Category: Life Events

* Healthy Chinese Flame Tree Cut Down by City on Voltaire

* Newport Avenue to Be Repaved in June
* Roundabout Being Considered by City at West Pt Loma and Bacon
* Many Former Hippies Turn Out for Frank Gormlie’s Talk on “Hippies in OB”
* OB Tenants United Meeting
* Now OB Residents Can Order Their Booze Thru Delivery Service
* Update on Police Cameras – Signage Finalized, Still Month Away From Placement
* Oldest in the Country: the OB Kite Festival – May 14th
* OB Fire House to Have Major Rehab
* OB Library Expansion Could Be Caught in Catch-22 as City Insists on New Design Assessment
* City Budget Includes Gains for OB
Lifeguard Rescues for March

OB Planning Board Presented with Final Version of Plan, New City Planner

“This Changes Fundamental Things … About Surfing”

Kelly Slater is an 11-time world champion surfer, but he’s done something else no one else has – and that is to make great artificial waves in the middle of farmland. He posted a video of him riding waves from the machine and within a week, it had 9 million hits. Up to then, he’d been keeping his project a secret.

The LA Times sent a reporter out to find him and filed a report:

By Jeeni Criscenzo / San Diego Free Press

It doesn’t take the recently released Point in Time Count report to know that the number of unsheltered people in downtown San Diego is exploding.

Seeing every vacant lot encircled with blue tent and tarp encampments propped against chain-link fencing has ceased to evoke alarm. It’s now the norm.

The fact that we have become so accustomed to seeing human beings huddled in these makeshift shelters is a pathetic indictment of our city’s dismal failure to solve our housing problem.

The City Needs to Build and Own More Affordable Units

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

According to a recent Zillow report: “Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego are unaffordable for both renters and buyers. … Looking forward, the picture doesn’t look bright for renters.

Rents will likely keep rising at roughly their current pace for at least the next few years, which will lead to a continued affordability crunch unless wage growth significantly improves.”

Enter the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) whose job is to redress the balance of unaffordable rents to make it possible for San Diego to be inhabited by other than rich folks.

Initiative Has Enough Signatures to Appear on November Ballots

By Emily Gray Brosious / Extract Sun-Times / 05/04/2016

Adult Use of Marijuana Act powers forward in California.

The group leading efforts to legalize recreational marijuana for adults in California will announce Wednesday, May 4, that it has collected enough signatures to put its legalization initiative before voters on the November ballot, as reported by the Sacramento Bee.

The Adult Use of Marijuana Act has gathered more than 600,000 signatures, far exceeding the 350,000 needed. It has also received backing from billionaire Facebook co-founder Sean Parker and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, in addition to the support of many other marijuana policy reform groups.

The Act would establish a regulatory system for recreational cannabis, modeled after the state’s medical marijuana regulatory system that passed in 2015.

In Response to Nixon’s Invasion of Cambodia, American Campuses Exploded in Protest in May 1970

Today, May 4th, 2016, is the 46th anniversary of the infamous Kent State Massacre – where 4 students were shot to death by National Guardsmen during anti-Vietnam war protests on the Ohio campus.

Protests at Kent State were part of a wave of demonstrations that swept the country right after President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Ten days later, 2 Black students were shot to death by police during an anti-war protest at Jackson State.

* Explosion in Apartment in 4900 Block of Del Monte

* Midway Medical Cannabis Shop to Expand

* Helm’s Brewing to Open on Newport in Mid-May

* Surfrider San Diego’s 16th Annual Art Gala

* 9-1-1 Dispatchers and Cops Taken to Task for Missing Urgent Calls from OB

* Are Sand Crabs in Decline?

* Fund Raiser for Point Loma Shooting Victim

* Cop Involved in Fatal Midway Shooting Accidentally Discharges Weapon

* Pick-up Truck Flips on Canon Street

* Luxury Cinema to Open in Liberty Station

Ryan Boarman Has Reached Singapore – More Surgery Possible

According to a San Diego U-T article:

An ardent Ocean Beach surfer was bitten by a shark off the coast of Bali, Indonesia Monday morning, April 25 and managed to ride a wave into shore before passing out. 26-year-old Ryan Boarman was sitting on his board waiting for a wave when a shark estimated to be about 6 feet long swam up behind him and chomped onto his elbow. Boarman was either able to shake loose, or the shark let go, but he was losing blood fast.

Boarman was in excruciating pain, but ended up surfing a wave into shore. He was quoted as saying, ‘It was a good ride,’ and then passed out.”
See Update Inside

Originally published April 27, 2016

OB as the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego

By Frank Gormlie

In my many writings about Ocean Beach history – some of which I share below – I’ve always noted that in the late 1960s, OB became the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego. By 1967 – a year after the OB Pier had officially opened – it was already evident that Ocean Beach was morphing into the San Diego equivalent of that fabled and iconic San Francisco neighborhood synonymous with “hippie-ism”. If you were a hippie or a hippie-wannabe during this time somewhere in San Diego, you ended up in OB.

Of course, other factors contributed to the incubation in Ocean Beach of a community sympathetic and supportive of the new emerging counter-counter:

Has the City squirreled away millions of dollars in off-budget funds which could be used for affordable housing and housing for the homeless?

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

In the City of Palo Alto, if you make less than $250,000 a year, you’re eligible for a housing subsidy. The city council has voted to study a housing proposal that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

Here in San Diego, the situation is not much better as teachers, police and government workers cannot afford to live in the city they work in. So if middle class, college educated professionals can’t afford to live here, how can anyone else lower on the economic ladder afford to live here either? In particular, those on the bottom most rung, the homeless, can’t even afford a foot in the door.

* OB Pier Surf Classic on April 30th

* Meanwhile, Still Time for Art at Pier’s 50th Birthday Celebration

* Frank Gormlie to Speak on “Hippies in OB” – Sat., April 30th – at OB Library

* O.B. Reggae Band Remembers Patrolling Iran with New Single, “Black Line”

* Jessops Project Battles Point Loma Grassroots Group

AND MUCH MORE INSIDE ….

This is directed at the Creative OB and San Diego Arts Community:

According to Stu Schreiber, the sublease on the beautiful Ocean Beach Playhouse ends May 31st. Due to many personal challenges, he and his were really never able to get it off the ground as they had intended, and are now actively looking for serious contenders to purchase (the equipment and furnishings), the theatre, and start a new lease for the space with the landlords on June 1st.

If they do not find those people this month, they will need to begin the unfortunate process of dismantling on May 1st, Stu told the OB Rag.

Today- Saturday, April 16th, there will be a meeting held at the OB Playhouse from 4-6 pm …