News and Notes of Ocean Beach and Point Loma – Mid-September 2017

Timing of The Little Miss Brewing

Voice of San Diego. Little Miss Brewing was looking to open a tasting room in Ocean Beach this year. The Miramar-based company applied for a liquor license and was given a conditional permit protest from the police department in June. The Ocean Beach Planning Board was against the idea of the tasting room, advocating for a bookstore or an organic market instead. One month later, ABC told Little Miss Brewing that the police were NOT recommending giving out any new liquor licenses in the Ocean Beach area, once again pointing to crime and high saturation. An official decision from ABC is still pending.

Without a license, the owners are stuck paying roughly $5,500 in rent with no business. The tasting room would have joined large craft beer establishments in Ocean Beach, such as Pizza Port, Mike Hess and Belching Beaver. “Seven breweries came in before us and had no problems, I don’t get it,” said Greg Malkin, the operations manager of Little Miss Brewing. Malkin pointed out that crime is down in Ocean Beach. “It’s not an issue of crime, it’s an issue of policy and politics. Restaurants and [craft beer] tasting rooms — if they cause crime — then crime would be crazy in San Diego, because San Diego is full of them,” Malkin said.

Ocean Beach saw a 16 percent decrease in overall crime from 2015 to 2016. But crime stats for the census tract that encompasses Newport Avenue, Ocean Beach’s main drag, where Little Miss Brewing’s tasting room is located, put it well over the police department’s “High Crime Area” label. Griffin said that her unit has recently outright protested several license applications from Ocean Beach. “There’s comes a point when the glass gets full,” she said.

Controversy with Point Loma Project at Emerson and Evergreen Is Not Over Yet

“It makes developers look bad, and I’ll just leave it at that.”

By Julie Stalmer/ San Diego Reader – The housing project on the corner of Emerson and Evergreen streets in the Roseville neighborhood of Point Loma has had more ups and downs and twists and turns than a roller coaster. The fourplex has towered literally and figuratively over Roseville residents, oftentimes leading to more questions than answers. The most recent showdown on August 31 was no exception. Neighbor Jonathan Chapin talked fast to get through all he’d prepared to say in under six minutes. The city planning commission meeting was prompted by an appeal filed in July to overturn a June decision to approve a tentative map waiver allowing the units to be sold instead of maintaining them as renter units.

Local Church Tapes Bizarre Fliers to Front Doors in Ocean Beach

A local, small church that rents out space from the OB Woman’s Club every Sunday is caught up in some controversy. It’s pastor and presumably others have been taping fliers to the front doors of neighbors. The fliers talk about how the anti-christ will destroy worshippers. Here’s the Ch10News report:

10 KGTV — An Ocean Beach woman was alarmed by a flier taped to her door saying “the antichrist will destroy anyone who worships him.” Holly Raines said her 7-year-old son found the flier taped on their front door. “I started reading the letter but I was like half asleep so I started panicking a little bit because it just seemed very threatening and very intense,” Raines said. Several other neighbors say they got one too. The letter stated it was from New Life Christian Chapel, which is a few blocks away from where Raines lives in Ocean Beach.

“It was very damning and then it has like a phrase that says ‘The antichrist will destroy anyone who worships him, there is no middle ground,’” she said. Raines said the flier quotes several Bible verses but found them far from comforting. “The words just aren’t very friendly, they talk about slaying lambs and antichrist and unrighteousness,” Raines said. It ended by inviting her to a home Bible study but she can’t help but feel like the church crossed a line.

“We have a lot of friends that go to church around here and a lot of the community churches here are awesome, they do great things,” Raines said. “The idea of taping anything on somebody’s door is a lot and this is a full document of typing. I mean if anyone wrote me a letter like that I would think it was an angry letter.”

10News reached out to New Life Christian Chapel, and Pastor Thomas J. McNearny told 10News in an e-mail:

“My purpose in distributing the flyers was simply to get the Word of God out to the public. I get no perverse pleasure in scaring people but simply want the best for people by helping inform them of what God’s will for them is and how Jesus Christ has made a wonderful salvation available for them.

The apostle Paul did say that: ‘Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. ..’ Judgment is coming but there is a way to be ready. We love people and want to welcome them to come and find peace with God.”

DIY surfboard shaping — cool but not too cool

In the early 1960s, surf shops, which had been little more than beach shacks where balsawood blanks were sculpted into surfboards, were replaced by storefronts where surfboards were sold along with T-shirts and trunks. By the mid ‘60s biggest name in San Diego surfboards was Gordon & Smith, followed by Hansen. Then, in the late ‘60s the shortboard revolution took hold and classic ten-foot surfboards were cut down in neighborhood garages and reshaped into small, mostly crude “pocket rockets.” SD Reader.

