Month: May 2023

Barry Bahrami, the man whose livestream caught two Navy ships nearly colliding in the San Diego Bay has been ordered to take the cameras down.

It was Bahrami’s video that showed the near collision of two Navy ships at the San Diego Bay back in November 2022, an incident commonly referred to as “Warship Chicken” which now stands at the center of a new controversy. The Navy Criminal Investigative Service says the camera’s livestream shows military activity in the area, but Bahrami calls, “bologna,” and that he has the right to film.

Is this guy an artist … or a vandal? Or a graffitist?

The individual was seen down at the cliffs between Del Monte Ave. and Narragansett Ave.

Hundreds of San Diego residents rallied across a wide swath of  the city on Saturday, May 6, to protest Mayor Gloria and the city’s housing policies, as well as Senate Bill 10 (SB-10).

From University City to Hillcrest, from Mission Hills to the College area, from Clairemont to North Park and in Normal Heights, people stood on street corners at major intersections holding signs that decried the direction Gloria and the City Council were taking their neighborhoods. Councilmembers Steven Whitburn and Kent Lee were also targeted for supporting Gloria’s policies.

It’s a conservative estimate that 600 people took part in the 7 different rallies. Two small counter-demonstrations were also held.

By Geoff Page

Most people would agree that weeds growing in pavement cracks are a pretty good indication that a street needs work. Weeds. That is what Bacon Street looks like today, has for some time, and will continue to look that way for the foreseeable future..

By Frank Gormlie

For at least an entire generation of Americans, the day May 4, 1970, will always be associated with the shootings of unarmed students by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed – two had nothing to do with the protests, one was an ROTC cadet – and nine others were wounded, including one permanently paralyzed. The shootings will be eternally remembered as a grim stain upon US history.

By Katie Hyson / KPBS / April 25, 2023

Nearly everyone passing through Chicano Park calls out to the park’s cofounder Josephine Talamantez, who squeezes them tight and asks after their families. Highway pillars surround them, covered in colorful murals. From the time of Spanish conquistadors to the present, they depict a single message of Chicano resilience and self-determination: “Aquí estamos y no nos vamos.” “We’re here, and we’re not leaving.”

The space was born from this refusal.

By Benji Jones / Vox / May 3, 2023

A few miles west of San Diego is a stretch of ocean that’s rather unremarkable from the surface. The water is cold and blue. There’s some green seaweed peeking out.

Sink below the waves, however, and a whole other realm appears. Under the sea here, near Point Loma, is a forest as beautiful as any other. It’s made not of trees but of strands of giant kelp, a species of algae that can grow taller than a 10-story building. Tethered to the seafloor and buoyed by air-filled chambers, the kelp strands undulate with the current,

From Protest Organizers

The May 6th “Citywide Protest Against the City of San Diego’s Reckless Housing Initiatives” will draw hundreds and potentially thousands of residents from 16 communities across the city, kicking off at 10:00 a.m. in University City, which alone is expecting around 300-400 people. (Go here for the 6-neighborhood rally schedule.)

“Our city officials have been rolling out one high-density housing initiative after another, without regard to the supporting infrastructure that would be needed,…”

During a 90-minute STRO Zoom community briefing on April 27 by the City’s Development Services Department Code Enforcement Division on their plans to enforce regulations of the City’s new Short-Term Residential Ordinance which took effect May 1, not all went well.

Also, not all is going well with Mission Beach short-term rental hosts, as it turns out over 50 may have lied on their license applications (see below).

By Caleb Lunetta / San Diego Union-Tribune / May 1, 2023

The city’s newly-established Privacy Advisory Board voted last week to create an ad hoc committee to gather more research and public comment on the San Diego Police Department’s proposal to install hundreds of smart street lights and automatic license plate readers across the city. The purpose of the committee will be to ensure the board has more community input before its members decide whether to recommend the proposal to the City Council.

At the March 2023 meeting of the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board, it designated three houses as historical resources, including one in Point Loma that was once lived in by Fred Rohr, founder of the Rohr Aircraft Company — a major San Diego employer during World War II.

Here is Save Our Heritage Organization‘s description of the site from its May/June newsletter:

555 San Fernando Street in the Peninsula Community is the Fred Rohr/Ralph L. Frank House, a two-story home with a basement built in 1940 in the Colonial Revival style.

Groups from across San Diego are uniting in opposition to San Diego’s reckless high-density housing initiatives and are planning 6 neighborhood rallies this Saturday, May 6.

Residents throughout San Diego are uniting in solidarity on Saturday to peacefully protest San Diego’s irresponsible overdevelopment policies. Neither the Mayor nor the City Council are respecting the development policy concerns of their constituents, so residents are taking to the streets to make their voices heard.

What these groups oppose:

• Mayor Gloria’s intention to implement SB 10