Month: June 2021

OBceans and other Southern Californians must have breathed a sigh of relief in not being engulfed by the record-breaking heatwave that hit the Northwest this past weekend. I happened to be in Oregon visiting family and was able to experience it all.

It was 109 in the small town I was in, southwest from Portland. For three days. After spending two days mostly indoors, on the third day of the heat, we bundled everybody into two cars and headed for the Oregon coast.

Akili Cobbs was fatally shot Sunday night, June 27, in a parking lot at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. Now his family wants answers.

Multiple gun shots and someone yelling for help brought police to the scene close to the 4500 block of Ladera Steret around 11:30. Cobbs was found in a car in the parking lot often used by surfers and park visitors, below Point Loma Nazarene University.

Now there’s a memorial for the 33-year old victim.

Outdoor restaurant spaces have become common to many Ocean Beach, Little Italy and other San Diego streets as eateries and other businesses used them to survive the coronavirus pandemic.

Now the outdoor eating areas could become permanent according to a plan the city of San Diego is currently working. Some businesses are rejoicing while others see the host of new restrictions and regulations as making things that much more complicated for business owners.

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / June 22, 2021

San Diego is spending $15 million to buy 240,000 green recycling bins and kitchen pails so city residents can begin recycling food scraps to comply with a new state law that will fundamentally change recycling in California.

The new organics recycling law, SB 1383, forces residents and businesses to start separating out food waste and food-soiled paper products from their trash so that they can go in green bins for recycling.

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / June 23, 2021

San Diego’s proposal to allow many businesses to eliminate their parking spots passed a key test last week when a City Council committee voted 3-1 to support the change after a contentious hearing. The vote, with only Councilmember Marni von Wilpert opposed, makes it likely the proposal will get support from at least five members of the full nine-member council next month.

Many San Diego businesses would no longer have to provide parking under policy proposal

By Chris Brewster / Voice of San Diego / June 23, 2021

If the mayor and City Council are serious about police reform, they should make clear that the expectation is that the police chief must meaningfully bring police stops into alignment with the makeup of the population, or spell out clearly why doing so isn’t desirable.

The San Diego Police Department’s leadership has been ineffective over many years at ensuring equity in police stops.

By Jesse Marx and Sofía Mejías Pascoe / Voice of San Diego / June 17, 2021

A long-awaited analysis of San Diego Police Department data, conducted by an outside think tank, was released Thursday, June 17, and offers a familiar picture of the disparities that people of color face when encountering law enforcement. But the police chief and the report’s authors have said they don’t believe it’s appropriate to attribute such disparities to officer bias.

The OB Rag will have very limited postings over the next 6 days, as I’m off to the Portland area to visit my daughter and her family.

Leaving behind a rain storm and heading into 90+ heat is quite a turnaround for San Diego and Portland.

Comments will continue to be open –

Enough workers at the flagship Mission Valley location of cannabis retailer March and Ash signed authorization cards that now they are all part of a union. They joined the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 which has been organizing cannabis workers all over Southern California lately.

Brent E. Beltrán, Communications Director for Local 135, sent out the following statement:

SAN DIEGO – On the heels of last month’s announcement that employees at cannabis retailer March and Ash in Vista, City Heights, and Imperial chose to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 and voted on their first ever union contract, enough workers at the flagship Mission Valley location signed authorization cards to bring themselves into the bargaining unit.

Happenings in the “hood”

By Colleen O’Connor

Immigrants and explorers have been coming to San Diego for centuries. One of the earliest was Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who led the first European expedition to the west coast of the United States.

Historians believe he anchored his flagship, the San Salvador, on Point Loma’s east shore near the land that becomes Cabrillo National Monument.

It was the first contact between the coastal California Indigenous tribes, like the Kumeyaay, and men from Europe.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / June 17,2021

Not all edtech is negative but it is important to remember that private companies are in it for the money. Giant corporations and private equity firms require return on investment. Improving education comes in second to making profits and everyone in the business knows that the real edtech gold comes from data mining.

Dr Velislava Hillman is a visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In a post on the LSE blog she writes,

“It is hard, perhaps impossible, to go to school and not be registered by a digital technology. Cameras wire the premises; homework is completed using one business’s software application (eg Microsoft Word) that may be embedded onto another business’s platform (shared via Google);

OB Vibe is this weekend, and the people putting it on need volunteers!

OB Vibe will be in lieu of the traditional Ocean Beach Street Fair and will be held on June 26th from 10am – 6pm.

The OB Mainstreet Association and the OB Town Council need lots of volunteers for various areas, such as, but not limited to:

• Vendor Check-in
• OBMA Information Booth & Merchandise
• Canvas Painting Class Coordinators