Category: Culture

Coastal Commission Nixes Sanders’ Vision for Foot of Broadway – to Delight of Local Activists

By Pat Flannery / Blog of San Diego / April 15, 2010

One of the biggest mistakes Jerry Sanders made in his two mayoral terms was to fall for whatever slick sales talk Steve Cushman used to cajole him into backing this used-car salesman for a third term as Port Commissioner, despite term limits. Sanders’ strange fascination with Cushman raised eyebrows at the time. It may now have cost him his legacy – the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan (NEVP). It lies in ruins because of the cruise ships.

The Adopt-A-Fire-Pit Project Is Looking for a Few Good Local Volunteers

OB Fire Pits Before OB Town Council on April 28th

The eight remaining fire pits on OB beaches are fast becoming a burning issue. As you probably know, the City of San Diego, under the pretense of not having sufficient funds, plans on removing all 185 fire pits that ring the City’s beaches – including Mission Bay. And these include what’s left of the pits in our community.

The City’s plans of removal are said to begin at the start of the new fiscal year, July 1st, as the City does have the money for maintenance of the fire pits up through this June.

* Syringes Found Washed Ashore South of Dog Beach on April 14th
* OB Historical Society Presents “OB Coffee Culture” – April 15th
* “Save OB Fire Pits” on the OB Town Council Agenda – April 28th
* Changing of the Guard at the OB Planning Board
* Antique District Sales Event – April 17 – 18
* Clean OB Committee meeting – April 19
* Crime Prevention Committee meeting – April 20

One of the OB Rag’s more able bloggers is moving on and out of OB … to grad school … to be a writer. Although we protested – “Hey Mary! You’re already a great writer!” – she is ignoring our pleas to stay in OB.

Mary joined our staff one year ago exactly. Here is a sample of her posts since then:

* An Arch to Build a Dream On
* Keith Kifer – the Blues Wizard: “I’m always on stage.”
* The Kids – the Young and Homeless of OB
* OB Burners and Hoopers Get Busted
* The Hidden Garden of Ocean Beach
* Bars and Clubs of OB – a Review
* Who Was That Naked Swimmer Anyway?

The event was at Queen Bee’s in North Park, and it represented a coming-together of the County’s various Coffee Party chapters. There were reps from Ramona, Oceanside, Escondido, and from the various San Diego areas, “Coastal”, “eastern San Diego”, and “mid-city”.

Representative Filner stressed that the nation needed public financing of elections, in order to level the playing field. This issue has become one of the Coffee Party’s central issues.

by Jen Wilbur

We OBceans sure do love our animals. Not only do we have Dog Beach and Dusty Rhodes Dog Park nearby, but also many restaurants, bars and coffee carts have a fresh bowl of water readily available.

There are also no less than 5 veterinary hospitals within a less-than-5-mile radius. So it’s no surprise that folks are vocal about which vets they love, as well as those that made them miserable from time to time.

The San Diego chapter of the national Coffee Party movement is holding a kind of “coming-out” party in the late afternoon on Sunday, April 11th, and Congressman Bob Filner is the keynote speaker.

This private affair will be at Queen’s Bee, an entertainment venue/ coffee house in North Park from 3:30pm to 5. Stacy Taylor, one of San Diego’s most popular (ex-) radio personalities will also be on hand as a speaker. There is music and poetry, so this could be quite a gig.

The San Diego Coffee Party organization is not even one month old. Its first meetings were on March 13th, and there was so much of a turn-out of kindred spirits that it was organized into 3 to 4 groups. There’s also a chapter in Oceanside, one in Carlsbad, and a small one in Ramona. There are efforts a foot to establish one in the South Bay as well.

About a dozen OBceans are active in the “coastal” section …

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA AND POLICE WATCH TOWER COMING TO OCEAN BEACH

Big Brother is creeping into our lives, inch by inch, camera by camera, tower by tower. Recent posts on our blog have described plans by the City of San Diego to install surveillance cameras in and around Mission Bay, including one on the OB Pier, and that the San Diego Police Department dragged out their controversial mobile watch tower for this year’s first Floatopia.

Surveillance cameras, police towers … Big Brother is definitely creeping in … do you remember the origins of Big Brother? He is a fictional character in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the dictator with seemingly absolute control in Oceania, a society that is a totalitarian state.

by David Helvarg

President Obama’s decision to have Interior Secretary Ken Salazar open vast new areas of federal ocean waters to offshore oil drilling is no surprise. In his State of the Union address, the president explained that his vision for a clean energy future included offshore drilling, nuclear power and clean coal. Unfortunately, that’s like advocating a healthy diet based on fast-food snacking, amphetamines and low-tar cigarettes.

If the arguments you hear in the coming days for expanded drilling sound familiar, it’s because they’ve been repeated for generations. We’ve been hearing promises about safer drilling technologies since before Union Oil began drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel. And if you don’t remember what happened that time, you should. Soon after the wells were bored, one of them blew out in January 1969, causing a massive oil slick that slimed beaches and killed birds, fish and marine mammals. The resulting catastrophe helped spark the modern environmental movement.

COME INSIDE FOR MORE ….

* “Terriers” Returns to Old Townhouse Restaurant April 6th

*OB Rag Calling for OB Heathens

*OB Comedy Celebrates Fourth Anniversary Show – April 9th

*OB Centric Holds Another “Swap O Rama Rama”

*Rock ’n’ roll academy opens doors in OB

Now, I’m not a big fan of “State of” kinds of speeches. Most times they leave me with a feeling of “Now, that was some BS I could have spared myself.” But it was a joy the other night listening to Richard Barrera, the President of the San Diego City Schools Board of Education, share his thoughts on schools being community based in a refreshing non-preachy conversational tone as opposed to the usual empty tome that politicians usually read verbatim at such occasions in coma inducing tones.

His rap resonated with me because as an educator I can say, from having been “part of” creating some fairly dynamic learning environments in my time, that it can’t be done with out tons of input from the “hood.” I mean what is the purpose of education if not to empower communities, the stakeholders?

At first, it looked safe to go in. So, two young highschoolers decided to try swimming at Sunset Cliffs. But Katie Kitchenka and Breyaundra Woods, both 18 years old and from Steele Canyon High School, soon found out it was too cold.

They tried getting back to shore, but couldn’t. Fortunately, an off duty border patrol agent came upon them yelling for help, and he threw them a beach towel and helped get them to a ledge.