Category: Culture

By Paul Krueger

Barnes Tennis Center executives are willing to renegotiate a lease agreement that pays the city just $50 per month on yearly revenues of more than $7 million.

The controversial lease for city-owned property in Point Loma was signed in 1994. The lease expires in June, 2029, and does not include any periodic increases in the $600 annual payment over the life of the agreement.

Committee member Vivian Moreno said she is “extremely angry” that the city has for decades received such a minuscule share of the Tennis Center’s $7.2 million in revenue. “Any San Diegan would love to have their rent frozen at 1994 levels,” Moreno said.

Committee member Henry Foster was also critical of the agreement.  “If we are writing contracts that aren’t beneficial to the city, shame on us,” Foster said during Wednesday’s meeting. “Quite honestly, this is a mess, and it’s a pattern. And (city) leadership needs to get this problem resolved.”

Details about the lease came to light last week with the release of the City Auditor’s investigation, which was prompted by an call to the city’s fraud hotline.

Ongoing

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings. September 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine: Advocate for Peace and Justice in Gaza and Everywhere

September 2nd. Wednesday 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm Monthly Social for Makers, Tinkerers and Creatives Event by Zero Waste

September 3rd Thursday 10:30 am – 12 pm Trial by the People

September 4th Friday 5 pm – 9 pm San Diego Sustainable Night Market

September 5th Saturday.  12 pm- 1:50 pm Protest at Del Mar RaceTrack

By Devin Robertson / Newsweek / September 1, 2026

Before Slightly Stoopid could fill Petco Park, Miles Doughty and his bandmates asked listeners for places to sleep. “We’d literally ask people if we could sleep on their floor,” he recalled, and the fans who opened their homes during those early touring years helped build a community capable of following the Ocean Beach group from cramped bars to destination festivals. Three decades later, Doughty is preparing the band’s 10th studio album while protecting the same independent spirit behind its ascent.

“We’re always just excited to keep making music,” Doughty said. The coming release makes the band feel like “kids again,” he added, because anticipation can still cut through the blur of sold-out shows, border crossings and late-night drives; for a group built on forward motion, a fresh collection of songs offers another beginning.

A New Record, Shaped by a Changed Life
The long interval since the group’s previous album arrived during a period when its members started families, and although touring continued, domestic life shifted their attention and changed the experiences feeding the songs. “We’ve all started families,” Doughty said, describing a stretch when the band remained active on the road even as its members entered a different stage of life. With the group focused again on recording, he sees the new work as a record of its present moment, while flashes of the punk rock and ska from Slightly Stoopid’s early years reconnect the musicians with the urgency of their youth.

A person was found aboard a sailboat that was trapped on rocks near the Ocean Beach jetty early Tuesday, Sept. 1, and was taken to the hospital in unknown condition.

Around 6:39 a.m., lifeguards found a sailboat trapped on the North Channel jetty with one person aboard. Rescuers then had to extricate that person from the boat.

It has begun. San Diego’s recent budget battle has now reached Ocean Beach and Point Loma.

It started on Saturday, August 29th — over a dozen San Diego recreation centers had their operating hours cut drastically — including the Ocean Beach Rec Center. Hours were cut from 60 to only 40 hours — that’s 33% — a third!

Other rec centers with these kind of cuts include La Jolla, Ocean Air, Pacific Beach, North Clairemont, Canyonside, Carmel Mountain Ranch/ Sabre Springs, Hilltop, Rancho Bernardo Glassman, Scripps Ranch Community, Kearny Mesa, Allied Gardens, and Tierrasanta.

These drops in a third of the hours opened were the results of the $118 million budget shortfall that the electeds couldn’t deal with. And they may mean that community groups – like the OB Planning Board – will have to find alternative locations.

After Lengthy Delays, the Project Will Turn Hundred Year Old Buildings into Restaurant, Marketplace, Game room and Wedding Venue

When restaurateur Ryan Thorsen, fresh off the acquisition and remodel of Mister A’s, began raising funds a couple of years ago for an ambitious makeover of the long vacant officers quarters at Liberty Station, he expected to have the $15 million project finished by this summer.

Summer has nearly come and gone, and the now $20 million hospitality complex known as The Admiral at Naval Training Center has yet to break ground. But the good news, says Thorsen, is the project remains very much alive, with financing nearly secured and an expected groundbreaking before the end of this year.

The Arts District Liberty Station, the major leaseholder and overseer of 26 of the 45 historic buildings at Liberty Station, is much encouraged by the progress Thorsen and his team have made — so much so that it expects to have a critical lease with the city signed in the coming months that would clear the way for the redevelopment to move forward.

No longer a pipe dream, the admittedly challenging project is well on its way to becoming a reality, says Lisa Johnson, CEO of the Arts District. That’s a promising prediction given that so many other skilled developers predating Thorsen have failed, she said, in their efforts to revive the 7-acre site fronting on Rosecrans.

By Zachary Roth, Jim Saksa / Democracy Docket / September 1, 2026

A whistleblower claims in a new report that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) defied a court order by moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Donald Trump’s mail voting order, which is now mostly blocked.

The report, published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with a letter sent by Blumenthal to Postmaster General David Steiner, warns that the hurried development of a data portal for states to upload the new mail ballot envelope designs and mail voter lists required by USPS’s rule carrying out Trump’s order risks disenfranchising millions this November.

“According to the whistleblower, USPS’s effort to develop and deploy the Portal has been ‘rushed,’ ‘risky and haphazard’ because leadership has demanded an impossible timeframe,” Blumenthal wrote. “In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections.’”

By Steve Anderson / Times of San Diego / August 27, 2026

Summer has come to an end for our little OBceans as they made their way back to the classroom two weeks ago. However, the focus in our community remains on the outside of schools, particularly the roads surrounding them.

In October 2025, three children were struck by a vehicle while attempting to cross the street outside of Pershing Middle School in San Carlos. One student, Andrew Olsen, was killed while his two siblings sustained injuries.

Since then the San Diego Unified School District has been attentive toward school speed limits and safer crosswalks. If you haven’t noticed, Ocean Beach Elementary sits on one of the busiest roads in our community.

This school year, leadership at OB Elementary has requested safety improvements along the surrounding roads.

by Nadia Lathan / Cal-Matters / August 31, 2026

Facing a shrinking budget, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria made few commitments during his annual address to the city in January.

One of them was to win approval for a controversial plan to build a billionaire-backed professional sports stadium and a housing project in a long-vacant arena parking lot.

“Let me be crystal clear,” Gloria, a Democrat, said. “The redevelopment of the sports arena will move forward. We will get this done.”

He may finally fulfill that promise for California’s second-largest city, despite the 165 foot-tall structure vastly exceeding the neighborhood’s 30-foot building height cap.

In the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers Sunday approved a last-minute deal to fast-track construction for Midway Rising, a project to construct a 25-story professional arena, 4,250 housing units and nearly 15 acres of public parks. If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the new law would immediately shield the planned development from potential environmental lawsuits.

It’s a break for San Diego officials whose ambitions for the city’s Midway District have been fraught with legal challenges for years, namely because of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, August 31: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 200: Amend Sole Source Contract For OpenGov to Extend for One-Year Period with One-Year Option Renewal

Why it matters: On July 13, after the Independent Budget Analyst harshly criticized city staff for lack of due diligence in seeking competitive bids, the Council ordered staff to try again. This follow-up item should make for an interesting discussion.