Category: History

Working on behalf of The Corky McMillin Companies, a major national financial player called HFF (Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P.) was able to secure the amount of $43 Million in financing for the Liberty Station Marketplace.

Everyone on the Peninsula is familiar with the Liberty Station Marketplace – it’s where Trader Joe’s and Vons have markets. It’s also where Rock Church is located. Plus much more.

Folks who love what’s going on at Liberty Station – the former Naval Training Center – like to site all the amenities in the area. The development has won awards. But it also has controversy.

By John Lawrence

Saturday, Sept. 28, will go down in San Diego history as the day the much awaited central library opened in San Diego.

The opening ceremonies started at 11 a.m. and lasted for about an hour. All sorts of dignitaries were seated on the platform, and many of them spoke. The event was presided over by Mayor pro tem Todd Gloria.

Wednesday, October 2nd at 7pm at DG Wills Book Store
By Jim Miller

San Diego City Works Press is proud to announce the publication of The Encyclopedia of Rebels by local author and UCSD writing teacher, Mel Freilicher. The book plays with the intersections between history, fiction, memoir, fantasy, and mystery. As Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout puts it, “You could call this both an outrageous comedy and a credible look at the world we live in.”

Mel Freilicher will read from his new book this Wednesday, October 2nd, at 7 PM at D.G. Wills Book Store at 7461 Girard Ave in La Jolla as part of the San Diego City College International Book Fair.

For some, the Great Recession has been a good deal. Just look at this land speculator who in a year’s time, made over a cool half million dollars by flipping apartments in Ocean Beach.

John Douglas Dudek bought 8 units in the 4700 block of Point Loma Avenue in September 2012 for $1.85 million. He just sold those same units for $2,384,200. That’s over half a million bucks in one year. Nice going for somebody who can afford that.

Isn’t it great to watch as Establishment types roll in the dough, while the rest of us working stiffs have trouble even making our rent or mortgage payments?

The property that has now been sold twice within a year is located at 4746-4756 1/2 Point Loma Ave (assessor’s parcel 448-351-06). It’s a single-story courtyard apartment that includes 8 two-bedroom and one-bath units – which are small, each with 672 square feet. There’s also 8 garages off the alley.

Lack of Community Consensus Could Lead to Worse Problems

At their public monthly meeting – held last night, Sept. 25th – the Ocean Beach Town Council voted to “cancel” the July 4th marshmallow wars.

The Council board passed a resolution that called on the community to end the annual and traditional marshmallow fights held just after the fireworks display on the beach.

Council representative Dave Cieslak told the media:

“Over time the hope is that the marshmallow war starts to taper off and goes away and that people can enjoy the Fourth of 4th of July without worrying about having a marshmallow thrown at their head.”

As part of their resolution, the OBTC will ask the San Diego Police Department to enforce the city’s laws against littering and throwing harmful objects.

The council will also be asking local merchants not to sell marshmallows, marshmallow “guns”, and other items related to the tradition, such as T-shirts. The fireworks will continue.

However, within the pro’s and con’s of the board’s resolution, there are some issues and questions that are left unresolved, despite this vote by the board.

First, we applaud the council’s effort to take some leadership around this sticky issue, as there hasn’t been any leadership or sponsorship taken by neighborhood groups up to now – due to the “organic” nature of the tradition itself, and it has been absolutely a leadership-less yearly event.

By Paloma Esquivel / Los Angeles Times / September 21, 2013

For years, a stubborn divide between youth in Orange County’s beach communities and those who visit from the inland has been summed up in the term ‘909ers,’ a less-than-flattering reference to an Inland Empire area code that — in beach slang — has come to mean anybody east of the county line.

Its popularity has waxed and waned but resurfaced with a vengeance in the aftermath of the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach in July.

Editor: We thought a repost of this article originally posted on the San Diego Free Press March 19 this year would be appropriate.

by Kimberley Beatty

Starting in 1990, I was a federal agent with both the DEA and ATF. My first assignment was with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms at their Richmond, Virginia office. At that time Virginia was a major source for illegal gun trafficking to urban centers in the eastern United States.

Over an 18 month period, 1,627 guns were obtained from crime scenes in New York. 41% of those guns had been purchased in Virginia and 10% of those guns were traced to one store, the Virginia Police Equipment Company in Richmond. That gun shop was not far from the federal building where I worked.