 Boy wanders into Ocean Beach donut shop looking for parents

A young boy spotted wandering in front of an Ocean Beach doughnut shop early Monday morning was reunited his family. According to police, someone reported seeing a boy — believed to be 3 years old — walking alone just after 4 a.m. in the 3700 block of Voltaire Street, near Christy’s Donuts. Police said the boy entered the shop and asked workers where his parents were. Responding officers accompanied the boy around the nearby neighborhood to help him find his home, and they eventually located the child’s house. The boy’s mother was stunned to learn her son had left their home but was relieved he was safe. The boy apparently told officers he knew how to open the door. 10News

OB Kids and Skateboarders Get Props from New York Times

Minuet Huffman, Jessy Jane Condon, Autumn McDonald and Kailey Merritt at Ocean Beach near sunset. “When you grow up in San Diego, a lot of the partying and hanging out is done at the beach,” Mr. Peters said. … “I kind of just stood out where I was from, ’cause I was a punk little skater kid,” said Alyssa Fink, who was photographed at Ocean Beach, “I move out here, and everyone’s a punk little skater kid.” New York Times

Mel “Buck” Barlow of Point Loma with his 1929 Model A Ford.

Point Loman Holds Court at Antique Auto Show in Mass.

Mel “Buck” Barlow of Point Loma had his 1929 Model A Ford. It was automotive history, Detroit style, was presented in the Antique Auto Show and Picnic by the Cataumet Schoolhouse Preservation Association off County Road. The event provided for one brief but delightful afternoon when everything seemed culturally distant. Vintage auto enthusiasts from Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Florida, and California made their way to the schoolhouse. Perhaps they had little in common, except for an appreciation for an era long-past. Villagers mixed with seasonal residents and late-summer vacationers who fondly remembered their first cars, where they bought them, how much they paid, and how long they drove them. The show included restored 1937 and 1947 Buicks, made-over Chevy Corvettes, a Nash Rambler, a 1951 Packard, audacious early-1960s Chryslers with big and pointed fins, defying easy description, and more. Think screamin’ machines.

Mel “Buck” Barlow held court at the schoolhouse steps, displaying his distinctive 1929 Model A Ford with its California plates. Barlow grew up and left Pocasset in the early 1970s, working through retirement in California’s motorcycle industry. He calls Point Loma home. He enjoys driving his antique, but concedes the point he has too many vehicles and motorcycles now. “It’s all about survival,” he said. “I’ve got to keep working. It’s what I do.” Wicked Local

Sessions Public Gets New Ownership

Starting next month, Sessions Public will be under new ownership. Its founder, Abel Kaase, opened the craft beer and cocktail bar with food on busy stretch of road between Ocean Beach and Point Loma seven and a half years ago, when gastropubs had yet to saturate San Diego. Citing the challenges of running a small business, Kaase shared that he’d considered shifting Sessions Public in another direction — from a tacos and tequila spot to a pizzeria and an arcade bar — but ultimately decided that the space just needed new blood.

Kaase says that the bar’s next proprietors intend to keep Sessions Public open and will operate it in its current form until later this fall, when it will be remodeled into a fresh space that will likely have a larger focus on cocktails, with the goal of maintaining its customer base and drawing in new guests. Part of the reason for the sale is to allow Kaase to concentrate on Beerfish, which launched on Adams Avenue last June. Eater San Diego

Point Loma’s Modern Times Eyes Portland

For years, San Diego and Portland have both laid claim to the title of Best Beer City in America, so it’s no surprise that Modern Times has long eyed Oregon’s largest city as a potential site for another “production brewery and neighborhood hangout.” In fact, McKean even gave “serious consideration” to opening Modern Times in Portland, but ultimately decided to launch his now-ubiquitous brand in Point Loma. CityBeat

Barons Market to Move HQ Out of Point Loma

Family-owned Barons Market announced Monday the grocer has officially moved its headquarters to Poway. The company’s new home base is attached to its distribution center and will serve as a central location between its four stores in San Diego and three in the Inland Empire, according to Rachel Shemirani, Barons vice president of  marketing. “For more than 20 years Barons Market was run out of offices above the Point Loma store, where we could see our neighbors shopping from our desks.” Times of San Diego

OB Historical Society Presents: Kumeyaay Resistance and “Abusive” Art at Mission San Diego and the San Diego Presidio

By Richard Carrico on Thursday, September 21 at 7 pm at P.L. United Methodist Church, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B. Do you ever wonder how the local Kumeyaay Indians might have resisted Spanish colonization besides sacking Mission San Diego in 1775? Is there any chance that they used art forms to show their disdain for the Spaniards right beneath (and above) the eyes of the colonists?

In this highly informative and engaging talk, local historian and anthropologist Richard L. Carrico will delve into the “dark art” that the Kumeyaay used to continue their ancient artistic practices and their use of symbology. The Kumeyaay served as laborers at both the mission and presidio and as part of that work effort they formed and fired the adobe roof tiles (tejas) and floor tiles (baldosas) at both outposts. Probably unknown to their supervisors and to Spanish authorities, some Kumeyaay inscribed the wet adobe with images and symbols. Many of the images are comparable to designs we see in local rock art and on ceramic pots and vessels that predate the arrival of the Spaniards. They include circles, concentric designs, cross-hatching, and what may be human figures. In addition some of the designs depict things and places on presidio hill.

Through a series of vivid slides and images Richard will guide us back to the 1770-1820 period when the tiles were formed and decorated and then link the art work to a far more ancient period. Mr. Carrico will strongly suggest that the images have deep rooted meaning and form what one scholar has called “abusive art” art that is meant to reflect cultural persistence and a rejection of some of the Spanish dictates.
An observer of something that doesn’t move, something that is the same this morning as it was thirty, fifty, or even one hundred years ago. Or is it?