Public Service Announcement: Riding Electric Scooters on the Sidewalk Is Against the Law

Next time you see someone riding an electric scooter on a sidewalk, please politely remind them that it is illegal and ask them to get into the street. They can use the bike lanes.

Hey OB – got flies?

Several weeks ago, I was having dinner with a group of friends in Point Loma – and we were eating outside. The hosts apologized numerous times for the flies that seemed to be trying to enjoy our food. Later, I thought, we’ve eaten outside many times before at their house – which is just a few blocks from OB – but never have the flies been this bad.

Then just this weekend, I was visiting with friends who live down in the flatlands of Ocean Beach. We were sitting outside in their back yard – and there was no food around – but there were flies. As my friends were lighting a whole bunch of incense sticks and placing them around the patio in an effort to ward off the flying nuisances, they told me the flies have never been this bad since they’ve lived here – over 10 years now.

So – have you been bothered more than usual this year by flies? Just why are there so many at the beach?

Apparently, a three story building is going up in the backyard at 4925 Saratoga Avenue in Ocean Beach. Despite any other 3-story residences in the immediate neighborhood and despite the project being denied by the Ocean Beach Planning Board on May 3, 2017.

Applicant-Owner Todd Schak applied for a Coastal Development Permit (CDP) to build a two-story house (okay, it’s a small house with only 918 square feet) on top of a 4-car garage. There’s already a rehabbed Craftsman 2-bedroom in the front which is 800 square feet.

Tragedy struck Saturday morning, Sept.8, when a 73-year-old scuba diver drowned while diving off the tide pool area near the sewage treatment plant in Point Loma.

Apparently the as-yet to be identified man became separated from his dive partner. The dive partner called 911 and just before 11 a.m. emergency crews responded by boat after they received reports of a scuba diver in distress. One news report had a bystander pull the unconscious guy out of the water by the time they arrived.

Here are four things you need to know about the Torrey Pine at 4633 Long Branch Avenue in northeast Ocean Beach.

One. The tree is not moving. There is at least 1 pin in the tree (possibly 2) placed by the city as an intersect to measure movement; a city engineer told a local resident there has been no movement by the tree, and its not falling. This means the city has data about the tree that demonstrates it is not going to collapse or that it has even moved.

Two. The City wants to chop the Torrey Pine down. This was evident on July 5 when a crew showed up to do just that. If they hadn’t been deterred by local residents, they would have removed it. Plain and simple. And thank you Matt Madruga.

Meeting last night before a packed crowd in the OB Rec Center, the OB Planning Board – once it obtained a quorum – appointed two new board members, approved the proposed 2 condo project on Froude and agreed to send letters to the City regarding safety issues on OB streets.

2 New Board Members

Two individuals who qualified to be members of the Board were appointed to fill 2 of the 6 open seats on the Board. Kevin Hastings was appointed to planning area district 6 and Tracy Dezenzo was appointed to district 1.

Kevin Hastings

Board member Craig Klein introduced Kevin – who is well known in planning board and town council circles – by stating Kevin “single-handedly provided a huge amount of data [on short term vacation rentals] to help the City Council, to give residents ammunition.”

Matt Madruga has lived on the 4600 block of Long Branch Avenue in Ocean Beach for 16 years – he still lives in the house his grandparents bought back in the mid-1950s.

So, Matt – who runs a small diving and yacht services company – knows about the large Torrey Pine that towers over the eastern end of his block. It stands in the right-of-way next to the narrow street near his property line with his nextdoor neighbor. In fact, one can see a portion of its trunk through a crack in Matt’s concrete patio.

This is the same Torrey that was saved by the community 7 years ago from the city wanting to chop it down and is the same Torrey that was almost cut down this past July, and it’s the subject of an upcoming Urban Forestry Commission meeting.

Matt has been watching the tree for 25 to 30 years now, he told the OB Rag recently. He knows how it lives, he knows what lives in it, he knows how it blows in the wind,

On Thursday, August 30, proponents of over-turning last month’s San Diego City Council vote establishing limits on short term vacation rentals turned in – what they say – is more than 62,000 signatures to the county Registrar of Voters.

In order to force a public vote on the restrictions, Airbnb and Homeaway representatives need 36,000 valid signatures of registered voters. They and their consultant, PCI Consultants, employed an army of signature gatherers across the city who in turn employed aggressive tactics to wrest signatures from unwary residents.

A sexually aroused dolphin has been getting so close to human swimmers at a picturesque French beach in the northwestern Brittany region that the local mayor has closed the beach at the village of Landévennec in Finistère to bathing.

Brittany is a region of France known for its beautiful beaches with beaucoup swimming and sailing opportunities.

The local mayor, Roger Lars, issued a new law prohibiting swimmers from getting closer to 40 meters (close to 130 feet) to the dolphin, whose name is Zafar. The dolphin has a name, you might ask with eyebrows raised? Mais qui.

Unfortunately, we predicted it back in February that big changes were coming to the 4800 block of Voltaire Street in north Ocean Beach. And it looks like they are. We predicted that somebody could come in and purchase both Jim Bell’s old house and the old Dover Plumbing building – and make way for a huge complex.

It’s happened. The city has posted notices that Jim Bell’s former house at 4862 Voltaire and the former Dover Plumbing at 4870 will both be demolished, to make way for a 3-story mixed use building, with 10 residential units and near 3,000 square feet of commercial space.

There’s just too many questions being raised about the newly-formed Sunset Cliffs Merchants Association and a so-called “Street Fair” they are organizing.

On this past Wednesday, Aug. 22, the OB Rag published a post about the group and the street fair supposedly calendared for September 1 – a week away – using a report in the online The Beacon by Judi Curry and using the group’s facebook page.

But over the last two days there’s been some pushback mainly in the form of comments and questions to the article, private comments made at Wed’s OB Town Council meeting, and more concerns raised after some quick digging by locals.