Month: June 2019

By Geoff Page

It seemed for a moment there that the Midway-Pacific Community Planning board was channeling OB. As the pictures show, the board met at the Bay City Brewery and sat on backless bar stools at tables consisting of four piled wooden shipping pallets. A big sign hung above them at the back of the room “Bay City Brewery.” It was a relaxed, comfortable, definitely funky location to discuss planning board stuff. So, it felt a bit like the OB Planning Board meetings.

The Midway board met for some years at the community college on Kemper Street but had to relocate a year ago. The new location was generously provided by the Urban Corps on Jefferson Street. But, that only lasted a year and the board moved again. A private business stepped up this time and donated the aforementioned space.

The debate around the future of Fiesta Island in Mission Bay has been brought to a focus now that the San Diego City Council’s Environment Committee decided on May 23 to send their favorite proposal for its future to the full council.

That proposal – which was unanimously endorsed by the committee – is known as “Option B” and it would reserve much of Fiesta Island’s southwest corner for a fenced-in, off-leash dog park – which currently exists – but would be enlarged, it also includes parking areas at the north and east perimeters of the area, and walking trails.

“Option A” was a plan to include a smaller fenced-in, off-leash dog park; park road extension that cuts through the dog park; parking lot; boat storage area; and a park adjacent to a swimming beach. City staff have been pushing Option A, which also includes upgrades such as turf fields, children’s play structures, picnic areas, a camping area, restrooms, public plazas, hiking trails, parking lots and a concession stand.

By Jim Miller

Back in January of 2016, Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, reported on the Koch brothers’ efforts to partner with liberals on criminal justice reform in the New Yorker in which she noted that:

A new, data-filled study by the Harvard scholars Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez reports that the Kochs have established centralized command of a “nationally-federated, full-service, ideologically focused” machine that “operates on the scale of a national U.S. political party.”

Women of Ocean Beach – please come out and join the women who run the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club at their next general meeting, this Tuesday, June 11.

This is a social gathering and they’re making succulent teacups. And not just from any teacups – these were left to the club years ago and are taking up space they desperately need.

This is a great chance to check out the club, meet some cool women, and make and take home a piece of OB history!

There’s a disturbing story coming out of Point Loma High School right now. Apparently, school officials including Principal Hans Becker have been made aware that there were hate and anti-Semitic messages on an Instagram account linked to a ROTC student at the school.

The hate messages included ” memes of guns and ammunition, talk of a school militia, as well as anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim messages”, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. A photo posted on the Instagram account showed a student wearing a Junior ROTC uniform

The U-T reported:

Screenshots of the Instagram account show posts depicting a swastika and the Dr. Seuss character the Lorax with the quote, “The trees say six million wasn’t enough,” and one saying that America needs to shut down mosques and ban Islam. Another asked Point Loma High students if they “would like to join the militia.”

At their Wednesday, June 5 meeting, the Ocean Beach Planning Board prioritized their list of future Capital Improvement Projects for the community – those large public projects that usually take years to materialize.

Every couple of years, the city of San Diego goes through this process in order to determine what future projects are needed for the neighborhoods. The volunteer community planning committees are tasked with coming up with these CIPs – and this year the Mayor’s Office wants the lists in by July 1.

It was important for the Board to do this, to be part of the process in deciding what OB needs for its infrastructure. And CIPs are usually considered projects that cost $100,000 or more.

Devouring the Apple

By Joni Halpern

Dear Ohio,

I’ve been thinking lately about our dear country, and about you as the bellwether election state. I was wondering if you see what I see – namely, that everyday Americans do not think they are important in themselves. Instead, they seek the notice of others, as if blind to their own image, as if they cannot feel their existence unless someone else casts an approving eye upon them and says, “Yes, you are one of us. You are real.”

Every day, some man or woman in Ohio or California or elsewhere in the country wakes up in the morning, tired from a sleepless night, and puts food on the table for themselves and their loved ones, dresses for work, gives up hours to the job, comes home, deals with dinner, and sits in front of a screen waiting to see if anything more interesting than their own life is happening in fiction or in fact.

At Wednesday nights Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting, the volunteer panel quickly dispatched 2 projects before it, had rounded discussions about Capital Improvement Projects for OB, a couple of California Senate bills concerning housing, plus the board took on scooter corrals.

The board had a full quorum of 13 members within the Community Meeting of the OB Rec Center, while at least 25 people circulated in and out of the audience. Chair Andrea Schlageter gaveled the meeting to order very close to 6pm.

Here’s the notice Dirty Birds Bar & Grill has placed in their window at the corner of Santa Monica Ave and Cable Street in Ocean Beach (apologize for the blurriness – it was taken at night).

It’s a Public Notice of intent of Application To Sell Alcoholic Beverages, specifically for the “On-Sale Beer and Wine Eating Place”, as was foretold in an earlier post a week ago here. It appears to have been posted June 5, 2019. As we stated then, the interior looks very ready.

As many OBceans are aware, there’s been a saga in the Dirty Birds’ journey

(Thoughts Inspired by Erica Jong)

by Ernie McCray

There’s so much talk about the risks that would be involved in trying to impeach the president.

And I’m thinking: Risks? What risks?

A literary hero of mine, Erica Jong, once said: “If you don’t risk anything, you risk everything” and to me it’s a bigger risk not trying to give El Numero 45 a pink slip than allowing him to sink the ship that is America.

By Councilwoman Jennifer Campell / May 2019 Newsletter

Hello Neighbors!

Here is an update on some of the most prominent pieces of legislation that City Council has passed recently.

First, scooters. On May 14th. City Council followed up it’s previous unanimous approval of scooter regulations with another 9-0 vote on the legislation’s second reading. That means that the new laws regarding scooters will come into effect on July 1st, laws that include geofencing on the boardwalk and bayside walk that will slow scooters to 8 mph.

Even with the new rules many of us are disappointed that there is not a scooter ban on our boardwalks. When the Mayor’s regulations came to Council, for both the initial hearing and the second reading. I was vocal about my support of banning scooters from the boardwalk.

By Jim Peugh / The Times of San Diego / June 4, 2019

The last several years have seen a deluge of news about infrastructure in San Diego. Whether it’s the future of the stadium site in Mission Valley, the extension of the Blue Line trolley to UCSD, or the push among urbanists to revolutionize housing in our city, refining our development footprint has taken up a sizable volume of bandwidth in our civic conversation.

As plans move forward to reshape San Diego’s built environment, it’s easy to overlook how these changes can negatively affect our quality of life and the sustainability of our communities. In the rush to redevelop, we often miss out on opportunities to incorporate green infrastructure