OB Rag

The Ocean Beach Town Council will be hosting a Candidate Forum for OB Planning Board candidates and then during the same meeting, the Council will sponsor a public discussion on the homeless.

This logistically challenging event will be on February 24th, at the Town Council’s monthly meeting. It will be held at the Masonic Temple, located at 1711 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

GO INSIDE FOR ALL THE JUICY DETAILS

* Peace Rocker’s Peace Sign Taken Down for High Winds

* Point Loma High’s Baseball Field to Be Named for Pitching Champion and Local David Wells

* Point Loman Walt Bailey Remembered for His Volunteerism

* City to Repair Six Coastal Stairways – Three in Ocean Beach

* Stimulus Money Used to Hire Seattle Company to Dredge Mission Bay

By David DeGraw / AlterNet / February 17, 2010

The United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis — and it’s gotten even worse since.

As a record amount of US citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEO’s are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening, how did we get to this point?

by Patrick Finley / Arizona Daily Star / February 14, 2010

TUCSON – The crowd stood and cheered. Someone handed Ernie McCray the basketball.

When the Arizona Wildcats hosted Los Angeles State at Bear Down Gym on Feb. 6, 1960, there was no scoreboard to show how many points each player had scored. No public way to document the smashing of records and preconceptions and prejudice.

The 6-foot-6 senior from Tucson High School scored 46 points – a UA record to this day.

Afterward, his teammates went to a restaurant to celebrate. McCray didn’t join them – he knew he wouldn’t be served.

by Jordan Barnes

I could not have anticipated what I was to see, or the affect that our experience in Haiti would have on me.

My fiance Christene and I left from Ocean Beach to join ten others and 1,200 lbs of medicine and supplies that had been donated. This is only a fraction of the donations that “Children’s Hope” has received since the catastrophic quake, but such was our weight allotment, the rest will go down in subsequent trips.

My mother Leisa Faulkner began Children’s Hope, a non-profit/non-religious organization, in 2004 to help the desperate situation of the children of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Along with humanitarian aid, my mother has become very involved in the political situation there.

Recently, we asked our readers what they thought about the major construction projects listed by Mayor Jerry Sanders in his State of the City address, and what their priorities would be.

In our poll, we gave respondents choices of “a new central library,” “convention center expansion”, “a new city hall”, “a Chargers football stadium downtown,” plus “none of the above,” and also allowed readers to write in their own ideas.

Someone wrote in that they wanted to see a permenant homeless shelter – and guess what? That won. A third of our respondents went for that. 32%

Who is The Naked Swimmer?

On January 30th, a community at the brink found cause to boil over in protest to the increasing population of street kids. On this day in Ocean Beach, a very intoxicated man swam naked near the pier. He resisted arrest next to the seawall on Newport and Abbott, which is just about as public of a spot as OB offers.

However, the intoxicated man, who I have referred to as The Swimmer in a previous post, was not a street kid.

Stephen Morse is a clean-shaven, 6 foot 200 pound college student. The 19-year-old has a role in the student government at San Diego State. He is a recent transplant from the state of Washington, where he went to high school, and was on the local school football team.

Morse was charged with resisting arrest (penal code 148) and public intoxication (HS 11550). He was bailed out of jail straight away, and is awaiting his court date.

Angela from Santa Cruz is not semantically homeless. The 19-year-old has supportive parents, so much so that they pay her cell phone bill so that they can reach her on the road. Because, although Angela has a house that she can live in, the road is where she chooses to be. Angela is not homeless; she is traveling.

This bit of semantics is the true distinction between the permanent “bums” on Newport Avenue (most vocally represented by Boston James, www.bostonjames.com, the “first homeless man on the internet”), and the groups of transient youth known as the Kids. “Traveling” is the label that binds them together. They are without a home by choice.

The local beach and bay press paper, The Peninsula Beacon, has taken on the issue of the homeless youth crowding the sidewalks of Ocean Beach in a recent article by Kevin McKay. This is very commendable. Yet the article was written without the benefit of talking to any of the homeless youth.

Business leaders are quoted in the article, and they have important things to say, but there are no quotes from anyone who can be described as a member of this targeted group. To their credit, the OB Rag is mentioned and our web address cited.

by Kelly Bennett and Dagny Salas / Voice of San Diego

San Diego County’s low participation in the food stamps program stems from problems with the way the county operates, a study released February 5th by the Supportive Parents Information Network concludes from more than 170 interviews with low-income residents.

* DA Bonnie Dumanis Threatens Third Judge With Boycott

* Permanent Homeless Shelter On Hold

* San Diego’s Teenager Curfew Law Ruled Illegal

by Robert Allen

Mr Schillinger: We Are All OB Locals ! We all pay taxes and pay rents and support OB. We all have personal problems. To use this forum to air yours is a bad way to do business. You criticize my business ethics with no truth and only opinions without the facts.

You can claim the deep pocket business men are shutting down the little guy!