OB Rag

by Ernie McCray

Tina Turner.
Gone.
I first saw her on stage
around 1957
or ’58,
and it was love at first sight.
Couldn’t help myself,
if I tried with all my might.
Not with the way
she and the Ikettes
moved and grooved

From Neighbors for a Better San Diego – May 30, 2023

The Mayor’s Planning Department continues its push with the Housing Action Plan (HAP) 2.0, which includes the SB 10 opt-in. The next opportunity to push back against San Diego’s proposed SB 10 implementation is the Planning Commission meeting this Thursday, June 1st, 2023 at 9 AM.

By Megan Kitt / The Coronado Times / May 29, 2023

This year, Memorial Day kicked off a “summer of misery” – at least that’s how Laura Wilkinson Sinton, who is fed up with beach closures related to ongoing Tijuana sewage crisis, describes it.

“What do we want? Stop the poop!” chanted more than 50 people at a protest on Saturday. “When do we want it? Now!”

The protest was organized by Wilkinson Sinton and Marely Ramirez, who pulled it together in just three days after researching the extent of the sewage problem.

by Ernie McCray

I was moving
my old bones
to the music of San Diego’s
Hoover High School Mariachi Band
which put me in a deeply responsive mood
for what was next
that afternoon,
a premiere of
“A Chicano Love Story,”
a documentary
featuring Linda and Carlos LeGerrette,
two of Cesar Chavez’s
most valued right-hand
woman and man.

By Colleen O’Connor

Want some positive news with a great cast of characters?

It was all there in full, glorious color Sunday, May 29, with wonderful moments, and two distinct cultures sharing the sights and sounds of Point Loma’s Festa De Spiritus Sanctus and on full display during the parade route on Avenida del Portugal to St. Agnes Church in Point Loma

A 700-year old tradition that commemorates Portugal’s Queen St. Isable, who (during a famine) promised the Holy Spirit to give her crown to the Church, “if sent a miracle, so my people will be relieved of their hunger.”

Michael Mills has a reputation in Ocean Beach among our renter population. He owns over 300 rental units exclusively within OB, and is purchasing more.

These are all multi-family structures ranging from 2 to 37 units.

He is a convicted slumlord, and was forced by the court to turn over management of his rentals to a 3rd party. (For more background on Michael Mills, see this Rag article from 2016.)  Here’s a quote:

Mills owns a lot of property in Ocean Beach – many rental units. And he has a long history buying up properties, raising rents, and maintaining sub-standard living conditions.

By Geoff Page

The event noticed here in the OB Rag on Tuesday, May 23rd, titled the “OB Pier Update & Discussion” came off as advertised. It was sponsored by the Ocean Beach Town Council and held at the Point Loma/Hervey Branch Library. As noted in The Rag “(and there’s plenty of parking),” was accurate, but plenty went unoccupied.

The advance notice for this gathering was, unfortunately, not well done as evidenced by the attendance. There were 12 people at the live event and three more attending virtually. While the OBTC’s effort was well-intentioned, the result was a missed opportunity, not a total loss, but underwhelming.

There’s been a battle going on over the future of northeast Mission Bay for at least the last 7 years, but just recently in what the U-T described as “a powerful backlash this spring from tennis players, golfers, boating clubs, campers and supporters of youth sports,” this new push-back appears to be on the late side.

Folks in this backlash claim that “the city’s plan to replace some recreational areas with hundreds of acres of climate-friendly marshland threatens vital local institutions that have been part of San Diego’s civic fiber for more than 50 years.

It’s a sad but predictable truth, that the local planning boards of Point Loma — Ocean Beach, Peninsula and Midway — are faltering before our very eyes. And it’s all due to the city of San Diego’s neglect.

Take the following as prima facie evidence of this maddening trend.

Ocean Beach Planning Board

The OB Board has been struggling this past year in maintaining enough members to serve. At their May 3 monthly meeting, “there were only eight of ten board members attending for a board this is supposed to have 16 members,” as Rag reporter Geoff Page observed. Getting OBceans to turn out for their annual elections has also been a challenge over the last several years, not discounting the pandemic.

And despite a potentially controversial or contentious issue of planned roundabouts on Bacon Street on the agenda, Page reported, “There was only one person in the audience during the board meeting besides this writer and the District 2 representative.”

By Gary Warth / San Diego Union-Tribune / May 23, 2023

A divided county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to authorize up to $32 million in loans toward the city of San Diego’s potential purchase of four residential properties that could be used to house more than 300 homeless people.

The city’s Housing Commission is considering buying the properties with money from the state’s Project Homekey program, and the purchases are contingent on receiving the grants.

By Ernie McCray

Hey,
LAY THOSE PISTOLS DOWN, Ja!
Enough of
all that jive foolishness,
flashing guns on videos
as though you’re a gangster wannabe
or some kind of an OG.
If it’s attention you want
you’ve already got that,
it seems to me,
because on a basketball court
your fans eat up
your razzle and dazzle
and wizardry and artistry
with unadulterated glee.