Month: November 2018

There’s lot of punditry talk these days how Jen Campbell’s election over Lorie Zapf will tilt the City Council into a 6 to 3 Democrat “super-majority” and how labor will now dominate the council and set the agenda, blah blah blah. (Which isn’t true. )

So, it’s helpful to reflect and get a more historical view of the district’s representation and when you do, you understand how the balance of power on the Council, a council dominated by Republicans for decades and decades, has now shifted to the party that has been out-of-power for so long.

For Jen Campbell is only the third Democrat to be elected to represent District 2 in over 40 years. 43 years to be exact. The only other Democrats during these long years to represent Ocean Beach,

What many had called the election of our lifetimes is over, and while any moment for reflection was immediately stolen by Trump’s purge of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the subsequent fallout with regard to the Russia investigation, there are still big, important questions that progressives inside and outside of power will face in the coming months if we hope to present a vision that does more than say no to Trump while getting trapped in his diversions.

Can the Democrats in the House and elsewhere at the national level set a bold economic agenda?

It’s the 2018 OB Restaurant Walk

The Ocean Beach Town Council and Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association welcome you to join the foodie event of the year for Ocean Beach – the annual OB Restaurant Walk!

San Diego’s Best Restaurant Walk

This year, on Tuesday, November 13, from 5:00pm-9:00pm, the OB Restaurant Walk invites culinary enthusiasts to enjoy more than 50 food samples from some of OB’s best restaurants and breweries

Colleen Dietzel is retiring – and the Ocean Beach Green Center is throwing her a party. It’s all happening Saturday, November 10th, from 2:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

There will be Live Music, awesome refreshments, exciting raffle prizes.

It’s also the Green Center’s Fall Celebration Fundraiser.

An unidentified body was discovered off Point Loma Avenue in Ocean Beach Friday morning, November 9.

First responders were notified of the body seen floating off the coast near the terminus of Point Loma Ave. around 9:30 a..m. With law enforcement okay, lifeguards removed it, transporting it initially to Lifeguard Headquarters in Mission Bay. The body was then taken to the County Medical Examiner’s Office.

According to police, the body had been in the ocean “a while”.

County Supervisor candidate and former District Attorney, Bonnie Dumanis, was simply swamped by Nathan Fletcher.

Check out this map of how all the precincts in Supervisor District 4 voted, thanks to inewsource.

As you can see plainly, Fletcher took all but 11 precincts, and one of those was a tie. District 4 includes most of the City of San Diego, including Ocean Beach, more than half of Point Loma, and all the other northern beach areas, as well as most neighborhoods north and south of I-8. All in all, a very Democratic-leaning area.

We can easily speculate that this race was probably the last one that Dumanis will run.

Friends of the Ocean Beach Library are holding a book sale this Saturday, November 10th from 9:30 to 12:30.

By Geoff Page

New Ruth Varney Held Park Design

There are those who look at an open space and love that it is open and that it sparks the imagination with possibilities for fun and relaxation. Then, there are those who see an open space and see chaos and feel it must be organized. For those in the first group, the revised design of the Saratoga Park was a welcome sight at the Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting on Wednesday, November 7. The frantic organization seen in the original design has given way to a much more relaxed open space.

According to board member Jane Gawronski, the change was due to complaints from the community about the first design. That plan had just about every square inch of the grassy area north of the main lifeguard station planned for all kinds of park amenities.

The new design leaves most of the grassy area wide open.

The Ocean Beach Town Council has a new president – Mark Winkie, formerly the vice-president. Winkie was elected by the Board of Directors due to the unanticipated resignation of Marcus Turner as president; Turner has accepted new out-of-town employment and will no longer be able to carry out the functions of the president.

Other changes have occurred also – causing a leadership shake-up. Priscilla Turner, Marcus’ spouse, also resigned from the board and as correspondence secretary. Marcus has accepted employment in Long Beach – where he grew up (see this interview) and where his parents and several siblings still live – and Priscilla is moving back there with him.

Jill Kent was elected by the board to be vice-president. Jon Carr was elected to be the new correspondence secretary, Priscilla’s previous position.

And seemingly unrelated to the Turners’ resignations from the board, Nicole Ueno has also resigned from the board.

More than 500 San Diegans rallied last night, Thursday, November 8 at the downtown Federal Court House to show support for the Mueller investigation.

The San Diego protest was one of over a thousand held across the country in response to Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the appointment of a Trump crony and critic of the investigation to oversee it as the “acting” attorney general.

Hosted by a rapid-response network and called for in less than 24 hours, the rallies demonstrated a sharp rebuke to the president’s efforts to undermine the investigation into a conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign / White House into sabotaging the 2016 presidential elections.

Almost daily and nightly we hear comparisons of the abuse of power by president Trump to those by former president Richard Nixon back in the mid-1970s. And at times like these – immediately after Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his appointment of a Trump loyalist and critic of the Mueller investigation to now be the acting-attorney general – we hear comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” which led eventually to Nixon’s resignation

Okay, then, just what was the “Saturday Night Massacre”?

It was Saturday, October 20, 1973, and the nation was deep in the grip of the Watergate scandal and the investigation into Nixon’s abuses of power.

In response to Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his appointment of loyal ally Matt Whitaker to be the “acting” Attorney General, nation-wide protests have been called for today, Thursday, Nov. 8 at 5pm.

In San Diego there will be a protest gathering at the downtown Federal Courthouse at 333 West Broadway. It’s being hosted by San Diego Indivisible and Mueller Rapid Response – San Diego