Month: April 2017

This reporter stood on the sidewalk and observed the entire Climate March in downtown San Diego today, Saturday, April 29th.

At least 5,000 people attended the rally, the one-mile loop of a march and then a second rally at the County Administration Building.

Here are the people and their wonderful signs:

By Frank Gormlie

Nate Bazydlo – the vice-president of the OB Town Council – got up before the audience the other night at the monthly meeting of the Council and recounted a sad story. He had recently run into an old friend, a long-time resident of Ocean Beach, who had just been evicted out of her home of 20 years.

Seems some mystery man had approached her landlord and had offered him hundreds of dollars more a month than what Nate’s friend was paying. The landlord took the deal, kicked the friend out, and leased it to the mystery man. And without moving in, the mystery man made the place into a short-term vacation rental. He didn’t even have to buy it, he just leased it, and then turned around and now leases it out to high-paying vacationers.

By Frank Gormlie

The OB Town Council held their monthly public meeting last Wednesday night – where they usually do – at the Masonic Center on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

As I drove into the Center’s parking lot from the alley between Santa Monica and Santa Cruz, I could see that something was up, as there was a crowd of people congregating around the side door that leads immediately into the community room. Oh, no. Another meeting outside? I conjectured, recalling the last time that the meeting was held outside on the asphalt, that summer night when the electricity blew a fuse or something.

By Mark Hughes, SanDiego350

In the recently published book, “The Knowledge Illusion”, authors Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach assert something rather disturbing: we rarely think for ourselves. Instead, we patch together our understanding of the world by taking a bit from over here and a bit from over there. If they are correct, it’s pretty easy to see that it’s whose bits we incorporate (the IPCC or Trump? Hmm.) that create our worldview.

Ed Harris, union leader for San Diego lifeguards, slammed the city’s fire chief over water-rescue dispatch changes recently implemented, Wednesday night- April 26 – at the Ocean Beach Town Council meeting.

Billed as a “public forum on policy change to water 911 calls”, both Harris and Brian Fennessy, the new fire chief, had been invited by the council to debate the issue – but Fennessy had declined to attend, and OBTC president Gretchen Newsom read his email response instead.

The core issue is that after over 30 years of practice, Fennessy unilaterally changed the policy on water-rescue dispatches.

By Geoff Page

The Midway Community Planning Board devoted its regular Wednesday monthly meeting April 19th to the topic that is most on the minds of its members: the homeless and the problems they are causing in the Midway area.

Council member Lori Zapf was at the meeting as was the Mayor’s so called “homeless czar” Stacie Spector. There were about 40 people in attendance. The meeting was held at the new EF Language School on Kenyon Street.

Zapf arrived at 3:30 and was the first to speak.

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Who knew that the Cerutti Mastodon site along SR54 in San Diego may be “the oldest in situ, well-documented archaeological site in North America and, as such, substantially revises the timing of arrival of Homo into the Americas”? And what does that actually mean?

San Diego has been a rich source of paleontological discoveries. A 300,000 year old mammoth was excavated during the construction of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego. Additional excavation ten feet below the skull and tusks of the mammoth revealed the 500,000 year old skeleton of a California Gray Whale.

Mar-a-Lago to Add More Watersports Facilities

COME INSIDE FOR SLIDE

By Geoff Page

There was another good sized crowd at the Peninsula Community Planning Board’s regular monthly meeting on Thursday, April 20, 2017 at the Point Loma Library. But, as it turned out, many of those attending were presenters. The biggest group was from the McMillin company, there to show the public plans for improvement at the intersection of Nimitz and Rosecrans.

The improvements were only on Rosecrans north and south of the intersection from Jewell Street to Jarvis Street, nothing was planned for Nimitz.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

If anything can be believed from anyone in the Trump regime, the US “strike group” led by the the San Diego based aircraft carrier Carl Vinson is indeed heading for the Korean Peninsula.

On Saturday April 23, Trump said, “all options are on the table, ” including a military strike, according to Al Jazera, while VP Mike Pence added to the war fever escalation, stating that the the US warships would be in Korean waters “within days.”

That same day, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told reporters in Greece, where he was visiting:

“We need to issue peaceful and rational words. China is firmly supporting the peaceful de-nuclurerization of the area in the name of stability and peace.”