Month: March 2021

Restaurant Review

StarFish Filipino Eatery
1830 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., Suite E
San Diego, CA 92107

By Judi Curry

I am always intrigued when a new ethnic restaurant opens nearby. I have long felt that Ocean Beach has enough Mexican, Pizza and Asian – read Japanese – restaurants and not enough “other” kinds. I was thrilled to hear that a Filipino restaurant has now opened right on Sunset Cliffs.

When I was working at Job Corps in Imperial Beach, I had several instructors and secretaries that were Filipino. When they brought in food for different occasions it was usually the first to go. They could never make enough Lumpia to satisfy the staff – you have to know that I had over 130 staff members! – and the Pancit was the best I had ever tasted. I “borrowed” Alicia’s recipe for Lumpia, and would spend hours cutting up the vegetables the way she taught me to but it never tasted as good as hers.

The pancit was interesting, because Alicia would put a layer of raw oysters on the top, and that stopped many of the staff from devouring the tasty dish. Other staff members did not put any topping on theirs at all and they were the first to be finished!

Now we have a Filipino restaurant in Ocean Beach. They have very limited hours – close their doors by 6:00 – which I am hoping will change as the pandemic decreases.

By Geoff Page

The Peninsula Community Planning Board held its first election in two years Thursday, March 18. Last year’s election was cancelled due to COVID. This election was also clearly affected by COVID and not in a good way.

Every year, five of the 15 seats on the PCPB are up for election. Because there was no election last year, 10 seats were up for election. Because a board member resigned last year without completing the term, there were 11 open seats. This was a large number of seats to fill but the election attracted 16 candidates.

There were 644 total ballots, which surprised the Board. In fact, that was the largest election turn out in many years. Is it possible that the complete relaxation of all voting rules was the reason?

A Comparison of How Local Planning Boards Handled Their 2021 Elections

The pandemic threw planning board operations and elections into a turmoil.

by Ernie McCray

Someone, unknown, once wrote “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.“

I can’t help but say amen to that just from having, the other day, read my journal about the past year and noticing how in between my comments about the enormous loss of human lives and a dangerous looney-ass president’.’ string of improvised lies, and wide political divides, and the like, there were so many entries that literally made me smile.

Especially one about me swatting a pesky fly just to see him die, borrowing from a Johnny Cash line.

And I sure smiled a lot at what I wrote about visiting Maria’s family and friends in San Antonio, home of the Alamo, and in Jalapa, Cuernavaca, Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo in the beautiful country of Mexico.

I couldn’t help but smile as my words made me recall how I, after being such a recluse, finally dared to go out during the pandemic and wined and dined and laughed outdoors with dear friends, wearing masks and keeping a distance.

Here are two events Saturday in Point Loma for the Campbell Recall campaign.

Saturday: Petition Drive at Famosa Canyon

Saturday, March 20th from 10 am – 1 pm

Famosa Canyon – 2320 Famosa Blvd. Across the street from Bill Cleator Park. Neighboring Sea Colony and Park Point Loma. We need lots of community support and positive energy! Time to Stand Up and Speak Out! This is our community!

With restaurants able to have 25% capacity now that San Diego County is in the Red Tier, we’re wondering whether OB eateries are ready to give back all that public space they grabbed during the pandemic in order to keep their doors open.

Anyone who has been on Newport Avenue or Voltaire Street knows what we’re talking about. Local restaurants commandeered parts of sidewalks and parking spaces to be able to offer outdoor dining, and those bars who were able to arrange food service are also in that same boat.

And many in the community have been sympathetic to their plight and understanding

Cruising down Newport Ave, it’s clear that a number of new Ocean Beach businesses are ready for the Grand Reopening – the county’s entry into the red tier allowing many businesses to reopen. Other newbies on Abbott and Sunset Cliffs will be joining them.

Here then, is a casual pictorial of many of these upstarts, ready to take on the world from their OB sites.

Teitan Tattoo

This new tat parlor offers “Neotradtional” skin engravings. The Las Vegas-transplant tattoo shop artists are also trained in customer service to provide a world-class experience for clients. Patrick DeMarco, founder, and chief artist at Teitan Tattoo, saw his new shop as the best logical step in their expansion, following their widely successful flagship shop in Las Vegas.

Locals involved with or observing planning and housing trends have been witness to a huge boom in the construction of so-called “granny flats” recently.

It seems there’s not a meeting of the OB Planning Board where there isn’t an application to build a granny flat somewhere in Ocean Beach. They’ve become a routine agenda item for the volunteers who run the planning panel.

None of them needed to read today’s Union-Tribune to know that the last two years have seen an explosion in granny flat approvals and completions, especially in OB and other beach neighborhoods.

Today, Thursday, March 18 is the annual election to the Peninsula Community Planning Board. There are eleven vacancies to fill in this modified election (see the procedures below).

According to the PCPB:

These eleven Board positions to be filled comprise over two-thirds of the Board’s fifteen positions. Board terms are typically three (3) years in length. Because the 2020 election was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the 2021 election will include several positions with shorter terms. Of the eleven PCPB positions to be filled, five will be for three-year terms, five will be for two-year terms and one will fill a current vacancy for the balance of a one-year term.

Here are the people running for the seats with a brief description.

Straight Up With a Twist

By Edwin Decker

Dear Ed, With restaurants only offering take-out, I’ve wanted to do my part in helping them, so I’m often getting food from establishments I love. While I’ve always considered myself a great tipper, I have never been someone that tipped the person at Starbucks with a tip jar. To me, they’re a cashier, not a waiter. . . My logic is . . .I’m already spending money on the food, and the inconvenience of taking it home and not enjoying the ambiance of their restaurant . . .

A brand new, declassified intelligence assessment has come out about how Russian President Putin tried to influence the 2020 election in favor of Trump.

And part of the Kremlin campaign of disinformation that was pro-Trump and anti-Biden, was the use of un-named American “media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences,” states the report by the National Intelligence Council.

And specifically, as part of the campaign efforts, “they also made contact with established U.S. media figures and helped produce a documentary that aired on a U.S. television network in late January 2020.” Who do you think aired that propaganda? None other than the San Diego-based cable channel

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, San Diego County is back in the Red, tier that is! And San Diego area schools have been given the green light to reopen.

Dr. Wilma Wooten on Tuesday announced that San Diego County has attained a case rate low enough to rejoin the red tier Wednesday, March 17.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

In a biweekly COVID-19 update to the Board of Supervisors, the county’s public health officer foreshadowed the contents of the state’s weekly tier report, listing the score at 6.8 cases per 100,000 residents.

By Judi Curry

When you think of SeaWorld what do you think of? Shamu? Orcas? Dolphins? Seals? Sharks? Fish? What was the reason that Sea World started in the first place?

Let me give you some history:

“SeaWorld® opened its gates for the first time in 1964, founded by George Millay, Milt Shedd, Ken Norris and David DeMott. Originally planned as an underwater restaurant, the concept grew into a marine zoological park on 21 acres along the shore of Mission Bay in San Diego. With an initial investment of $1.5 million, 45 employees, several dolphins, sea lions, and two saltwater aquariums, SeaWorld drew more than 400,000 visitors its first year.