Month: November 2018

Vintage Revivals Going Out of Business

An antique storefront on Newport Avenue, Vintage Revivals Home & Garden Decor, has hung a banner above one of its front windows that reads: “Going Out of Business”.

San Diego U-T Asks ‘Will OB Be Able to Move On After Hardware Store Closes and Target Moves In?’

John Wilkins at the U-T raises the relevant issue whether OB can recover from the double whammy of having its beloved hardware store close along with a new Target moving in across the street. Wilkins ponders:

Here is San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry’s memo to City Attorney Mara Elliott requesting an investigation into McMillin’s compliance with its lease of Liberty Station and its management of the North Chapel. The memo is dated November 15, 2018. (See here for background.)

Editordude: The following letter was sent to the San Diego City-paid arborist Brian Widener by Kris Schlech, a retired biologist.

Mr. Widener:

My name is Kristen Schlech. I am a former long-standing resident of OB, a retired biologist (Botany), and spent over 20 years in San Diego working to protect and preserve the unique flora of San Diego County. While I have not been privy (yet) to the City’s 11th hour arborist’s report regarding the Torrey pine tree on Long Branch Ave., I have been previously deeply involved in the preservation efforts for all of OB’s Torry pine trees.

With the help of Save Penninsula Trees, and in collaboration with Anne Fege, a forester and member of the City Forestry Advisory Board, we collectively produced a handbook in 2016, for free and for use by the City, on stewardship for San Diego’s trees. In addition, we successfully identified numerous Torrey pine trees within the OB

We — the people who’ve overseen this incredible platform called the San Diego Free Press — have decided it’s time to move on. Dec. 14, 2018, will be our last day of posting.

We would like to say thank you to everyone who subscribed to, commented on, and shared our articles over the years — and to those who showed your support more quietly simply by visiting our site. We saw your presence in the stats, and we couldn’t be more grateful.

In fact, we’re going out on a high note. We’ve just had our best two months ever in terms of readership. We have funds in the bank, and — most importantly — all of us on the Editorial Board remain good friends.

Initially, we’d planned on taking a break after the 2016 election

Fig Tree Cafe
Liberty Station
2400 Historic Decatur Rd., #103
San Diego, CA 92107
619-821-2044

One of the fun things about having visitors come to San Diego that have never been here before is introducing them to the variety of restaurants in the neighborhood. I used to think, when I lived in San Francisco, that I would like to start trying restaurants on Lombard Street and try a different one every day. I doubted if I would ever get to try them all because there were so many different ones.

San Diego does not have as many restaurants as Lombard Street, and restaurants seem to change more rapidly than they do in San Francisco, but there is still a huge variety of different tastes in our fair city.

So Friday Hugh and I decided to try the “Fig Tree Café” in Liberty Station.

By Kathy Blavatt

Thanksgiving is reminder that it is time to work on your yards, to get down and dirty in your garden to prepare for winter. It is time to turn on the creative juices for the holidays.

Autumn is the perfect time to inventory your garden and see what trimming, mulching, composting, planting and prepping needs should be done1 for winter.

Ocean beach has its own microclimates, and varies depending on if you live right on the beach, on the flats, or up on the hill. Along the coast we sometimes can have months of fog and overcast skies.

Councilwoman Barbara Bry has joined the ‘pile-on’ going on over Mayor Faulconer’s inaction on the North Chapel and Liberty Station. And thank goodness! She joins Congressman Scott Peters in making demands on the City to look into how McMillin Co. has managed the North Chapel in Liberty Station.

Bry has asked the City Attorney’s Office to investigate the McMillin Co.’s handling of its lease at Liberty Station, after Peter’s similar request garnered no action by the Mayor or by Councilwoman Lorie Zapf’s office. Liberty Station is within Zapf’s District 2, but her office could still be shock after losing the seat during the mid-terms; at any rate, lame-duck-ness is a real thing.

Into – Doug Porter, the main political writer for the San Diego Free Press – sister online publication of the OB Rag – and one of 7 SDFP editors, has been observing and critiquing elections in San Diego City and County from a progressive point of view for years. Here is an interview he did with the OB Rag over the weekend on the recent mid-terms:

Question: Can you give us some of the overall trends you’ve witnessed and observed in terms of voting patterns and types of voters – and who’s on first?

More people than was expected were interested in voting, thanks to outreach efforts by a variety of groups not seen in previous elections: Indivisible, Moms Demand Action, the Brady Campaign, NextGen Climate, Together We Will, to name a few.

The city is not listening to our community of Ocean Beach about our Torrey Pines.

By Colleen Dietzel

After attending the Community Forest Advisory Board meeting on November 14th it became clear that the city is planning to cut down the Torrey Pine on 4633 Long Branch in Ocean Beach without community input and even without input of its own Advisory Board. The agenda for the meeting listed as an Action Item an update on further analysis of the Torrey Pine and recommendations. Brian Widener, the Urban Forester, presented the board with the arborist”s report at the meeting.

The CFAB board, voted on “not to make a recommendation to city until they review the arborist’s report”. They wanted to discuss it at the next meeting but were told that the city’s decision would not be delayed until then.

Nothing in the wake of the midterm elections made me quite as happy as the sight of the newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joining young climate activists who were protesting outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C.

The protesters, who were part of the Sunrise Movement, put their demands bluntly: “They offer us a death sentence. We demand a Green New Deal.”

You just know, somebody, somewhere, at some point – will make a movie about all of this. All of this living under Trump for 2 to 4 years in the mid to late second decade of the 21st century.

And when they do – who will play Trump? What actor could best portray a phony, narcissistic and lying dictator-wannabe?

Alec Baldwin, of course, first comes to mind, because of all his Saturday Night Live episodes, where he played a comedic Trump. But the movie won’t be a comedy. More like “All the President’s Men”. Or “The Post”. Or the movie on Mark Felt who was “Deep Throat” during Watergate. Serious movies. Serious historical chronicles.

So who could play Trump? Gary Oldman? He was just excellent as Winston Churchill.

By David Helvarg /Blue Frontier Campaign/ Blue Notes

Was this election good for the fish?

Mostly the answer is yes, also for democracy and government checks and balances.

Still, it’s hard to argue that the ocean and climate played a significant role in most campaigns, even if these are issues of survival impacting our food security, jobs, health, where we live and the quality of our lives.

The policy and PAC group Ocean Champions claimed that early results showed 52 of 58 candidates they endorsed had won their House and Senate races,