Category: San Diego

Hundreds of local surfers and ocean enthusiasts this weekend plan to paddle around the Ocean Beach Pier to raise awareness about pollution along San Diego County’s coastline.

The 19th annual Paddle for Clean Water Festival, expected to draw more than 1,000 people using everything from surfboards and bodyboards to kayaks and outrigger canoes, begins at 9 a.m. Sunday.

Saturday the 4th of September, a bunch of OB Ragsters and friends jumped the rails. Eight of us met at the Old Town Trolley Station around 10am with a map to take the entire loop east to Santee and then back again.

Most of us had never traveled so far on San Diego’s MTS (Metropolitan Transit System), and many of us had to buy a $5 day pass, so that we could ride for hours. A good deal.

The plan was to board the trolley at the Old Town station, go east all the way to Santee on the Green Line, back up, and change lines and head south to Grossmont, La Mesa and all the way to downtown on the Orange Line.

By Center for Policy Initiatives

Study shows 229,000 households in the red, including many with full-time jobs

Almost a third of working-age households in San Diego County have incomes below what they need to meet basic living expenses. Half of those struggling households include someone with a full-time job.

About the Downtown San Diego Registry Week

The Downtown Partnership’s Board of Directors and its Social Issues Committee have teamed up with the nationally renowned organization Common Ground and its 100,000 Homes Campaign to administer a survey and create a by-name registry of everyone experiencing homelessness on the streets downtown. Local partners in this effort include the United Way, the San Diego Housing Commission, the Centre City Development Corporation and several other organizations. The registry data is analyzed and broken down into sub-populations (veterans, medically fragile, seniors, youth) and then prioritized, matching those in the greatest need to housing.

If you’ve spent any length of time in an urban community in the U.S., I’m sure you’ve seen the ads on public transportation or heard the television commercials from schools where you can train to be a medical assistant or a computer technician. But before you or someone you know signs up for a “promising career” at one of those for-profit colleges, take heed!

For-profit colleges have been around for years. The University of Phoenix, …

by Dylan Mann / Voice of San Diego / Originally posted August 25, 2010

You see them in the medians at intersections and at the bottom of freeway off-ramps. Suntanned and weary in camouflage pants, they hold magic-markered signs announcing: “HOMELESS VET — ANYTHING HELPS — GOD BLESS.” And you feel empathy for them, don’t you? No matter what you think of our nation’s military campaigns, it’s undeniable that here before you is a person that once served our country, but now he sleeps outside and isn’t sure when he’ll eat next.

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. — Local Rep. Brian Bilbray is counting on his tough stand on illegal immigration to earn him another term in Congress, but some of his detractors said he will do anything to win, including working with an alleged hate group to push his anti-immigration agenda.

The 10News I-Team learned Bilbray is on the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) board of advisors, spent three years as a lobbyist for the group where he earned $300,000 and has accepted campaign contributions from FAIR political action committees.

April 2014 – Editor’s Note: In light of the recent OB Town Council meeting that ended up focusing on the homeless, we wanted to repost a report of a Town Meeting on Homelessness – on August 24, 2010!

The second in a series of Community Forums on the homeless and homelessness in Ocean Beach was held last night, Tuesday, August 24th. The First Baptist Church on the corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd and Santa Monica had opened their doors to the neighborhood, offering pastries, juices, coffee, etc. The event was organized by the OB Inter-Faith Community – a grouping of about a half dozen local churches.

About sixty people crowded into the assembly hall. After some brief intros by Jack Hamlin, we were directed to choose one of four areas to meet over – public facilities, community, government, and activities.

by Pat Flannery / Blog of San Diego

This is the dirty Agreement that is spawning multiple lies about the Embarcadero Oval Park. The fact is that a Panamanian company, the Carnival Corporation, advanced the Port District $12 million at 4.5% interest to construct two home ports, one on B. Street Pier and one on Broadway Pier. The sole source of funds for repayment of this loan, which must be repaid in full by April 30, 2015, shall be a Special Facility Fee charged to each passenger while Carnival branded vessels will receive preferential berthing rights.

Originally posted on Aug. 20, 2010.

by Annie Lane / August 20, 2010

Meet Jacob Magness, a native San Diegan who’s spent the last 13 years saving lives in Ocean Beach.
As one of OB’s permanent lifeguards, Magness, 32, is no stranger to the ocean or making rescues. In fact, he’s been in or near the water for the last 24 years.

Editor: There’s a new ‘bad boy’ in town, and he’s not a bum or a homeless person. He … or she … is the person who grabs free electricity from the Newport Avenue light poles. The “new” U-T (Union-Tribune) felt this story still had legs and quotes our own Denny Knox, CEO of the OB Mainstreet Assoc., and Jim Musgrove, head of the OB Town Council. Go to it.
________________
City street crews are looking to curb the number of people in Ocean Beach who siphon electricity from outlets on street lamps to power everything from cell phones to recreational vehicles.

The San Diego Streets Division is awaiting another shipment of tamper-proof utility covers that restrict access to electrical sockets on a three-block stretch of Newport Avenue ….

By Rocky Neptun

“Mommie, I’m hungry,” the little girl cried as she stood shivering in the cold wind, waiting for food. The image has never left me…and now that I am semi-retired I want to be part of an effort making sure no more children starve on San Diego city streets.

I want to help buy a catering truck. A fellow member of the San Diego Renters Union, who was once homeless, has gotten a modest settlement and has agreed to match whatever the Renters Union can raise toward buying a food truck to feed the homeless. As someone who spent their teen years on the streets of New York City, I learned very early, as I camped under a hedge at New York University, that whatever didn’t fit in a back-pack was useless. I had no possessions, so possessions did not possess me. But I did know hunger and, often, what crimes against society – and oneself – it took to obtain money for food.