Month: October 2017

By David Helvarg / Blue Notes – Blue Frontier

The Ocean is in trouble is a familiar refrain.

A year ago we seemed to be making some progress, but most of that is now being reversed. Denial of science and common sense solutions to existential threats like fossil fuel-fired climate disruption also put our lives and our future at risk.

That is why I can’t understand people like EPA Chief Scott Pruitt or Governor Rick Scott of Florida who refuse to believe NOAA scientists when they tell them climate change is real

Editordude: Here are two tributes to Tom Petty by two members of the Ocean Beach community.

Tom Petty RIP

by Bob Edwards

Another giant of rock passed away last week. Tom Petty had the same sort of swaggering, rock and roll presence as Bruce and Mick and Ray Davies of the Kinks.
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Tom Petty and Bob Dylan at the San Diego Sports Arena

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

I’d already heard the OB Dylan stories–at least some of them.

“Yeah, he owns a place on Abbott Street, everyone knows that.”

Editordude: Please welcome this new column, “OB Walkabout” by Joaquin Antique, which will feature photos of oddities, signs and other things Joaquin finds of interest plus funnies he overhears in his walkabouts in OB.

By Joaquin Antique

The Week’s Anecdote

Overheard at Roberto’s:

The Widder Curry writes: On Friday morning, October 6th, Matthew Alford was surfing off of Hill Street and Sunset Cliffs. This is his own story, as posted in Next Door. Nice to read a good story! Matthew is a professor at La Jolla Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Wow. An amazing thing happened this morning while I was surfing: I saved a life.

I was surfing my favorite high tide spot at Sunset Cliffs and people on the cliff started yelling and pointing. A woman had fallen off the cliff and was getting swept by the waves toward the rocks.

Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America is disturbing reading. Last week, I outlined how she exposes the missing link of the Right’s plan to “save capitalism from democracy—permanently.” As centrally important as it is to understand that basic premise of the Right’s agenda, it is equally valuable for progressives to learn precisely how and why that is the case and what, ultimately, the end-game looks like.

* OB Woman’s Club Celebrates New Foundation
* Coffee Bean at Voltaire and Catalina closed.
* Willie Is Back!
* Woman Injured in Fall at Sunset Cliffs
* OB Man Wants City to Help Clean-up Homeless Trash
* Good Rant Against Short-Term Rentals
* San Diego County rents hit record high
* Point Loma Picked as One of “Hottest” Neighborhoods in the Country
* Home Brew Mart Founded by Point Loman Celebrates 25 Years
* “Muses of the Old Globe” Includes Dress by Actress Marion Ross, Graduate of Point Loma High
* OB Electric Bike One of 1000s Stolen Across San Diego, Police Say

COME INSIDE FOR THESE STORIES

“The Irish are the blacks of Europe,” says the band manager in “The Commitments,” the 1991 movie about his quest to put together a soul act in pale, white Dublin. “Say it loud — I’m black and I’m proud.”

Noel Ignatiev, a Massachusetts College of Art history professor and controversial scholar of American race relations, uses that classic line to kick off “How the Irish Became White.” The 1995 book offers an in-depth analysis of America’s assimilation of the millions of Irish who emigrated in the 1800s.

Remember that old Craftsman house on Voltaire Street in Ocean Beach that was possibly up for grabs for free? The one that will be demolished in order for the construction of the new, mixed-use, 2 story building approved recently by the OB Planning Board.

It’s located at 4921 Voltaire Street, 92107.

The one condition was the house had to be hauled away within a few months – with the caveat that the owner had not agreed to the whole deal yet.
Well, there’s been some new developments …

By Bob Dorn / San Diego Free Press

I woke up to a New York Times headline on Tuesday, October 3: No Easy Answers After Las Vegas.

Yes, there are.

Let’s not sell automatic rifles to anyone who goes to a gun show or a gun shop. F**k ’em. Let them manufacture their own, like the moonshiners during Prohibition did. Then they can strut and have movies and serials that can make them feel like they won the Civil War.

Maybe they’d even be arrested for possession of killing machinery.

While we’re at it, let’s not sell guns to kids.

Effective October 5, 2017 at 8:20am, a health advisory from the County went into effect warning of high bacterial levels at Ocean Beach’s Dog Beach and the San Diego River outlet. Within this area, bacteria levels may exceed health standards.

AVOID WATER CONTACT IN THE ADVISORY AREA.

By Bob Edwards

On Wednesday, October 4, 2017, the Ocean Beach Planning Board met at the OB Rec Center and dealt with two hot button issues.

In the first action, the Board voted 8 to 3 to recommend granting a retroactive building permit for repairs and changes to a cliff side deck at the Inn at Sunset Cliffs. These modifications had been done without a permit in previous years by former and current owners and in 2016 through an emergency permit.

In the second action, the Board voted, also 8 to 3, to oppose the Soccer City proposal for the Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley.

Keep OB, OB?

By Brett Warnke

A small but fervent protest of about twenty to twenty-five members of “No Target in OB” showed up to obtain signatures and raise awareness for a Community Forum directed at halting Target from entering Ocean Beach. One speaker declared:

“We want to preserve our local beach town. Target is not wanted here. We stand strong against it and other mega-corporations!”

Target, a Minneapolis-based company whose stock prices are down 16 percent this year, has been heavily criticized for compromising millions of customers data and recently paid $18.5 million to states in a settlement.