Month: June 2019

Come to the Ocean Beach Town Council meeting for a “sneak preview” of the renewed Peninsula YMCA. The Council holds their public meeting on Wednesday, June 26 at the Masonic Lodge, 1711 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. 7:00 pm.

The guest speaker at the meeting will be local YMCA Executive Director Jason Milosh, who will present the rendering for the upgrades to the existing structure, as well as an explanation of the good works the Y does for our community.

As always there will also be updates from our elected

By Geoff Page

A very clear demonstration of how the legal system can be used to intimidate people, especially people who have had little exposure to the system, was apparent in the cancelled Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) meeting last Thursday, June 20. A board member filed a lawsuit naming the PCPB and the City in an alleged violation of his right to free speech. Here is what the PCPB posted on its website:

Due to the PCPB named as defendant in a Civil Rights Action case, Board and committee meetings may be adjourned until further notice. Please check the committee and board pages to see if adjournments have been posted. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to be back to normal operations soon.

After the OB Rag reported on Saturday, June 22 that the tall pine trees in front of Point Loma High School on Chatsworth Blvd were chopped down, a reader responded by sending what purports to be a letter from the district’s supervisor of facilities communication, Samir Naji. The letter was a response to an inquiry about the project.

“Thank you for your interest into our Point Loma High School Whole Site Modernization Phase 1 project.

By Jim Miller

In the summer of 1967, the great Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector, began a seven-year stint as a writer for Jornal de Brasil (The Brazilian News) not as a reporter but as a writer of “chronicles,” a genre peculiar to Brazil. As Giovanni Pontiero puts it in the preface to Selected Chrônicas, a chronicle,

“allows poets and writers to address a wider readership on a vast range of topics and themes. The general tone is one of greater freedom and intimacy than one finds in comparable articles or columns in the European or U.S. Press.”

What Lispector left us with is an eccentric collection of “aphorisms, diary entries, reminiscences, travel notes, interviews, serialized stories, essays, loosely defined as chronicles.” As a novelist, Pontiero tells us, Lispector was anxious about her relationship with the genre, apprehensive of writing too much and too often, of, as she put it, “contaminating the word.” It was a genre alien to her introspective nature and one that challenged her to adapt.

At the end of this week as the school year came to a close, the San Diego Unified School District obliterated the tall, old trees that have framed the front of Point Loma High School for generations. Chopped them down, ground them up. Disappeared them.

All part of the renovation, no doubt, of parts of the school.

2019 MUSIC LINEUP

MAIN STAGE
Beer Garden/OB Pier Parking lot at foot of Newport Ave

Colleen O’Connor, a well-known retired college professor – and the sister of a former mayor of San Diego – has called on the City Council to save the historic “Prairie Style” house on San Fernando Street in Point Loma. O’Connor voiced her argument in a recent Times of San Diego post.

The 1912 house has been the center of attention lately as La Playa and other Point Loma residents are in the process of building a campaign to save it. The Save Our Heritage Organisation and La Playa Trail Association have both weighed in on the side of preservation.

O’Connor’s point of view is that ethnic communities in Point Loma, such as the Portuguese ” have faced an erosion of their heritage and the loss of their single-family residential neighborhoods, historical sites and irreplaceable architecture.” She cites as a close and recent example the campaign to save 310 San Fernando Street. O’Connor explains why the two-story one hundred year house is an architecturally significant “Prairie Style” home.

Here’s an opportunity to meet the members of the Ocean Beach Town Council – if you haven’t already – without getting out of your chair.

Over the last couple of months, the OB Rag has collected short biographical sketches of the members of the Board of Directors. We had asked them to answer a few basic questions, like where they grew up, their family, where they went to school, how they arrived in OB and why did they want to volunteer for the OB Town Council. We present edited versions of them below.

Mark Winkie – President of the OB Town Council

Mark – recently elected to be the president of the Board – has been with the OBTC Board for over four years; he most recently served as vice president. His recent handling of the public meetings as chair has demonstrated he’s a quick-thinker, adept at juggling different roles in front of a hundred people.

Mark grew up in and around London, across the Atlantic.

Here is the letter to Mayor Faulconer from the Ocean Beach Town Council Board of Directors expressing support for Non Toxic San Diego and its efforts to change the city’s pesticide and herbicide use.

The letter, with the signature of Mark Winkie, the President of the OBTC, was in response to Non Toxic SD’s presentation and request for support at the most recent OBTC public meeting on May 22 about RoundUp. The Board then held its internal monthly meeting on June 12 and took a supportive stance. Winkie’s letter is also addressed to the City Council. City Attorney, and County Supervisor.

At the end, Mark has some nice words about San Diego with a caveat that hopefully appeals to Mayor Faulconer.

June 13, 2019

Earlier this week, local station Fox5 found “Dozens of electric scooters and bikes were found damaged or defaced with inappropriate words in Ocean Beach Monday,”, adding the damaged scooters caused “a bit of an eyesore.” Of course, this reporter ignored the eyesores caused by dozens of scooters everywhere else.

Some of the scooters and bikes were spray-painted; for instance, one said, “Bird sucks”; others had spray-paint on their handles and sides. Others were damaged and weren’t able to be used. At least one scooter had a flat tire.

This article was originally posted on June 19, 2019
Some residents in the La Playa area in Point Loma are scrambling in an effort to save an historic house from being demolished and turned into a new development.

The two-story old home at 310 San Fernando Street is a 1912 Prairie-style residence that local residents and the group Save Our Heritage Organization believe should be made “historic” to avoid the wrecking crew.

Apparently an elderly couple who owned the residence passed away and the property was bought by Thomas Gaeto of BG Consolidated, LLC in Escondido. Gaeto plans to demolish it and its smaller buildings and redevelop the large lot for three new small mansions.

OMG! A partially-submerged jet airliner has just been discovered just off the Ocean Beach Pier!

The news even made Newsweek online.

What’s going on? According to iDropNews:

Social media users on Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram are seemingly freaking out over what appears to be an underwater airplane near the pier in Ocean Beach, a coastal neighborhood located in San Diego County. But it’s not exactly what it appears to be.