Category: History

In our continuing series of looking at each of the seven planning districts in Ocean Beach, we come to District 5 in southwestern OB. (Here is a map of all these districts within the Ocean Beach Planning Area. )

The OB Rag is performing this public education service as the OB Planning Board is having its annual election on March 11th. (Here are our views of District 1, District 2 , District 3, District 4. Here’s why it’s important.)

District 5 – the Cliffs at Ocean Beach

The fifth district within OB is the smallest district geographically, but because it hugs the gorgeous Sunset Cliffs, it has some of the most stunning views of sunsets, the coast, the surf, and provides an aura of solitude at those cliffs.

Editor: The San Diego City Council just passed new zoning rules allowing for medical marijuana dispensaries to legally open throughout the City. The new plan only lets about 4 dispensaries for each of the city council districts.

One of the zoning rules is that the dispensaries cannot be within 1000 feet of each other – or schools, playgrounds, etc. This will mean that one of OB’s pot dispensaries on Voltaire Street will need to move as they are definitely within that limit currently.

by Dan Bacher / Daily Kos

Apparently responding to recent articles written by Adam Scow of Food and Water Watch and others about the insanity of using water for fracking during an unprecedented drought, the oil industry has fired back with its standard response claiming that the oil industry uses insignificant amounts of water for fracking and is going out of its way to conserve and recycle the water it uses.

Don’t expect a major turnaround from the GOP on cannabis, just electoral pain across America.

By CJ Werleman / AlterNet

As the movement to expand access to marijuana grows across the country, the Republican Party, with the exception of its kooky libertarian wing, has a bad case of reefer madness. Gov. Rick Perry, who’s no stranger to moments of mental madness, equated marijuana use to murder, while Gov. Chris Christie has more or less said he’d prefer dead kids to stoned kids. During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney promised to “fight tooth and nail” against pro-marijuana legalization.

By Jim Miller

In my first novel, Drift, there is a passage where the main character, Joe, is driving through City Heights pondering the poetry of the streets.

He notes the “funky majesty” of a store front church sandwiched between a pharmacy and a liquor store and revels in the cacophony of signs in Vietnamese, Spanish, English, and more while he loses himself in the street life passing by as “everything bled together seamlessly in the twilight and became part of the mystic fabric of impending night.”

Editor: As we continue in our series looking at the different districts within the Ocean Beach Planning Area, today we settle in District 4 – the Hub of OB. (Here’s a look at District 1, District 2 and District 3. Here’s why it’s important.)

District 4 – The Center of the Village – the Hub of OB

It’s easy to see why District 4 is indeed the center and hub of the community of Ocean Beach. Just look at a map and you’ll see that the business district and the main beach are both in this district.

Downtown OB – the 3 commercial blocks of Newport Avenue and the adjacent side streets – is certainly the center of the community, no matter how you measure it. Traffic, pedestrians, events, happenings, music, food – and of course drink – it all happens right there.

Full Board to Take Up Project on March 5th

Last night, Feb. 19th, the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board met to check out a project proposed at 4766 Brighton Avenue. And after extensive questions and comments by board members, the applicant and audience members, the reviewers voted to send the project to the full board without approving or denying it. Without making a decision on the controversial project, they punted it to next month – entirely in their right to do so.

The full board next meets on Wednesday, March 5th. Whereupon, the applicant – Yale Jallos – will presumably return with promised changes to the design of the buildings and their placement.

Jallos is proposing to …

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press

You kibitz with the homeless in your campaign ads. Now that you’re Mayor Kevin Faulconer, are you really going to do anything about it? Or are you going to continue to procrastinate. Other cities are ending homelessness from Phoenix to Salt Lake City to Nashville.

You have the model to follow. It’s a no-brainer. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just follow their successful models. You don’t have to continue to study the problem in order to address it ten years from now.

By Will Falk / San Diego Free Press

What do you see when you look out across San Diego and see the San Salvador being reconstructed?

Do you see the first wave of wave upon wave of white settlers who systematically dispossessed California’s indigenous people of their lands?

Do you see the beginnings of a process that reduced the indigenous population of California from 250,000 in 1800 to less than 20,000 in the matter of a century?

Do you see the face of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo grinning maniacally back at you?

By Jim Miller

Nobody thought this was going to be easy.

Back in July, at the height of the Filner debacle, I predicted a dire outcome, noting that “in a recall or special election in an off year, the electorate is guaranteed to be more conservative and definitely not favorable” for a progressive replacing Bob Filner because, “Faulconer would have a huge fundraising advantage garnering support from all the usual suspects downtown and benefit from an energized base geared up to hand it to the liberals, unions, minorities, and other foul ‘special interest groups’ that they’ll blame for bringing us the evil that was Bob Filner. With the Democrats dispirited, humiliated and divided, it might not even be much of a fight.”

As it turned out, David Alvarez stepped up and offered progressives hope, and the labor movement surprised everyone by actually being able to raise more money than the Faulconer forces. Sadly, on Tuesday, many of us were crying in our beer instead.

By Ernie McCray

There are moments when I want to sing out loud, “I’m Black and I’m Proud” and just get up and dance in my joy, doing the do like James Brown used to get us to.

I felt like that the other day as I listened to Harold K. Brown, a hero of mine, reminisce about when he and other San Diego activists marched and chanted and sat-in and demanded an end to the practices that various organizations and companies utilized, in town, to keep folks like me down.

By Jim Miller

San Diego is on the national stage again.

As the final week of the dead heat mayoral showdown unfolded, Politico reported on “the battle for San Diego,” the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters pondered whether the race would be a harbinger of things to come in California politics, and the New York Times covered “a battle of ideology in a city unaccustomed to that sort of election,” astutely noting, as I did here at the San Diego Free Press during the primary, that this contest is “a test of whether yet another big-city Democrat can be elected by riding a wave of populism, much as Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York did last fall.”

And that test is happening because last November David Alvarez defied the pundits and political insiders and beat the prohibitive favorite, Nathan Fletcher, in the race to face Kevin Faulconer in the run-off to be San Diego’s next mayor. This was a seminal moment for San Diego—perhaps the biggest political upset in the history of the city.