By Joe Flynn

Odd isn’t it? The self professed “cheerleaders” for San Diego – the editors of the U-T San Diego – preview the grand opening of the new library with this article puffed up with a quote from San Diego’s Dr. No, Richard Rider, libertarian. I wanted to get the spelling right, but after reading his remarks no one will mistake him for a librarian.

Richard Rider, a local libertarian, called the new library “a monument to an era that is ending — a structure that in a few years will have little more utility value than a Pharaoh’s pyramid in Egypt. The only difference is that the library will have high operating costs — the pyramids need no such annual funding.”

–UT San Diego article “New library: Is this monument necessary?”

by Jim Miller

This last week marked the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a political happening that finally put the issue of economic inequality in the spotlight and started a national discussion about money, class, and political corruption. That movement was largely brought to us by young people, Millennials mostly, whose view of mainstream politics is justifiably jaded.

As Peter Beinart recently pointed out, “Compared to their Reagan-Clinton generation elders, Millennials are entering adulthood in an America where government provides much less economic security. And their economic experience in this newly deregulated America has been horrendous.”

And this experience has been made worse by bankrupt politics that pits what Beinart rightly characterizes as “a procapitalist, anti-bureaucratic Reaganized liberalism” that is “inclined toward market solutions” to everything against a radicalized “right wing populism”:

Filner was pushed. And yes, he jumped

by Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Editor: Here’s Part 1 and Part 2.

Here’s a quick reminder about our former Mayor: there is no dispute that Bob Filner’s interpersonal habits, short fuse, and juvenile impulse control in the presence of women were blatant failings. The problem is, these failings were embedded in a unique individual whose political agenda was like long-awaited manna to the voters who elected him.

Tension, arguments, and righteous proclamations have erupted during these past months among San Diegans (mostly Democrats) genuinely torn between condemning a “progressive” political leader for his personal defects and giving up their hopes for a new, more enlightened social and economic agenda for San Diego — a no-win dilemma.

But there’s much more to the story. Last week, in an effort to shed light on likely suspects in the political defenestration of just-elected and swiftly-deposed Bob Filner, we herded the San Diego “wolfpack” into one side of a large meeting room for some mug shots.

By Kelsey Lynore / The Tarot Nook

Each week, Kelsey throws a “What to do?” spread for each of the zodiac signs. The first card is shown and the other two… well, you’ll just have to infer them from the written forecasts. Mind the heads up and have a lovely week!

Rams

Prepare for a banner week, Aries. But know this: Your dreams won’t come true if you isolate yourself in your own mental bubble and fantasize about how great your life could be if only. You need to move out into the world and make it happen! Is it scary? Of course! Will it get your blood pumping? I sure hope so! But where you might have tried and failed in the past, you now stand a very good chance of succeeding. So, strap on your hiking boots, pack only those things that you want to carry with you into the future, and then move towards that future. As soon as you do move, you really, really will. Yee-haw!

It’s happened. The final design for the new Ocean Beach Veterans’ Memorial Plaza has been publicly unveiled.

Over the last week and a half, presentations of the new design have been made in front of both the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association and the OB Community Development Corporation (OBCDC) – the project’s sponsoring organization. And both groups gave green lights to the project that will replace the current memorial, one that has been worn down literally by salt air, sand, ocean water, foot traffic – not to mention marshmallows – .

Yet it may be years before the new memorial project itself is completely constructed.

The OB Veterans’ Plaza has also been in the news for months (for instance San Diego Newsroom ) because of a connection with the developer Sunroad and accusations of ‘pay to play’ monies given to the City, that former Mayor Filner wanted to go to the memorial. (It was mentioned in last weeks San Diego Reader cover story entitled “Did Sunroad pay to play?” )

Once built, the new plaza will have a final design that resulted from a process that involved two community workshops earlier this year and the creative input of the design consultant, and will be located next to the current reserved parking lot south of the main lifeguard station, butting up to Abbott Street. It will have a mosaic walkway from Abbott Street to a gathering plaza next to the sand, and includes four granite walls with the names of the honored vets. A crosswalk at Newport Avenue and Abbott Street is also being considered as part of the design.