Category: History

Editor: The debate continues. Here, Geoff Page – former chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board – responds to Maxx Stalhim’s “Everything You Wanted to Know About the OB Community Plan Update …”. Stalheim is a senior planner with the City of San Diego and was instrumental in developing the Draft plan in its final years.

By Geoff Page

I hope everyone with an interest in this subject matter reads [the] piece by Maxx Stalheim, carefully. It is very much the same as what I originally criticized. Parts of this statement are definitely worrisome.

The first part I found disturbing began with the question “What is different about the new plan?” Stalheim wrote that this is a new document and “it represents a “no change” update.” Somehow, this word choice seems contradictory to me. It sounded like doublespeak. Stalheim stated that “the Neighborhood Commercial Designation for the Voltaire Street and Pt. Loma Avenue districts will be replaced with a Community Commercial Designation” without bothering to provide a modicum of definitions for these terms.

Please join us:

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents:

WONDERLAND – 100 YEARS CELEBRATION!

Featuring Pat James & Jonnie Wilson

Thurs., June 20 at 7PM

at P.L. United Methodist Church, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

We the People have now learned that all three branches of government have furtively conspired for seven years to violate our privacy—so, no, we don’t trust any of them.

By Jim Hightower / NationofChange / June 19, 2013

It’s back. The Patriot Act — that grotesque, ever-mutating, hydra-headed monstrosity from the Bush-Cheney Little Shop of Horrors — has risen again, this time with an added twist of Orwellian intrusiveness from the Obamacans.

Since 2006, Team Bush, and then Team Obama, have allowed the little-known, hugely powerful National Security Agency to run a daily dragnet through your and my phone calls — all on the hush-hush, of course, not informing us spyees. Now exposed, leaders of both parties are piously pointing to the Patriot Act, saying that it legalized this wholesale, everyday invasion of our privacy, so we shouldn’t be surprised, much less upset by NSA’s surreptitious peek-a-boo program.

The newly-released Draft of the Ocean Beach Community Plan Update is now available on the San Diego Planning Commission website.

Here is the link to the website of the San Diego Planning Commission. Here is the PDF version.

U-T Editorial Blasts Pacific Beach Group as “Spiteful” and Urges Filner and Goldsmith to Save OTL

With all the crises in the world and at home here, the editorial board at the U-T San Diego found it necessary today to wade into the brouhaha between “Over-The-Line” organizers and a social networking group out of Pacific Beach, called FreePB.org . The editorial called the PB group’s effort to hold an even with the exact same conditions that OTL is allowed by the City and police and threatening to go to court “a spiteful maneuver” and begged:

“This is not the kind of dispute that should ever end up in court. We urge Mayor Bob Filner and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith tdo work together to assure that the OTL is not derailed.”

Of course, this is the same Mayor Bob Filner who is vilified daily by the newspaper, its editorial board and political cartoonist. … More inside …

Here’s Doug Porter’s excellent take on the issue from yesterday’s column at the San Diego Free Press.

Lawsuit Seeks to Shut Down Over The Line’s Boozin Beach Tournament; Preferential Treatment Claimed

By Doug Porter

A non-profit group has filed suit against the City of San Diego, seeking to block approval of a special-event permit for the 60th Annual World Championship Over-The-Line Tournament (OTL), scheduled for two weekends in July.

Editor: The following rant is an unsolicited article by Don Sevrens on the issue of “vigilante stop signs in Point Loma”. For earlier posts on the issue, go here, here, here, and here .

By Don Sevrens

Ever wonder why there seems to be a stop sign every two blocks whether needed or not?

The San Diego City Council has a curious policy that allows uninformed community planning groups to overrule the city’s traffic experts and, with the concurrence of one district council member, order stop signs installed.

There are no standards for collecting signatures or even telling the neighborhood what is going on. Just get a couple friends together, ask some community planner to schedule a vote and – presto! – you have new stop signs up.

Editor: The following is another part of the debate over the new Draft OB Community Plan Update. This is by Maxx Stalheim, senior planner for the City of San Diego who was deeply involved in the rewrite of the OB Precise Plan. Stalheim has been making presentations around OB on the new Draft. The debate was kicked off by Geogg Page, who was responding to this report; Page was answered by Giovanni Ingolia. Stalheim writes his contribution in the form of questions and answers. The schedule for approval of the new Update can be found here.

By Maxx Stalheim, Senior Planner City of San Diego / Special to the OB Rag

What is a community plan?

A community plan is a blueprint for how the community will grow and develop over the next 20 years, or so. ….

Why is the Ocean Beach community plan being updated?

The City of San Diego adopted …

COME INSIDE

Juan Felipe Herrera shares stories and life lessons from his father.

Courtesty of UCTV

Let this moment be a educational one so let’s have the Debate that the President calls for

By Frank Gormlie

What a dastardly crazy last week and half it’s been.

Beginning Thursday, June 6th, with the Washington Post and the Guardian in London both running with the explosive news about the National Security Agency surveillance programs, we’ve been hit with daily revelations – that are still continuing every news cycle – that have created quiet a long list of whistle blower-delivered disclosures about what the government and the NSA are and have been doing to us – the American people.

Editor: In honor of Father’s Day, we run this tasteful ode to one father by Carlos Batara, a San Diego and Southern California immigration attorney and long-time supporter of the OB Rag.

By Carlos Batara

He never went home.

He left his native county at the age of 20 to find work. Born in an impoverished area of a poor country, he left home to earn money which he could send back to his mother and eight siblings.

He ventured through, and stayed briefly at, a few countries, eventually reaching the United States.

For the next 25 years, he crisscrossed California, Arizona, and Utah, moving from crop to crop before settling in San Diego where he worked as a dishwasher at one of the city’s most prestigious restaurants.

Editor: The debate over the newly-released Draft OB Community Plan Update continues. Here, Giovanni Ingolia, a current member of the OB Planning Board and Co-Chair of the Community Plan Update Subcommittee, responds to a post by Geoff Page, former chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board. Page was reacting to reports both at the OB Rag and SDNews.com about presentations on the new Draft Update by senior city planner Maxx Stalheim.

By Giovanni Ingolia

Mr. Page,

As someone who has been sitting on the OB Planning Board for 7 years, its Vice Chair for 3 years, the Chair for 2 years, and currently co-chair of the OB Plan Update Subcommittee ( along with Mindy Pellissier) I never understood why individuals like you always attacked city staff as the problem.

By Norma Damashek / San Diego Free Press

I took a mindful walk through downtown La Jolla this morning. It was my version of a meditative exercise that’s supposed to smooth your soul and clear your mind.

Here’s how it’s done: you put one foot in front of the other in the usual way of walking while you notice what’s around you.

First you notice. And then you let it go.

Notice…and let it go.

These are some of the things I noticed on my mindful walk: