Month: May 2019

On Thursday, May 16, fliers were found on cars in the Dog Beach parking lot in OB that give false warning about police enforcement of a new law that bars people from living in cars. The flyers were found on windshields 2 days after the City Council returned the ban on people living in vehicles on public streets.

The new ordinance bans people from parking a vehicle used for habitation within 500 feet of a school or home.

The flier states:

“You have received this notice because you are on a list of vehicles that has been reported as living in this lot continuously or frequently. Please park elsewhere. Enforcement will begin without further notice.”

In addition, the leaflet claims the entire Dog Beach parking lot is a no-parking area at all times for people who live in their vehicles because of the restriction against parking within 500 feet of any home.

By Jill Castellano & Brad Racino / inewsource / May 14, 2019

University of California San Diego officials stonewalled attempts to notify women in an HIV research study that their confidential data was breached more than seven months ago, an inewsource investigation has found.

UCSD researchers conducting the EmPower Women study told university officials in October that participants’ names, audio-taped conversations and other sensitive materials were made accessible to everyone working at Christie’s Place, a San Diego nonprofit supporting women with HIV and AIDS.

By Sara Libby /Voice of San Diego

Many San Diegans collectively freaked out when it appeared that a bill moving through the state Legislature, SB 330, would wipe out the coastal height limit to make way for denser, taller buildings.

Though the purpose of the bill is to beat back many of the local restrictions that block new housing projects, its author made clear this week that the measure won’t kill San Diego’s coastal height limit.

Sen. Nancy Skinner added this revision:

(2) This section shall not be construed to void a height limit, urban growth boundary, or urban limit established by the electorate of an affected county or an affected city on or before January 1, 2018.

By Mark Nero/ San Diego Patch / May 16, 2019

A man who hit a popular local surfer in the head with a carbon fiber paddle in the water at Sunset Cliffs has been sentenced to five years in state prison.

Although the sentence was issued Thursday, May 16, it was last month that Paul Taylor Konen, 34, was convicted of assault, with a great bodily injury allegation, for the June 26, 2018, assault on Kevin Eslinger, 56.

Eslinger sustained a gash to the back of his head that fractured his skull and caused brain damage, rendering him unable to speak until days after the injury, Deputy District Attorney Matthew Greco said. An emergency room physician said the injury looked “like a hammer blow,” the prosecutor said.

By Juan Cole / Reader Supported News / May 16, 2019

he Trump administration is now in full disinformation mode, using all the classical techniques of propaganda to put the gullible US public on a war footing with Iran. Here is how it is done.

1. Iran warmongers like National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pretend to speak for US interests instead of for the narrow and sectarian interests that want a war. Bolton has taken big bucks from the Iranian expatriate People’s Jihadis (MEK), which the State Department for long listed as a terrorist organization. NBC news at one point linked it to Israeli intelligence, and others have suggested a Saudi link. Pompeo is a Kansas oil man and we all know what oil men do to the Middle East (think Bush and Cheney).

2. Having hidden behind the flag, the latter-day Goebbelses then invent an emergency. The favored propaganda talking point at the moment is that US troops and diplomats are in danger. US troops and diplomats are always in danger. It is their job to be in danger. If we don’t want them in danger we should bring them home from dangerous places like Iraq.

By ZawnVillines / Daily Kos / May 16, 2019

One in four women has had an abortion. It’s a figure that’s prompted activists to remind us that everyone loves someone who has had an abortion, and that group discussions of abortion will almost always include at least one person who has undergone the procedure. Many women have worked tirelessly to destigmatize abortion. They’re willing to risk their lives and reputations, subjecting themselves to judgment, derision, and threats, to share their abortion stories.

Yet a person with a penis is involved in 100% of abortions. Where are they? Why aren’t they shouting their own abortion stories, talking about how abortion allowed them to pursue their dreams, live their lives, and pursue financial health?

I know dozens of women who devote every spare second they have to fighting for safe and legal abortion. Many of them also have full-time jobs and multiple children. Where are their husbands?

Trial Begins for Man Accused of Knifing Walter “Ras” Riley

Prosecutors in a San Diego court showed jurors images of a man in a light gray hoodie, dark pants and white-soled shoes – stills, taken from an OB ATM camera, which they say captured Noah Jackson moments after he fatally knifed a popular homeless man nicknamed “The Incense Man” in 2017. But attorney Eugene Iredale said, “That is not the face of Noah Jackson. Not even close.” …

Point Loma Comedian at San Diego Comedy Festival

Comic Adam Connie is a Point Loma resident involved in the San Diego Comedy Festival. He has been performing for nine years and can be seen at venues like Comedy Heights in University Heights and Valentin’s Bar & Grill in Jamul. …

Ban on Sleeping in Cars Comes Back

On Tuesday, May 14, the San Diego City Council voted 6-3 in favor of re-establishing a ban that restricts people from living in their vehicles on city streets, with the exception of certain designated lots. …

Point Lomans Anne Jackson Hefti and Amy Ryan have started a campaign to get the City of San Diego to stop using herbicides and toxic chemicals at city parks, playgrounds and beaches. It’s called Campaign for a Non Toxic San Diego and they are lobbying Mayor Faulconer using an online petition and other traditional tactics.

It all started when Anne and Amy were walking their dogs at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park earlier this year. The women believe they exposed to wind-drift toxic herbicide sprayed by workers there and began doing research on Round-Up. The OB Rag picked up the story with Judi Curry writing about it. Other media have followed suit.

Anne and Amy are mobilizing their supporters to the May 22 meeting of the OB Town Council to present their concerns

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing

Mother’s knees, they were misshapen by the lumps and scars of a lifetime.

There she sat, unaware of the lens, skirt pulled high to defy the wet Eastern heat that dampened doting offspring. The edema of unspoken words and fateful adventures swelled her joints and crippled her sidestep, yet still she twirled to the rhythms of her youth. Although achingly unsure in her final years, those knees had long served her well.

They held her aloft when she was barely tall enough to reach the outhouse seat—loath, she was, to rest on it for fear of all the crawling, stinging things her older cousins convinced her lurked there. And surely those knees propelled her toward the heavens when the plumbing was miraculously moved inside her grandfather’s Maryland farmhouse.

At the most recent OB Planning Board meeting, I had to do a double-take when an older gentleman came into the meeting room late and was sitting in the very back. It was David Steffens – a man OB planners knew 5 years ago when the OB Community Plan Update was up for approval with the Planning Commission and City Council.

But no one on the Board that night – except for one – knew who Steffens was. He had come to the meeting to talk about problems with people living in vans at Dog Beach parking lot.

Yet – in an ironic twist, he was there that night to ostensibly aid the Planning Board, operating under the OB Community Plan, in figuring out how to deal with the problem. It was ironic, as I recognized Steffens as the man who led the opposition to the city approving OB’s update to its Community Plan five years ago. He owns one of the McMansions just off the park. Five years ago, he led the effort to squash OB’s tool in controlling over-development, the low floor-area-ration that OB’s Community Plan uses.

After the meeting, I tried to explain all of this to some of the remaining Board members – and realized in a near-jaw-dropping moment – that there was no one left on the Board who was around during that period 5 years ago – except for Jane Gawronski. There has been at least one entire turn-over of the Planning Board during this last half decade.

So, I decided to repost the following article, published in May of 2014, as a recounting of those heady days back then when

A Response to Nicole Burgess’ Post on “Wonderful transformation for West Point Loma Blvd”

By Geoff Page

The subject of reducing West Point Loma Blvd. from four lanes to two lanes between Nimitz and Midway has been covered in several OB Rag pieces recently. One such article was written by cycling advocate Nicole Burgess titled “A Wonderful Transformation for West Point Loma Blvd.” Mrs. Burgess is a one-issue person if ever there was one. I will say at the outset that I admire her energy and commitment to her cause. Her constant promotion of cycling, at the expense of automobile traffic, is understandable because Mrs. Burgess does not drive.

I have witnessed her pushing cycling at planning board and town council meetings for several years. Last year, she came before the Midway planning board promoting a plan to remove parking on the south side of Sports Arena from Midway to Kemper.

By Peter Fimrite / San Francisco Chronicle / May 11, 2019 Updated: May 13, 2019

Exhausted, emaciated gray whales are going belly up along the coast of San Francisco this year at a rate seen only once — during a two-year period 20 years ago — since whaling was banned and the leviathans were pulled from the brink of extinction.

The death toll, part of a disturbing mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska, is happening largely because there is too little food in the ecosystem to sustain the behemoths on one of the world’s longest migrations, experts say.