Category: Culture

Anatomy of a Successful Press Event in Protest of City Placement of Rocks to Displace Homeless

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Some days I marvel at the value of the network of good people that has grown in our community—people involved in so many different areas, all so critical, who come together to support one another in our various efforts. Without that, we could have never pulled off the very successful action on Tuesday April 19 in protest of the City’s reprehensible decision to fill an underpass in Sherman Heights where homeless people take shelter with rocks.

PLAY VIDEO INSIDE

This was a case where all systems were running at peak performance. For the sake of all of those younger people who are just starting to dip their toes in the art of community organizing, here’s how it goes when you have a cadre of like-minded friends to call upon for a cause.

Children’s Creative Center Art Show & Fundraiser – Saturday, April 30

By Ruth McGraw

Drawing and painting were always easy for me. When I was five, I drew a giant green peace sign on my parents’ freshly painted wall. Needless to say they were less than pleased, but that was when I knew I wanted to paint every wall, every where.

In what feels like a former life, I served in the Marine Corps and then as a Civil Service agent, and achieved my bachelors in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I am very proud of my service and grateful for the friendships made and life lessons learned.

However, those days are passed. I finally realized that the taxing paranoia of constantly waiting for the “worst case scenario” was inhibiting my growth as a person. I was tired of expecting and seeing the bad in the world.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer wasn’t too popular at last night’s Ocean Beach Town Council meeting during the “mayoral dialogue”.

First, he didn’t show.

Second, both his opponents, former-Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, and San Diego Lifeguard leader Ed Harris, trained their sights on Faulconer and not on each other.

And third, this was Ocean Beach – the liberal bastion of the city – which usually votes Democratic; Kevin Faulconer is a Republican.

But still, Faulconer used to represent Ocean Beach – and the rest of District 2 – when he sat on the City Council. And the crowd of the 80 or so good-natured souls in attendance probably would have applauded him if he had showed. But he didn’t and neither did his aide, John Ly.

Originally published April 27, 2016

OB as the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego

By Frank Gormlie

In my many writings about Ocean Beach history – some of which I share below – I’ve always noted that in the late 1960s, OB became the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego. By 1967 – a year after the OB Pier had officially opened – it was already evident that Ocean Beach was morphing into the San Diego equivalent of that fabled and iconic San Francisco neighborhood synonymous with “hippie-ism”. If you were a hippie or a hippie-wannabe during this time somewhere in San Diego, you ended up in OB.

Of course, other factors contributed to the incubation in Ocean Beach of a community sympathetic and supportive of the new emerging counter-counter:

by Averi Melcher/San Diego UrbDeZine / April 21, 2016

As I’ve been camping and sharing my adventures, there’s one thing that keeps showing up over and over in my experiences: trash.

About 2 months ago, I was crawling through mud caves in Anza Borrego, when I looked down and found 2 Starburst wrappers illuminated by my headlight. A month ago, I was hiking a mountain in the Joshua Tree back-country and happened upon a deflated helium balloon. Then – later that night – I sat my tent down and fell asleep, just to wake up in the morning and find myself trying to maneuver out of my tent on shards of glass and plastic.

I thought to myself: why is this happening? Why am I finding trash in areas that are off the beaten path – in fact, they are so remote that the Joshua Tree trail log I found indicated I was the first human to step foot on that mountain in a month?

By Ernie McCray

I just finished one of those books that fit the category of a book that’s hard to put down: Back from the Dead by Bill Walton, one of the truly great basketball players and human beings. On the cover one reads “Searching for the sound, shining the light, and throwing it down.” That’s Bill, for sure, as I’ve followed him since he was a kid.

I didn’t know until I read his book that he was a musician, but I’ve known for a long time that he’s someone who’s attracted to the sounds of music, that he has been a player in the Grateful Dead scene for decades. I’ve known that he’s a lifelong learner, a man who’s constantly growing and questioning and shining a light on things that need tending to in our world. And his writing details somewhat poetically how he’s “thrown it down,” all out, throughout his life, in spite of forever having to endure an almost unbelievable array of crippling injuries and intense pain.

Homeless Population Under-counted

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

The 8700 people identified by the Point-In-Time-Count are not anywhere close to the total number of homeless people in San Diego City and County. They didn’t count all the people sleeping in their cars nor the many that are staying with friends or couch surfing.

Nor did they count the many that sleep “off the beaten track” in the many hidden gullies and the river bed. Nor did it count all those who slept in places unlikely to be found by the volunteers who did the counting who, after all, could not be expected to expose themselves to dangerous situations and environments.

Between ten and fifteen car windows were smashed along Coronado Avenue in Ocean Beach early Monday morning, April 25th.

Police are looking for suspects and the vandals are thought to have used a hammer to break the windows.

Local resident Jamie Capps told Channel10News that her husband’s car had been hit:

“There was glass everywhere, pretty much all up and down this street. When my husband was getting in the car for school, and our neighbor came out right here and said her car window was broken and she wanted to check on ours and, of course, ours was too.”

“So, I just kept walking up and down this street, and I probably saw 10 to 15 cars that were vandalized,”

“[The vandal was] Definitely not driving, because he hit a lot of cars.”

Sign the petition at Change.Org

By Enrique Limón / Change.Org

On Thursday, April 28 at 1 pm, San Diego’s Historical Resources Board will hold a meeting to strip away any historical association to the Caliente mural located on the back wall of downtown’s California Theatre (included San Diego’s Register of Designated Historical Resources in 1990).

In December 2011, after news broke that a beer company was set to paint over the mural, a petition on Change.org garnered over 1,000 signatures and made sure city officials listened loud and clear. An independent historic report commissioned by the Save Our Heritage Organisation determined the mural itself was also of historical significance. Now, the city wants to make way for big development.

This Wednesday, April 27th, the Ocean Beach Town Council will host a “Community Dialogue” on the upcoming mayoral election taking place on the California Primary, June 7, 2016. Candidates Ed Harris and Lori Saldaña have confirmed their participation; Kevin Faulconer declined and is not available.

The OBTC invited the top 3 mayoral candidates to address priority OB concerns, during the monthly Town Council meeting. These concerns include – but are not limited to – homelessness, enhancing our quality of life, rebuilding crumbling community infrastructure (specially related to flooding in 92107), upholding our Community Plan, and addressing environmental concerns such as climate change, cliff degradation, the plastic bag ban, and water quality at our beaches.

“Could I Have Been that Wrong?”

Liberty Public Market
2820 Historic Decatur Rd.
San Diego, CA 92106
619-487-9346

Holy Moly! I’ve been lambasted for reviews I have done before, but none like my first review of the Liberty Public Market in Point Loma. I call it like I see it, but with all the positive comments – forgetting the negative ones for a moment – that the Liberty Public Market has received on my comments, I decided it was time to go back and revisit it. If I made a mistake, I am certainly willing to admit it. (And I do that – look at an old article entitled “If you have to eat crow how do you cook it?”) I gathered a few women from my widow support group and we headed over to the market.

The parking lot was packed on this Friday afternoon at 1:00pm. We found a place after circling the lot once, and wished that not only had teachers taught children how to color in the lines, but also taught them how to park within the lines. Never-the-less, we embarked on our mission.

Why Students and Teachers Won When the Vergara Decision was Overturned

By Jim Miller

Last week I reviewed Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? in which he lambastes professional-class Democrats for thinking that there is “no social or political problem that cannot be solved with more education and job training.”

This makes perfect sense because, as a class, professionals are “defined by educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you.”