OB Rag

This weekend’s 40th anniversary of the Adams Avenue Street Fair, a landmark for free music, crafts, food and drink, almost didn’t come off. Two weeks ago, it looked like the sponsoring organization, the Adams Avenue Business Association, would have to pull the plug on the annual festival.

It has been a trying time for the business group and its staff. Due to the pandemic, the 2020 event was cancelled. Then, again, in 2021. Scott Kessler, executive director of the Association, explained to the San Diego U-T:

By Mike James

In 1980, as president of the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association (formerly Merchants Association), I proposed that the organization sponsor the 4th of July fireworks off of the Ocean Beach pier. The fireworks became a community tradition until 2019 when the event was cancelled due to structural issues to the pier.

That same year in an O.B Rag article, I suggested the community begin exploring an alternative for the fireworks.

Members of local Kumeyaay tribes are understandably upset that the operators of the Lake Cuyamaca Recreation and Park District have recently added tipis as rental options in their campground.

The tipis are replicas of the traditional dwellings of Indigenous Plains communities and not of local native peoples, the Kumeyaay.

Emily Burgueno, a member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the tipis are out of place, that using them as rentals is cultural appropriation of Native American heritage, and they needed to be removed.

The San Diego Veterans For Peace, along with 16 other local environmental, social, and religious groups, will be again demonstrating at the Carroll Canyon Road overpass to the I-15, this Thursday, Sept 22nd between 4 and 6 PM, asking that the upcoming Miramar Air Show be cancelled, as an unnecessarily dangerous and environmental disaster. (Come inside for more.)

On Tuesday, September 20, the City of San Diego formally rescinded a 1942 resolution the city council had passed 80 years ago in support of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in prison camps during World War II.

City councilmembers made the rescission and called the camps and the council’s 1942 resolution supporting them racist, unjust and a form of hate.

If you thought the developers’ feeding frenzy around the Sports Arena was intense, wait until you see what happens when the Navy unleashes its request for proposals for its sprawling NAVWAR properties.

Sometime this fall, the Navy will issue what’s known as a request for qualifications (RfQ) for its area in the Midway District. That will be quickly followed by a request for proposals, which, as the Union-Tribune described, “will kickstart a real estate competition where almost anything goes.”

By Paul Webb / September 20, 2022

The thing that I keep coming back to in all this is the notion that the planning groups are somehow stifling the development community and blocking much needed housing development that will bring down the cost of housing in San Diego.

I will ignore for the moment the often asserted belief that more housing will result in lower prices and just focus on how much housing planning groups have blocked. I have served two full three-year terms and am in my current term that ends in March.

This Saturday, Sept. 24, is the OB Hardware Anniversary Party. Join the new owners –Joe and Jenae Kuchman — in their celebration at 4871 Newport Ave.

There will be giveaways, Live music, and a Kiddo craft project.

Saturday, September 24, 2022 – 12:45pm

Panel Discussion on Issue Main Event.
This November marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the 30-foot height limit, Prop D, which was voted into law by the people of San Diego in 1972.

And the Point Loma – OB Democrats are having a panel discussion on September 25 about Measure C — this November’s ballot measure which seeks to amend the People’s Ordinance to exclude the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan area,

By Geoff Page

Anyone not living in a cave these days recognizes that we – the citizens – are now in a parent-child relationship with the administration in this city of San Diego. And we are not the parent and we are to be seen and not heard.

There are stronger terms for this than parent-child, of course. But, that term seems to fit because it is how the administration sees it, and us. To that end, the city has just taken another big step toward silencing the children so it can do what is best for us all, without having to actually listen to us.