Category: Environment

by Jon Carr

Saturday April 18th, 2009 was the first annual OB Rockfest. A picture perfect day without a cloud in the sky and plenty of locals and visitors getting together for fun, sun, music and a little dose of environmental awareness.

There will be Town Hall Meeting in Ocean Beach tomorrow – April 20th – on the FY10 budget. This is your opportunity to get an overview by the Mayor’s staff on his proposed budget and ask questions!

By Jon Carr

The first annual OB Global Rock Fest is taking place at the pier parking lot on April 18th, 2009.
The event is being promoted as “Carbon Neutral” because the stages will be powered with Solar energy and there will be plenty of environmentally conscious vendors in the grassy area between the wall and Abott street.

By OB Rag Staffer

Can you picture yourself being homeless and living in a tent city? That’s a frightening thought, but it is a looming possibility for more and more San Diegans as the economy gets worse for ordinary people.

Ocean Beach has a large homeless population. We see these people, chat with them and help them out with a buck here and there. But …

As San Diego closes its winter shelter for our local homeless, nation-wide the homeless, joined by the jobless, are erecting tent cities. Among the cities which are grappling with an increasing number of tent city residents are Fresno, Sacramento and Los Angeles in California, New York City, Seattle and Olympia in Washington, and St. Petersburg in Florida.

38 years ago – check out our account of the riot – reposted here, what led up to it, the causes, the reporting, and the aftermath.

the Battle for Collier Park

Spring 1971. One of the first major issues the OB Rag jumped into wholeheartedly was to join up with a new OB environmental group, OB Ecology Action, and lead a fight to save Collier Park, an urban patch of land in northeastern OB.

By Jon Christensen

Hidden in the center of San Diego though clearly visible on every map; ignored yet fought over all at the same time, this is South San Diego Bay. This water front property, a valuable and rare commodity on the California coast, is only an occasional after thought – a place we can’t quite figure out what to do with. It may be in the center of maps, but it’s hard to find on political agendas.

I want a plug-in hybrid. A vehicle with lithium-ion batteries good for 40-45 miles, two wheel drive, a six speed computer controlled transmission with a computer that starts a small generator; an 11 hp portable generator is rated for 6200 watts, and yes, burns gas, for now. Modular construction would make it easy to replace the gas power generator with a fuel cell or other non-internal combustion power source.

In my first post of this series on San Diego County government, I gave an overview of the County itself and then a brief look at the governmental machine. Because of the sheer size and magnitude of its operations and reach, it can be very overwhelming any time one looks at our County political apparatus. Because our county is huge, the government shell over it has to be huge too. And we’ve got to understand this shell.

You old hippies from the sixties and seventies remember the Furry Freak Brothers, right? And the crazy things they used to do with their cat, Freddy. Well, one of the brothers is alive and well in the body of a 20-year old dude, Acea Schomaker of Lincoln, Nebraska. Schomaker – in order to calm down an abused cat that he and his girlfriend took in – placed the 6-month old feline into a large, make-shift bong.

Schomaker said that when he smoked marijuana through it, it calmed the cat down.

The Capitol Power Plant’s days of coal are over. It’s been the waiting game here: Since 2 pm, over 2,000 activists have blockaded the three main gates to the Capitol Power Plant. The rather larger police turnout is impressive; clad in their best stocking caps, they dot the chain fence like lamp-posts, taking in the gregarious march with a bit of interest and fascination. No attempt at any arrests have been made. The crowd is controlled and peaceful; there is a festive atmosphere, young and old, all bundled up and dancing to keep warm on this crystal clear but chilly afternoon.

A higher-than-normal rate of cancer diagnoses in the building that houses UCSD’s literature department has been the subject of near-constant discussion in recent months, but it’s an issue that’s been on the department’s radar for years.

“We’ve been talking about this in the hallways for almost as long as I’ve been here,” said Anna Joy Springer, a creative-writing professor who’s been teaching at UCSD for six years.

Between 2000 and 2006, faculty and staff who work in the building reported at least eight individual cases of breast cancer. Of these people, two have died.