OB Rag

By Lester Black / SFGATE / April 7, 2023

California’s legal pot market has lost hundreds of pot farms a month as farmers opt to quit the legal market. And signs indicate the industry is only continuing to shrink.

The state has lost 1,766 cultivation licenses since the beginning of last year, according to data reported by the California Department of Cannabis Control and the Cannabis Business Times. Low wholesale prices and high taxes have made it almost impossible for operators to run a profitable small business, pot industry insiders say.

By Geoff Page

Writing this account of the Ocean Beach Planning Board’s March 2023 elections as certified by the Board Wednesday, April 5th, feels like writing an obituary, for several reasons. The news just is not good for the original San Diego community planning board.

What is happening may well be the result of the Community Planning Group “reforms” the city adopted last September to put an end to community input on land use.

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / April 6, 2023

A Point Loma Nazarene University dean was fired three weeks ago, allegedly for siding with a colleague who lost her job at the church-affiliated school for backing LGBTQ rights.

The dean, Mark Maddix, has hired San Diego attorney Josh Gruenberg to deal with the school. According to Lauren Cazares, founder of Loma LGBTQIA, PLNU Provost Kerry Fulcher fired Maddix, dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry.

Every issue of the weekly online Peninsula News has a tribute to the “Mean Green Team,” a group of volunteers who clean, prune, trim, pull, cut and chop their way across Point Loma in dealing with overgrown parcels of public land. Here’s their latest:

The LUMINOSITY committee’s effort to replace the annual Fourth of July Fireworks with a drone show and Festival of Light is moving forward.

With the Drone Show now secured, the committee has announced an Artist Open Call for Proposals. Artists are requested to submit proposals for installations that will be featured at various locations within Ocean Beach during the Independence Day celebration. Details can be found on the LUMINOSITY website. The deadline for submissions has recently been extended indefinitely.

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Thousands of miles away, his death changed San Diego media forever.

Many San Diegans don’t know the connections between citizen journalism in San Diego and King’s death. But they exist – ….

Five days after King’s death hundreds of students and some faculty at UC San Diego met in a protest meeting decided to form various committees or collectives and one group of students and grad students wanted to move off campus and publish a newspaper.

Originally posted April 13, 2021.

By Geoff Page

After three years of trying to obtain a copy, the city finally coughed up the engineering report on the Ocean Beach Pier.  As expected, the pier is in real trouble. The OCEAN BEACH FISHING PIER Draft Evaluation Report, dated September 3, 2019, was not shared with the public by former Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

The current District 2 councilmember Jen Campbell has not shared it either. This report explains why the city is closing the pier every time the surf is even head high.

by Ernie McCray

Wow!
Somebody
finally
indicted
a man
who can’t open his mouth
without committing
a major crime,
after a lifetime of thuggery
of all kinds,
and one of his attorneys
is talking about
how we
should be
bothered by

By Joshua Emerson Smith / San Diego Union-Tribune / April 4, 2023

Elected leaders celebrated Tuesday the replacement of a 70-year-old bridge spanning the San Diego River between Ocean Beach and Mission Bay — the largest such project in the city’s history. The dual-structure expanse now has three lanes in each direction and includes bicycle and pedestrian paths.

The newly completed $148 million Mission Bay Drive Bridge near SeaWorld was more than four years in the making and included $80 million from President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.

The OB Planning Board meets tonight, Wednesday, April 5, at 6 pm — and they’re back at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica Ave.

Much of tonight’s agenda is focused on important internal board matters, like certifying the results of the March board election, electing a chair, vice-chair, treasurer and secretary, and appointing members to the 3 standing committees (Project Review – the vice-chair usually chairs this, Transportation and Parks).

An alert member of the OB Planning Board, Tracy DeZenzo, sent us these photos of “something happening at Abbott and Muir.”

The large, empty lot at the southwest corner of the intersection has been vacate for decades. Since 2015, developers who wanted to build on the lot have appeared in front of the OBPB with various plans to harness those wild weeds. And one set of plans became very controversial and was continually rejected by the Board.

But we have not seen the new plans and can only speculate at this point. Perhaps they’re the old plans now that the “rules” have been loosened up. Come inside for background to the controversial project:

SanDiegoVille, an online site, has reported that a new pizza restaurant will be replacing Mr. Moto Pizza House at 1929 Cable Street.

The new eatery will be The Shop Pizza + Wine, a restaurant concept specializing in West Coast deep dish pizza. Brothers Brett & Cole Herring are now