OB Rag

Residents of Uptown were supposed to go to the polls Tuesday, August 20, to elect new members to the Uptown Community Planning Group, which comprises Hillcrest, Middletown, the Medical Complex area, Mission Hills, University Heights and Bankers Hill. Others just went on their phones or desktop or laptop computers with the intent to vote virtually.

But something happened a long the way.

The voting system broke down — literally — the computers running the count screwed up and froze. And those running the show cancelled the election. One local resident called it “a fiasco.”
Many of those who stood in line were outraged.

By Mat Wahstrom / Times of San Diego / August 21, 2024

If you’ve been following local news, you may be aware that two hours Tuesday night, August 20, was the only time allowed for any of the 40,000 residents in Uptown to vote in person in the new Uptown Community Planning Group election.

This election was already unprecedented as UpCPG’s intent has always been to conduct it entirely online — without a paper trail. (Even those showing up to vote in person had to use a tablet to register their vote.)

What could go wrong? Quite simply, everything.

At the 75-minute mark, the election committee finally had to cancel in-person voting. They realized their software was double-counting votes and locked up when they tried to fix it.

This was after over 160 people had been in line at the start, with many leaving rather than continue to wait over an hour — as it had already been taking up to 15 minutes or more to process each voter.

By Patty Ducey-Brooks

After promoting an online voting system as the future of elections, the “Vibrant Uptown” group experienced a major flaw that shut down in-person voting on Tuesday, August 20.  Residents and business owners from the Uptown community who chose to vote in person were frustrated and upset to learn there was no backup voting system available.

Worse, they were asked to leave without casting their votes.

Those who witnessed and were impacted by the voting failure — approximately 100 Uptown residents — denounced the breakdown and the excuses offered by “Vibrant Uptown” in its attempt to minimize its failure to manage an effective voting system.

Vibrant Uptown released the following statement after the voting fiasco:

Tomorrow — Friday, August 23 — is the deadline for the OB Rag’s “Worst ADU in San Diego” contest. If you haven’t yet sent in the address of a local ADU eyesore, time’s running out.

This contest set out to convey how the modest “granny flat” concept has spawned grotesquely large buildings on small lots. Along the way, it opened a heated debate about the social and ethical aspects of building massive ADUs:

By Bruce Coughran and Eric Duvall / Pt Loma-OB Monthly / August 21, 2024

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I wonder whatever happened to the old Point Loma House hotel”?  No? Never even heard of it, you say?

How about those enormous and fantastic colored glass domes that used to sit on the very top of the ridge that we call Point Loma? Talk about a landmark! Those domes were spectacular, sparkling in the sun by day and illuminated at night.

They say that between the turn of the last century and the Second World War, any mariner approaching Point Loma from the Pacific would see those domes long before they would see the new (1891) Point Loma Light.  The domes were even indicated on all the navigational charts of the period.

By Tom York / Times of San Diego / August 22, 2024

There’s been lots of news about outside investors roiling the market for single-family homes in San Diego, snapping up an ever larger portion of properties that come to market. The trend especially focuses on two New York City private equity firms, Blackstone and BlackRock.

Well, now we have added evidence about private investor activity.

According to residential real estate web portal Refdin, investors were quite active in San Diego’s residential housing market this past spring.

Less than a half hour after Point Loma High let out for the day on Wednesday, August 21, gunshots rang out on Zola Street — about a block from the school. Two people were killed, a mother wounded and her son was arrested as the suspected shooter.

When police arrived, they found the wounded mother, who is in her 80s, in the front yard of her residence. She was taken to a hospital with “very serious” injuries.

Her 60-year old son was also in the yard and was arrested without incident.

Roll-up For Cannabis Equity

By Terrie Best

The year was 2010. For medical cannabis patients in California it was a time of raids, confusion and painful interruptions to cannabis access. Activists were very organized and engaged in fighting for patients in courts; showing up to raids and badgering San Diego district attorney Bonnie Dumanis to clarify the laws meant to protect sick and dying patients.  Dumanis would not stop her raids, she led a fierce fight and victimization against us. But she and other anti-cannabis DAs in California inadvertently mobilized an oppositional force that has political implications to this day.

Meanwhile in 2010 Los Angeles, Steve Cooley, their district attorney, was a complete disaster too. He had raided medical collectives and added support for implementing proposition 8 (anti equality) to his arsenal of hate. If you care to look up any of his “tough on crime” rhetoric in the form of his braying press conferences, they are likely still on the internet. BTW, where is Cooley now? Not on stage with the winners this week.

Then there was Kamala Harris, district attorney in San Francisco who came out early for marriage equality. She wasn’t horrible on cannabis and was tagged as a liberal during a time when Democratic DAs were being pulled to the right by the harmful drug war nonsense that almost broke us.

By Geoff Page

On Monday, August 19, Channel 5 Fox News did a story on, well, signs. A person might wonder why a news station would do a story about signs. Fox was not motivated by a tip about a fascinating, untold sign story. Fox was showing how this city’s administration works by doing the city’s bidding.

The story was about new signs the city posted on the pier. A little background first.

The Rag carried a piece on these signs July 31.

In that story, this writer related telling the lifeguards about the missing sign on the pier, warning surfers to stay 75 feet away from the pier, that had been there for decades. Not trusting the lackluster reaction from the local lifeguards, the following email was sent a week later, on August 8, to the lifeguard management.

by Ernie McCray

I’ll forever remember
Snoop Dogg
at the Olympics
in Paris,
images of him
that range
from being quietly playful
and downright hilarious,
at all times gregarious,
embracing the spirit of the games
as though it was the dawning of the
Age of Aquarius,
carrying the Olympic flame
like many a blunt
he’s set aflame;

The Callen Report

By Kate Callen

You may see Ocean Beach as a beloved coastal village with a timeless Main Street and a storied history.

Shawn DiMartile and Mike Tighe see it differently. To them, OB is a cash machine. And they intend to pull as much money out of it as possible.

OB has dealt with aggressive builders before. But the battle over the 4705 Point Loma Avenue project, which goes before the San Diego Planning Commission next Thursday, August 29, is particularly insidious because it has been fueled by Todd Gloria’s grab-it-and-sell-it land use policies.

DiMartile and Tighe are the founders of Takeoff Capital, the real estate investment firm behind the project. In a one-hour investor webinar available on Vimeo, they sang the praises of Gloria’s “Complete Communities” program, and they commodified the many charms of life in OB.

“The Point” will be a 3-story, 20-unit complex.