Month: March 2019

Editordude: The following opinion does not reflect that of the OB Rag.

Part 1 of 4: Mayor Kevin Faulconer

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / March 13, 2019

Kevin Faulconer, San Diego’s 36th mayor, is finishing up his last term in office. Recently, I was taken to task over my choice of adjectives when describing our mayor. I was criticized for being too negative.

It’s true that I’ve called him a lightweight. An embarrassment to his constituents. An elected official lacking independence, imagination, backbone, and the political moxie to do right by our city. I even referred to him as a chip off the old Jerry Sanders block.

Lately he’s been parading around the country as a moderate politician destined for greater things

Trump has announced he will be ordering all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 grounded.

This news comes while some Point Loma residents have voiced their concerns about the potential for dangers as Boeing 737 jets fly over their neighborhoods, and as we now have learned the unsettling news that on Tuesday, March 12, a San Diego Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 was delayed for hours after smoke billowed out of the plane parked at the San Diego International Airport.

From 7SanDiego:

A battery-type charger overheated inside a piece of luggage in the cargo bin of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 at around 11:30 a.m., according to Dan Landson with Southwest Airlines.

Two wealthy San Diegans have been charged in the elite college admission bribery scandal that is rocking the country’s academia community.

One is Elisabeth Kimmel, former owner of KFMB-TV, San Diego’s CBS affiliate, who was arrested Tuesday at her La Jolla home. The other is Toby MacFarlane, a businessman from Del Mar and a former executive of a title insurance company.

From 7SanDiego:

Kimmel is accused of participating in an illegal conspiracy to get her daughter into Georgetown University and her son into USC.

San Diego Reader Continues to Expose the Street Lights that Spy

By Matt Potter / San Diego Reader / March 11, 2019

Following months of uncertainty regarding the low-profile rollout of San Diego’s so-called smart streetlights, equipped with spy cams, shot-spotters, and related intelligence gathering gear, officials have called a community meeting in Southeastern San Diego to tell the public what they have wrought.

The session, to be held at 5:30 p.m. this Wednesday, March 13 at the Malcolm X Library

Ry Rivard and Andrew Keatts / Voice of San Diego / March 11, 2019

Update: On Tuesday Sen. Ben Hueso announced he was pulling SB 615 from consideration by the Legislature.

City Attorney Mara Elliott went out on a limb to change the state’s Public Records Act, an effort Mayor Kevin Faulconer believes conflicts with his efforts to create a more transparent city government.

Now other elected leaders in the city are pushing back, too – aggressively. The City Council voted unanimously Monday to oppose what they said was an attempt to undermine the state’s public records law. Last week, Faulconer himself made clear to Voice of San Diego that he did not support Elliott’s effort.

Airbnb vans invade San Diego streets

By Mike Madriaga / San Diego Reader

On the Airbnb app/website, Craig is referred to as a “Superhost” for his $70 per night unit that can sit five visitors.

Craig accommodates his guests in his green 1998 Ford E350 van; he’s based out of Clairemont. “[It’s] great for camping and the back seat folds down into a bed for two,” he states on his ad. …

Last week, an Ocean Beach resident posted …

How Rice came to work at the Reader:

From SD Reader / March 3, 2019

Growing up around San Diego I’d always been aware of the Reader, and picked up copies semi-regularly beginning in high school in the mid-nineties, delighting in features like Jay Allen Sanford’s “Famous Former Neighbors” cartoon. By the late 2000s I was contributing to a local news blog called the OB Rag when my editor Frank Gormlie called me up, saying there was some guy that had questions about a piece I’d recently written about city plans to install surveillance cameras on the pier in Ocean Beach.

By Geoff Page

Peninsula Community Planning Board events don’t usually spark a great deal of interest in the general community, that is just a fact.

But, from time to time, things do get interesting. During a dozen years of experience with the Peninsula Board (PCPB), “control” of the board has swung back and forth like a pendulum. By control, it could be said that it is based on political bias or it could be class-based or something else, but there always seems to be two sides. Judging by the record number of candidates running for the open seats on March 21, there could be another swing. Usually, it takes a big amount of discontent about something to pull off a major change in the planning board.

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By Jim Miller

The formal beginning of spring is just around the corner, but an unusually wet winter already has visitors flooding into Borrego Springs in search of desert sunflowers, verbena, lupine, poppies, and primrose.

Thanks to a chain of storms, the desert is green and bursting with the promise of a rare “super bloom” that will likely carpet its floor with wildflowers in and around Anza-Borrego State Park. For local Borrego Springs businesses and hotels, this event is an economic boom that floods the town with a wave of commerce and full hotel rooms.

Come Inside for Photos of OB Pier Being Crushed

The “re-pier” of the OB Pier begins. The City expects to have crews to completely repair the OB Pier and have it open by Memorial Day. As of right now, the city expects to spend $430,000 in emergency repairs.

The Pier has been closed since mid-January when it suffered mucho damage during that winter storm; it was so strong that it literally tore off pieces of wood and they washed ashore and locals and tourists grabbed the remnants as souvenirs. 2,200 feet of railings were damaged by the storm which crashed the pier’s electrical, sewer and water lines.

March Events From the Ocean Beach Green Center

Ocean Beach Green Center, 4862 Voltaire Street, Ocean Beach 92107 oceanbeachgreencenter@gmail.com

Dear friends of the Ocean Beach Green Center,

We are almost ready to reopen at our new location at 4862 Voltaire Street, which is right across the street from our old location. FOR MORE COME INSIDE

Every Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Climate Mobilization Coalition Meeting March 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, 30th. Ocean Beach People’s Cooperative Community Room, 4765 Voltaire Street.

By Judi Curry

On March 1st, 2019, I received an EMAIL from “Kroger Shop” welcoming me to the Kroger family of secret shoppers. I was given the title of “Market Researcher” and am going to be paid $300 for each assignment I complete. (At one time in my life I worked for a secret shopper company out of El Cajon, and made many purchases looking for dishonest employees as well as extraordinary ones. )

Attention

Further to your interest to participate in our research project at Kroger, we are pleased to welcome you on board, setting out the details of your job. You are being appointed to the position of a market researcher.