.

By Miles Himmel / The Following Story

It starts like a riddle. What gets older, but never changes?

While the waves crash along the shore and the wind blows the palm trees from side to side. An aroma feels the air right about the time as the sun fades away. And sure, the people get older, but no matter what, Ocean Beach never dies.

I finally left the warmth of my parents home about two years after graduating from college. I never intended to stay as long as I did, but when my dad passed away, I lived with my mom as we both coped from my dad losing his life to cancer.

As I looked for my first place to live away from home in San Diego, I wanted a fun place. Not somewhere in the suburbs. I had spent my childhood out in the boonies, away from the action. This was my only time to be somewhere loud and fun! I looked downtown, too expensive. I looked in Barrio Logan, nothing for sale.

By Will Falk / San Diego Free Press

I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, though I know she remembers the first time she saw mine. It was the very beginning of my life, my birth. I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, but, I do remember the first time I saw my mother’s face at what would have been the end of my life after I tried to kill myself.

This is what I’m thinking about as I hold my fifteen-month-old baby nephew Thomas while he falls asleep.

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

In a scathing memo sent Monday to Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined a growing chorus of opposition to the nominee, probing her past support for “privatizing and defunding K-12 education” as well as her “paper-thin record on higher education and student debt.”

By Jim Miller

2017 awaits us fierce as a tiger with major assaults looming on multiple fronts. As I have written here quite recently, it is not an overstatement to say that we face existential threats . With so many things to worry about in the near future, what should labor and progressives be focusing on in anticipation of the coming storm?

Let me start by saying that our first order of business should definitely not be whether you are with or against the imperiled San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council President.

By Ernie McCray

It makes perfect sense to me that the House Republicans tried to secretly curtail the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics because, if you have no ethics, you damn sure don’t want some nosy person poking around documenting it.

And these GOP characters are as to ethical behavior as a sea turtle is to Death Valley. They’ve demonstrated for decades, which anyone can google, that they are not, by any means, on speaking terms with anything anywhere near synonymous with “ethics.” They are, in a word, ethic-less, if you will.

Oceana Restaurant
Catamaran Hotel
3999 Mission Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92109
858-488-1081

As so often happens to those of us living in San Diego, we have friends and relatives that come to visit and we go out to eat with them. Usually when that happens to me I make a suggestion as to where we might like to go, depending on their preference for food. But this time my friend Nel was staying at the Catamaran Hotel with her children and while they were at the beach, we were going to have lunch together.

She suggested the Oceana, because it is the restaurant in the hotel. It wasn’t until I began writing this review that I found it was listed as an “upscale eatery.” It talked about the beautiful view – it is – and the seafood is their specialty.

Study’s Proposed Expansion of Floor Area Ratio Will Not Fly in Ocean Beach

Editor: Much of following is from a Press Statement by Circulate San Diego.

Transportation and land use think tank Circulate San Diego published a report on Monday, Jan. 9 on how the City of San Diego can better facilitate transit oriented development (TOD).

Circulate San Diego’s report titled “Transit Oriented Development” outlines a variety of policies the City of San Diego can implement through city-wide municipal code updates. To promote more TOD, the report details proposals covering a variety of policies, from reform of parking requirements, updates to traffic models, and implementation of the City of San Diego’s groundbreaking update to the Affordable Homes Bonus Program.

Respected Latinas Step Forward with Shocking Claims Against UFCW President Mickey Kasparian

By Brent E. Beltran /San Diego Free Press

On December 17, 2016 NBC 7 San Diego broke the news that former UFCW Local 135 organizer Sandy Naranjo had filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against UFCW President Mickey Kasparian.

A few days later on December 21 NBC 7 San Diego came out with another story on Kasparian. This time it was regarding allegations of sexual harassment filed by former employee Isabel Vasquez. Vasquez’s complaint was full of lurid details.

By Ernie McCray

I had moments not too long ago when I thought that I just might not be around in 2017 – based on the complete lack of energy I was enduring day after day, with my belly under siege by some bacteria that just didn’t want to leave.

But I’m still here on the scene, happy as a lark, slowly getting back to my routines. Wanting to write something regarding my making it to 2017, I checked a writing prompt website and chose number 17 of the choices, as a symbol for 2017, and it read: “In 400 words create your ideal place.”

That put me in a nice place because the prompt could have been something like “Write a 150 word profile on somebody named ‘Margaret Mallory’” or write about “something wrapped” which would have called on more creativity than I wanted to own. I just wanted to kick the new year off in a nice tone.

There are now seven events being planned in response to the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump as President. They include 4 events on Friday, the 20th and two on the 21st. Plus there is a group of artists doing street theatre. And the folks who organized the “OB Sez No to Trump” rally late last year are attempting to mobilize an Ocean Beach contingent on both days.

PROTESTS ON JANUARY 20TH

Protest Inauguration Day and Fight Trump – San Diego Alliance for Justice
Friday, January 20, 10:30am
San Diego City College
1313 Park Blvd
For More Information

This is a call by to mobilize against the bigot, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, sexist, Trump and everything he stands for. On inauguration day the people of San Diego will unite and fight! We will send our message loud and clear to those at the top: We Reject the President Elect!

Daytime Rally: We gather at City College at 10:30am, speakers start at 11:00am. We march to the Federal Building to rally at 12:00 Noon!

Evening Rally: We join with allies from Unión del Barrio to protest at Chicano Park 5pm-9pm. There will be a march in a loop back to the park. A contingent will stay in the park during the march to welcome fellow protesters as they get off work.

SeaWorld in San Diego wants to add another roller coaster ride to its array of thrillers at the aquatic theme park. This one, called the Electric Eel, would have a 150-foot high ascent with loops, an inverted roll and twists. SeaWorld management hopes to open the ride in the early summer of 2018.

If built, it would be the fastest and tallest roller coaster on the SeaWorld site in Mission Bay, and is planned for an area to the west of another ride, Journey to Atlantis. Its other ride is the Manta, which opened in 2012. Manta’s fastest speed is 42 mph, whereas Electric Eel would reach 62 mph.