Month: August 2019

Restaurant Review

Fairouz Café & Gallery
3166 Midway Dr. #102
San Diego, CA 92110
619-225-0308

By Judi Curry

There are not many restaurants left in the Ocean Beach – Point Loma area that were here when I moved to San Diego in 1966. Most of the old favorites are gone and as new restaurants open and close, I seem to miss the older ones the most.

What is it that allows a restaurant to stay in business for a long time, still attracting diners – new and old? The Fairouz has an interesting draw – modern and fine art line the walls, all painted by the owner, Ibrahim Al Nashashibi. Under each glass enclosed table are poems written by Mr. Al Nashashibi. The poems are absolutely beautiful, depicting thoughts that he has had about life over the years.

The food is eclectic from Mid-eastern countries and there is an extensive menu.

From Aero Tech News / August 26, 20190

NASA in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey is helping emergency planners in Southern California get a more complete picture of the increasing risk of coastal flooding by looking at the highest of tides —”king tides.”

“King tide” is the informal term generally used to describe an exceptionally high tide, which most often occurs when the Moon and the Sun are aligned and their gravitational pull on the Earth is at its strongest. King tides can be just a few inches higher than normal, but when combined with other factors, they can have damaging effects.

That’s what happened in the winter of 2018-19 when a king tide occurred

A brand new network of local OBceans called the Save Bermuda Beach group held their “kick-off” event this past Sunday, August 25 – down at – of all places – the foot of Bermuda Street, where the stairs have been damaged.

The goal of the group is to mobilize neighbors and other locals to pressure the City of San Diego to repair the stairs that lead to a small, popular beach.

The access stairs to the beach were damaged by a winter storm in early 2016 and the public access has been closed since then.

Originally posted Feb. 1, 2018

By Kevin Hastings

If you haven’t explored our coast south of the OB pier, I recommend you try before they are gone completely.

These cliffs and pocket beaches south of the OB pier have historically served locals and surfers as a refuge from the more touristy beaches to the north. You’ll find an interesting mix of sand crabs and other wildlife, yogis and homeless, remnants of eroded structures, breathtaking sunsets, litter, and graffiti.

Unfortunately, the constant wave action and sluggish response from the city has left most of the coastline inaccessible. The map shows the locations, most of which are now closed (in red) or are at risk of closure (yellow).

Most of the locations are somewhere in the city’s to-do list, but

Come Inside and Take a Tour of Your Inaccessible Coast

No doubt there is a scooter rebellion going on in San Diego’s coastal enclaves. District 1 Councilwoman Barbara Bry – who is also running for mayor – called for a moratorium on the vehicles. A Pacific Beach resident has begun an online petition for banning them, the City of San Diego is sparring with one scooter company over non-compliance issues after new regs went into effect, while citizen complaints about them mount at the Mayor’s office … but one thing is clear.

There are serious consequences to the fairly loose, free-wheeling atmosphere government has allowed the scooters to create; people – riders – are suffering serious injuries; so much so that one recent week in San Diego, there were three skull fractures from scooter accidents.

One of those victims, Karen Riggot, continues to fight for her life

A special meeting has been called by the Peninsula Community Planning Board to review the future of the property at Famosa and Nimitz Boulevards and to allow a community discussion. The meeting is Wednesday, Aug. 28 at the Point Loma Library / Hervey Branch Library located at 3701 Voltaire Street. The meeting will be from 6:00 – 8:00 PM.

Background from the PCPB:

Famosa and Nimitz Boulevards Property (Site 428)

The San Diego Housing Commission released a memorandum on July 2, 2019 regarding the Feasibility study completed for the property and furthermore stated they will release an RFP (Request for Proposals) within 60 days to obtain proposals from developers for a potential affordable rental housing development at the site.

By Jim Miller

There is a movement afoot to reform Proposition 13, with community organizations aligned with labor promoting the Schools and Communities First ballot measure. Why would anyone want to touch the third rail of California politics? The answer is simple: we can keep its central benefit to homeowners while closing an unnecessary corporate loophole that will help our schools, cities, and counties across California.

Ever since its passage in 1978, Proposition 13 has starved California’s schools and local governments of funding. While the measure was pitched as a way to keep individual homeowners from being buried by taxes, the real beneficiaries of Prop. 13 were not elderly folks or other vulnerable groups struggling to hang on to their homes, but super rich corporate property holders.

What most voters don’t know about Proposition 13 is that it gave huge commercial property owners like Disneyland the same tax break as your grandmother.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout – Blog / Aug. 17, 2019

On July 30, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that the Afghan government and international military forces, primarily the United States, caused most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2019. That’s more killings than those perpetrated in the same time period by the Taliban and ISIS combined.

Aerial operations were responsible for 519 civilian casualties (356 deaths and 156 injuries), including 150 children (89 deaths and 61 injuries). That constitutes a 39 percent increase in overall civilian casualties from aerial attacks. Eighty-three percent of civilian casualties from aerial operations were carried out by the international forces.

Do you remember last August? So long ago, but last August 2018 saw the ocean water temperatures reach record highs.

On August 1, 2018, Scripps Pier recorded the highest ocean surface water temperature in its 102 history of taking measurements.

The water temperature was 78.6 degrees. Usually it’s around 68 that time of year.

By Joni Halpern

Dear Ohio,

The massive gap between what we know about each other and what we hear from a myriad of information sources is killing us. This gap is rendering us incapable of measuring the facts and opinions to which we are exposed against the truth about our individual lives.

How can we know if it is correct to cut 3.1 million Americans from the food stamp rolls if we know nothing about people who get food stamps except what powerful people tell us? There is no cure for this ignorance except to hear each other’s stories. I’ll go first.

In the recent past, when I was working as a volunteer lawyer, running a nonprofit that served very low-income families,

By Ernie McCray

Nothing has ever resonated with me more than the “I Have a Dream” prose and poetry Martin Luther King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on a pleasant summer day in 1963.

I was about to enter my second year of teaching and I couldn’t wait to share my thoughts about Martin and about what he had to say that day just in case any of my sixth graders were, in their youthful innocence, confused about what was being said about him throughout the country – all the demonizing of him as a womanizer and the FBI describing him as a dangerous commie, a designated “enemy of the state.”

I was eager to sit down with such young learners and set the record straight, to give them a bit of insight on the man from a black perspective. Mine.

I wanted to throw in some facts into the mix of insinuations and accusations in the air so that they could know and understand that Martin, this remarkable human being, rather than being a threat to our way of life, was devoted to making us more loving and caring as a nation.