Category: History

Board Chair Disallows Any Discussion on Kodiak or on Changing Zoning in Ebers – Point Loma Ave Area

Finally, after a 12 year process, the community plan for Ocean Beach has been officially “updated” by a unanimous vote by the OB Planning Board. The vote occurred at a Special Meeting called just to deal with the plan update, held on Wed., December 11th in the usual meeting hall at the OB Rec Center.

Through a long and often tedious process, the Board went over dozens of proposed changes to the update by residents and Board members alike with outlining the recommendations of the sub-committee, …

The organizers of this year’s OB Holiday Parade, the OB Town Council, have just announced the winners in each of the parade’s categories – and this year was the 34th parade.

And here they are – from a press release from the OBTC:

By Matt Pearce / LA Times / December 11, 2013

Although the jobless rate is at its lowest level in five years and the stock market has surpassed its pre-recession high, the economic gains have not reached many poor urban residents, and 2014 could be even worse, a new survey said Wednesday.

Homelessness and hunger have increased and are expected to keep rising in many cities next year, according to the latest U.S. Conference of Mayors survey of 25 large and midsized metro areas.

Last year’s national poverty rate of 15% is still near the Great Recession’s high of 15.1%, according to U.S. Census figures.

By Ellen Brown / EllenBrown.com

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. ”Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

Profits Before Populations

According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.

OCEAN BEACH PLANNING BOARD

PUBLIC NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

Wednesday, December 11, 2013 6:00 p.m.

Ocean Beach Recreation Center – 4726 Santa Monica Ave., Ocean Beach 92107

A special meeting of the Ocean Beach Planning Board has been called for this Wednesday, Dec. 11th, in order to have a final vote on the OB Community Plan Update Draft.

The meeting will be in the usual meeting room at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue, at 6pm sharp.

There is only one item on the agenda, “to consider changes to the OB Community Plan as a result of community input and to consider approval of the OB Community Plan.”

Last night at their annual Christmas Toy live auction, the Ocean Beach Town Council raised at least $5,000. That’s an unofficial figure, arrived at last night at the end of the proceedings at the Sunshine Company bar, provided to an inebriated OB Rag staffmember by Steve Grosch.

With such auctioneers as Mike James, New York Mike, Ed Decker and

On Wednesday, Dec. 4, a hearing by an officer of the San Diego Planning Commission ruled that the City does not have to remove the so-called police trailer from the parking lot at the OB Pier.

The hearing was held to make a judgement on whether the City of San Diego had to comply with a violation that the California Coastal Commission slapped on the trailer and its owners back in July of this year. The police trailer is owned by the City and supported by the OB Mainstreet Association as a deterrent to drug dealing and other anti-social behavior. Others call it an eyesore and an unnecessary structure that takes away parking and blocks view.

Some residents and merchants in OB have been split on this issue of the police trailer since at least all of this century.

By Thor Kamban Biberman / The Daily Transcript /November 27, 2013

A proposal for three hotels totaling 650 rooms at Liberty Station, where a single Nickelodeon hotel had been planned before the recession, is scheduled to be heard by the California Coastal Commission on Dec. 12 in San Francisco.

Plans currently call for a 252-room, all-suites hotel; a 215 room, residence-style hotel with kitchenettes; and a 183-room hotel with a mix of standard rooms and suites. A total of 701 parking spaces would serve the hotels.

Editor: There are changes afoot in north-west OB, particularly at the corner of Abbott and Voltaire. Here is Matthew Wood’s latest report.

OB Rag Confirms Pat’s Liquor Up for Sale

By Matthew Wood

The long-vacant lot at the southeast corner of Voltaire and Abbott Streets has just been recently sold, which may spark a domino effect of land sales on that corner.

Ray Adams, of Cassidy Turley Commercial Real Estate, confirmed the two lots had been sold for $635,000. The lots are 2,500 square feet each – 5,000 square feet total – and are zoned for residential housing. The Keen Family Trust was the seller.

By Ernie McCray

I like facebook. For me it’s been a nice way to get snippets, sometimes daily, of what’s going on in the lives of both new and old friends: students of mine from over time, some of my children and grandchildren, ex-colleagues, fellow actors and writers and activists – interesting people all.

Occasionally one of them will suggest a game for me to play and I usually don’t take part in such online activities because it’s too easy to spend too much time on social media without the temptation of getting involved in diversionary attractions of any kind.

But lately …

By Ernie McCray

On November 22, 1963, I was a twenty-five year old sixth grade teacher enjoying my second year serving students at Perry Elementary. Before recess that day we had gotten the news that the president was shot.

The radio in our classroom verified what we had heard with the words “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is dead.”

By Frank Gormlie

Fifty years ago this Friday, the 22nd of November, I walked out of my English class at Point Loma High School and full of disgust threw my brown bag full of lunch away in a trash can. I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t bare to think ab0ut eating – we had just heard that the President had been shot by someone from an overpass while he was riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

Classes were cancelled and we all went home, …