Category: Popular

By Nadin Abbott / East County Magazine / September 24, 2012

The mood was tense as people from multiple walks of life and political views filed into San Diego City Chambers. Among them was Republican Santee Councilman Jack Dale and Democrat David Secor, candidate for U.S. Congress for the 50th district. Both Dale and Secor came to oppose the Quail Brush gas-fired power plant.

So did Massada Disenhouse, activist for the Sierra Club and Martha Sullivan, a former California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) employee, and many others.

There were supporters of the plant as well, including Gary Salas, a member of the electrical trades. Also supporting the project was John Gibson, of Hamman Construction in El Cajon.

This planned peaked plant attracted people from multiple areas of the county, not just San Diego proper.

By Mercy Baron

Rocky’s Surf Shop on the corner of Abbott and Muir, in Ocean Beach, closed it’s doors September 15 after serving the surf community for an impressive 25 years. Owner, Doug Yates, was very forthcoming in my interview with him on the state of the surfing industry in Southern California today, and how it has affected his decision to close the doors to a surf shop destination.

Rocky’s was originally started in 1990 by original owner Robin Marion and was then bought by John Holly. Doug started as an employee about 12 years ago, and then bought it from John about 5 years ago in 2008.

Doug stated that in 2005, Clark Foam of Mission Viejo, the world’s largest supplier of surfboard blanks, went out of business, and they accounted for 80% of the blanks being made in the surf world. To fill that need, money poured into the industry with boards being made in China and Taiwan, which were made so cheaply, that it created a glut of boards.

This is the fourth and final part of my series on “What is the true birthday of OB and who is its true founder?” (Here are Parts One, Two, and Three.)

Besides J.M. DePuy and the partners Billy Carlson and Frank Higgins, there’s another historical character who walked across Ocean Beach’s stage, who had such an effect on the development of the community that some consider him the “true founder” of the village. And that is Col. David Charles Collier – who Collier Park up in northeast OB is named after.

Although Collier came later than our main contender for the title of the community’s “father” – William “Smiling Billy” Carlson, he had as much to do with what turned into our little town by the sea as anyone else. And perhaps more so.

“Charlie” Collier History

Ocean Beach and Col DC Collier first intersected in 1887, when young “Charlie” – then only 16 – bought one of Billy Carlson’s lots in Ocean Beach. The lot was close to the cliffs, over on Pacific – now Coronado Avenue – and Bacon Street. …

Among the 47% Who Pay No Income Taxes Is Mitt Romney Himself!

Mitt’s money that has not been funneled through offshore corporations linked to bank accounts in no tax jurisdictions has been taxed as capital gains, not income.

Mitt Romney dismissed 47% of the American people who don’t pay income tax as slackers and deadbeats. Thanks to a loophole Romney pays US taxes as “carried interest” which is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%. That figure would not only include Romney himself who pays no income tax, but also all those corporate persons (remember Romney said, “Corporations are people, my friend”) such as Exxon Mobil and GE who not only pay no income tax but get a generous rebate thanks to American taxpayers.

Here is a list of the top 10 corporate deadbeats and slackers (thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont):

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

Twitter [last Friday, Sept 14th] succumbed to pressure from a New York criminal court to turn over deleted tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester. This is why you should care.

By Andrew Couts / Digital Trends / Originally published September 14, 2012

Twitter gave in to a New York court subpoena requiring it to turn over more than three month’s worth of tweets posted by user Malcolm Harris, 23, who was arrested last September during an Occupy Wall Street Protest. The surrender of the tweets, which Harris deleted from his public profile, follows a months-long battled by Twitter to keep the information from landing in the hands of prosecutors.

The surrender of the tweets was the result of presiding New York State Supreme Court Judge Matthew Sciarrino’s threat to hold the company in contempt and impose a fine on Twitter if the tweets were not handed over by today. To assess the amount of the fine, Sciarrino demanded that Twitter disclose its earnings statements from the past two quarters — financial data that Twitter, as a privately-held company, does not want to be made public by the court.

Hillcrest Banners Favor Prop 37 On Robinson Street Overpass

By Nadin Abbott and Frank Gormlie

It was close to 4pm on the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street – Monday, September 17th – and the mood at the Canvas for a Cause headquarters in Hillcrest was expectant. As people started to arrive for the programed rally in favor of Proposition 37, Nadine Abbott had a chance to talk to Doctor Norrie Robbins of Women Occupy San Diego and a member of the singers Occapellas. Robbins is also Adjunct Professor at the SDSU Dept of Geological Sciences, and is retired from the United States Geological Service, DC office.

Robbins said: “I am worried about my food. I’m beginning to get weird allergies that do not run in my family.”

This is a continuation of my series, examining the timely issues dear to OBceans of “What’s OB’s True Birthday?” and “Who Is It’s True Founder?”

In Part One, a discussion was begun on the different theories on the birth dates for Ocean Beach – with the main one being that OB’s birthday stems from a land rush celebration hosted by developer William Carlson and his partner Frank J Higgins in 1887.

By Mercy Baron

Without a doubt, the gourmet food truck scene is one of the hottest trends rolling right now in the gastronomical world. Between the TV offerings of, The Great Food Truck Race on The Food Network, and Eat St on The Cooking Channel, to President Obama tweeting about his fave truck in D.C., (D.C. Empanadas) you just can’t get any more au courant with a hopefully, long lasting fad.

It all started just a short four years ago here on the West Coast, with the Kogi BBQ truck in Los Angeles. I remember reading about it when I still lived there and was hoping to catch up with it someday, but never did.

In the beginning of 2010, the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association (SoCalMFVA) was created, becoming the first organization started to protect the rights of gourmet food truck owners.

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press
I wrote a previous article in the San Diego Free Press about genetically modified (GMO) foods. One might ask, “What is the purpose of genetically modifying a food item.” Is it to enhance the flavor? Is it to make it more nutritious? Well, no, not really.

The sole purpose of modifying corn and soy products is to make them resistant to pesticides and herbicides. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy seeds grow into plants that will not be killed when Roundup is sprayed on the soy field which kills every other thing in the field EXCEPT the Roundup Ready soy plant.

It’s the week after Labor Day and the Carl DeMaio attack machine is in full force, with SuperPac-funded ads in the works designed to keep pounding away at Bob Filner while DeMaio furiously tries to repackage himself as someone palatable to moderate Democrats and Independents. This will involve things like lying to San Diegans about his environmental record, spending big money to woo Latino voters, and hoping that some local Democrats are terminally stupid enough to buy his “independent” populist reformer act. While I have written extensively about DeMaio’s right wing think tank pedigree, it never hurts to revive the historical record, particularly when we can count on the local news to fail on all counts in this regard.

A dozen community volunteers showed Saturday for the Green Store and OB Rag clean-up of the Gateway Project. We began about 7:45 and went till 10:30 or so.

Weeds, weeds, weeds. We hacked, shoveled, dug, pulled weeds by the hand, raked, sweated … and … we ensured we didn’t take or pull flowers and native plants. But there was a lot of dead stuff, some trash, but a lot of work was needed to make the place less of an eye-sore and more of an inviting place for OBceans. One guy came by and said he weekly toured the site and picked up trash.

By Kali Kat / Special to the OB Rag

With the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street just around the corner on September 17, and many other cities’ occupy anniversaries falling in the weeks just after, like Occupy San Diego’s one year anniversary on October 7, the question being begged is:

“What is the current state of the Occupy movement?” If you go down to the Civic Center or your local City Hall, are people still living there?

The Occupy movement, including Occupy San Diego (OSD), is still alive and well, but no, there are not people still living there – well not people flying the Occupy flag anyways.