Category: Satire

By Joe Mathews / JMathews@SCNG.com SD U-T / September 26, 2024

Lock up your tents, California! Toss out your old camping gear! Hide your pillows and blankets where the cops will never find them!

Because the people who run California have finally seen clearly that the greatest scourge in today’s Golden State is not climate change and not crime, not COVID and not corruption, not the rising cost of living nor grinding poverty.

No, what most threatens our way of life is people who camp.

Note: On June 3, Circulate San Diego moved its offices to an upscale high rise that, unlike their previous location, has reserved parking. The following document was purportedly found among the empty Starbucks cups and Postmates debris at their prior address.

Herewith are the common terms with their insider meanings that every YIMBY must know. They are not just received wisdom, but also rote rhetorical devices to denude meaning and nuance from any debate and appear more knowledgeable than our opponents.

ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANT: A state in human history that has only ever been achieved in short bursts as a result of social cooperation and environmental grace; the promise offered by every developer.

ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT (ADU): A granny flat, with four stories and seven other units having zero setbacks or parking.

ADAPTIVE REUSE: The ecologically superior repurposing of existing structures that are less suited for their original use than as alternatives, such as converting shopping malls and offices to housing. Not as enriching for every segment of the construction industrial complex as new development, and so never to be recommended beyond boutique renovations of quaint Victorian homes for law offices.

ALL HOUSING MATTERS: An appropriation of the racist “All lives matter” retort to the Black Lives Matter movement. (Since a lot of people started realizing that, we try not to use it in public much anymore.)

BICYCLING, BIKING: The most virtuous form of transportation, far more honored in breach than in practice; only used by YIMBYs in the context of performative or physical exercise. The Ivermectin offered to solve every lack of actually affordable housing.

The Callen Report

By Kate Callen

1. Are you surprised that so many of your 2020 supporters are sitting out your 2024 campaign?
2. Do you understand why the picture of you perched on a golden throne has exposed you to ridicule?
3. Is it true you’ve already set the record for ribbon cuttings, proclamations, dedications, celebrations, and other “victory lap” photo ops by a San Diego mayor in a single term?
4. When you cut the ribbon at the 2022 opening of North Park’s “climate action” 30th Street bike lanes, were you driven to and from the event in your city-issued gas-guzzling SUV?

In some great satirical news, UC San Diego is offering space for on-campus housing during Comic-Con International, held in San Diego this year from July 25 through July 28.

Colleen Kollar Smith, the executive director of UCSD’s Campus Performances and Events Office, announced that the university will make available dozens of tents — slightly used — that it has for use during the event in downtown San Diego.

The tents were collected during an episode on campus about a month ago. Some tents have slight tear and some have a slight smell of teargas (these are from UCLA).

It’s no secret that ground squirrels have overrun the grounds at Liberty Station. The growing population of ground squirrels have been seen running around and also taking over the San Diego waterfront over the last few weeks.

A spokesperson for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department said staff are keeping “an eye on all areas of Liberty Station park space that fall under the City of San Diego’s jurisdiction” for population growth of the ground squirrels.

Yet, Mayor Gloria’s team — with an eye on the upcoming election — has recommended that the squirrels be trapped and placed in a warehouse near the airport. Rachel Laing, Gloria’s PR person, claims a 1,000 squirrels could be housed in a warehouse Team Gloria has identified near freeways and away from residential areas.

WHDSF stands for “Wildfires, Heatwaves, Droughts, Storms, and Floods,” and is a handy way to remember the range of catastrophic change we’re going through.

By David Helvarg / Common Dreams / Dec. 17, 2023

If people can remember socially important acronyms like LGBTQ + and an older generation can’t get toxic advertising acronyms like LSMFT out of their brains (BTW—it stands for “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”) we might all want to start remembering WHDSF whenever the issue of climate change comes up.

WHDSF stands for “Wildfires, Heatwaves, Droughts, Storms, and Floods,”

When the city of San Diego enforced its ban on homeless encampments, neighboring cities like Chula Vista experienced an influx of unhoused people.

Sebastian Martinez, the executive director of a Chula Vista-based nonprofit that provides homeless services for the South Bay, told 7SanDiego:

“We’ve already seen, even in the weeks leading up to the actual announcement of San Diego’s camping ban, a huge influx of folks, folks that aren’t from Chula Vista, National City or IB.”

And now Chula Vista, the county’s second-largest city, is considering its own homeless camping ban.

By Frank Gormlie

Indeed, if La Jolla can secede from the City of San Diego, why can’t the Peninsula? The Peninsula — made up of the communities of Point Loma, Ocean Beach and the Midway District — could be its own city, its own municipality.

First, to answer my own question, La Jolla hasn’t seceded — yet — from San Diego, although there’s been countless efforts to do so since the 1950s.

By David Helvarg / MongaBay / April 12, 2023

Today I’m a waterlogged Californian, but soon I’ll be baked dry as a bone. The intensity of extreme drought and rainfall has “sharply” increased over the past 20 years, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Water.

Next July – ‘Hey kids, I’m putting on my Dune vapor recovery suit, is there anything you want from the abandoned gas station?’