Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
Boy, things you do when you’re seventeen.
Especially when you think you just about the coolest thing
the world has ever seen.
Know what I mean?
Now, I was cool at seventeen,
not to brag or anything,
but being a teenage male Negro
in 1955,
a dude had to be cool
just to stay alive;
That’s positively no jive….
The recent 2010 Census confirmed something that we have observed for a while now. Many of our middle-aged friends are seeing their college-aged kids moving back home. And it’s the economy. They can’t find work – or cheap housing – so they move back to their parents’. My own 22-year old daughter is living with her mom.
There I am as happy as I can be, at 58, posing in front of a camera at the 40th reunion of Tucson High’s Class of ’56.
It’s a cliche but time does fly, like a peregrine falcon diving steeply for its prey against the background of the sky, as in a few weeks I will be basking in the midst of an increasingly dwindling number of classmates for our 55th. Boy, they’re getting old – and vice-versa.
UPDATE: Medical Examiner’s Office has declared that Steve’s death was an accident caused by drowning. Also that he died around 1:41pm on August 31.
A local OBcian by the name of Steve Marquez- an OB regular at Lucy’s and the Tilted Stick – was found floating in Mission Bay near the Ingraham Street bridge yesterday, August 31st by police. His body was in a state of decomposition.
According to someone who knew him as a regular at these bars told us today that Steve had been missing for the last couple of days.
It’s Sunday, and you’re in line at Jungle Java in Ocean Beach, and can’t decide whether to have one of those bliss-filled vanilla lattes or a cup of ah-choo tea.
Or maybe you’re standing in front of your closet on Monday morning, running late for work, and you don’t know whether to dress up or down, as you know you’re going to be shredding files.
Citizens for Patient Rights and The Patient Care Association of California (PCACA), law enforcement, legal, clergy and MMJ patient representatives will present their reasons for supporting the repeal of San Ordinance No. O-20042.
WHEN: Monday, July 25, 2011, 2:00 p.m.,
WHERE: City Administration Building, Council Chambers – 12th Floor, 202 “C” Street, San Diego.
Yet it feels just like yesterday. And I still miss you like it was yesterday. But I’m getting better everyday. Now, I have to say, I still find myself shedding tears (tears that will be around forever, I’m thinking) but the deep intense bone and soul searing emotional pain that wore on me for so many months has faded away. I’m learning to be at ease with my sweet and precious memories of you, giving way to the poetry in the imagery that comes to me, like a click from your camera, to play on your photography.
A rally and vigil will be held on Thursday, July 21, 2011, at the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego in support of the hunger strikers in California prisons. The Hall of Justice is located at 220 W. Broadway San Diego, corner of Broadway and Front Street, and the vigil will go from 1pm till 8pm.
There has been much to do about the memorial benches stolen off the cliffs in Ocean Beach. And there should be – as their theft during broad daylight earlier this month is outrageous. The media has been all over the story of the missing memorial bench that the Cappellucci’s had for their son who passed away from cancer two years ago.
The other memorial bench stolen belonged to the family of George Story. Both benches were reportedly taken sometime between 7 and 8 a.m. on July 8th, by a large crane and placed on a flatbed truck, as witnesses have said. One person even took a photo of the truck. The City has denied taking the benches, and the police are investigating.
I spoke to George Story’s son, John – who lives in OB – , earlier today. And he’s upset.
I’ve found myself lately thinking of a man everybody, including me, called Mack. My dad. Just about the most laid back human being the world has ever had.
The man was always at ease, a man of simple tastes. I can see him in my mind, chomping on his almost ever present cheap cigar which chokes me even in my memory, sipping some whisky, and uttering that obligatory whispery “ahhh” that drinkers who like their liquor neat always sigh and he’s going about any one of his enterprises: playing solitaire, reading True Crime magazine or crossword puzzling – when he wasn’t playing the piano.
Funeral services have been set for James Cummins, 77, the Ocean Beach physicist killed July 8th when his car collided with an SUV driven by a 15-year-old traveling the wrong way. Cummins, known to some as “the hoarder” as he kept piles of newspapers and magazines in his 1979 Mercury, worked for SPAWAR for 54 years.
I have six kids I’m proud to call my own and this past Father’s Day, my 54th as a dad, I spent a few moments just thinking about them when I was alone.
Our journey as father and offspring began when I was but 18. My own life, in the scheme of things, seemed to have just begun as I welcomed Debbie, my very first one, into the world. What a darling little girl. She took that frightened teenager who was me and, ever so innately, and ever so gently, guided me with a demeanor of “Hey, I don’t know what I’m doing either – so let’s just go with whatever feels right.”
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