Reader Rant: ‘Let’s Not Give Up on OB as Our Refuge From the Wild World Around Us’

By a Concerned OBcean Finding His Voice:

I used to (and still do) consider myself a fairly progressive left-wing liberal, however given that I can no longer recognize or sit with the politics occurring at the national level, I have promised myself to dive more deeply into local policy and activism to help protect the town that I love and preserve it for my 10 month-old son. Given that I have no idea how to actually do that yet, let this rant to the editor of a grass roots and independent local newsletter be my first step.

Stream of consciously and in no particular order:

While I am, on principle, a believer in higher taxes (especially for the wealthy) and deeply appreciate the services they bring, I wish that local governments do better with the tax money we the citizens already generate (which is among the highest nationally) and not make the function of our city dependent on a tax bill to make it even higher.

In leiu of that, I really wish the government would not charge my family, which already pays the highest electricity and utility rates in the country after the city contracted our utilities to a corrupt for-profit entity (SDGE), to take our trash from the alley. When the green bins got rolled out, our family did not receive one because the city based dispersal on outdated plot records. It took three months and multiple calls to get our green bin delivered, which was then stolen the very next morning before I could spraypaint our address on it, then told to pay a $45 or so replacement fee.

Even if we tried our best to recycle and compost, which we do, not sure how much it would matter since half of our recycle bin every weak is filled with dog poop. Is this how we should treat each other?  So now I say **** your green compost bin program and this new trash fee (although very much a believer in composting and climate change in general—is there a theme developing here? A discord between my deepest beliefs and the way I see our local government handling them). Now, we’ll pay hundreds more a year on top of everything, while the owner of the STRO around the corner, whose guests last weekend woke our baby up and toppled our neighbors fence (an antique remnant of the original Hotel del Coronado) renew their $1,000-something license fee every other year. I think this is where I’m supposed to say “repeal citizen’s united!”, or something…

I wish that we, our community, would do better. Now many, many years into the homelessness crisis, I can still here the voice of my grandpa before he died, telling me, “Ya know, back in my day, if we saw someone down on the street, we would run over to them and make sure they were okay…”. Now walking over several homeless people on a date night to Third Corner holding hands with my wife is something we have accepted as regular and normal (meanwhile, three blocks over, a well-known local realtor is selling a demolished cottage for $2.5M now with two units and a second story). I ask that it not be—that we remember our humanity. I’ll try to be among the first to start.

I hope that, by the time my son is enrolled at Ocean Beach Elementary, I won’t have to explain to him at the end of his walk to school while someone needs to take shelter in the outside entryway near his classroom. But I will if I have to, and as best as I can, praying that he develops a deep sense of empathy that if his dad is worried he himself is slowly losing.

At the same time, I yearn for the day where I call the police as a clearly psychotic and homeless lady is verbally assaulting children at Saratoga Park, and don’t get immediately transferred to the non-emergency line (a voice recording after hours). The day when I experienced this really broke me—I finally saw clearly where we have landed in our society, even in our beloved little beach town. I probably should have gone over there myself. I’ll try to next time. Maybe this is the attitude we all should start taking. Luckily, the kids were okay and eventually left alone. But I ask everyone reading this, if not for our kids, then for whom?

I apologize for this incoherent ramble of this letter, and promise to write several emails later today to ask about how to join organized efforts that are trying to combat these local issues. In the mean time, I would be very grateful if these words moved even one person reading them to do the same—to feel a sense of longing for a better community for our children…a  call to action—and not just provoke overly critical and judgmental, sometimes venomous, online comments on one neighbor’s early morning musings.

We have come to cherish OB for what it means to us and to many people — an escape, a reminder of a simpler time when you knew your neighbor and cared about each other and when middle class people could still live at the beach, a place that gives us refuge from the wild world around us. Let’s not give up on it.

Sincerely, an OB family in a one-bedroom cottage