OB Rag

By Frank Gormlie

In San Diego’s continuing saga over who gets to be the franchise holder for the city’s electric and gas utilities, it is staggeringly clear now that Mayor Todd Gloria really wants SDG&E to stay. Gloria is pushing the city to get on board the SDG&E train for a ride.

He and City Attorney Mara Elliott have concluded “multiple rounds” of negotiations with SDG&E, formed a tentative agreement, and he is beginning to talk with the councilmembers about a new contract. Gloria claims his new deal is “certainly an improvement over the existing franchise agreement….” That’s not saying much.

Nothing is for certain. Gloria needs a “super-majority” of votes from the Council, six of the nine members.

Susan and Pat James of Ocean Beach are being celebrated this year by SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) for maintaining the tradition of the Wisteria Cottage and Garden Party. It’s SOHO’s 38th annual People In Preservation Awards with an online award presentation. Pat and Susan will be celebrated during the online ceremony on Thursday, May 27, at 4pm, during National Preservation Month.

Here’s SOHO’s description:

On Niagara Avenue in Ocean Beach, you will find a charming turn-of-the-20th-century cottage that plays host each spring to abundant blooms of colorful purple wisteria vines.

Editordude: The following is an open letter to elected local representatives from Nicole Uneo, a well-known OBcean active in the village. The letter was originally published on OB Neighborhood Watch. Nicole encourages others to join her in writing our elected officials to help save the pier.

To Congressman Scott Peters, Assemblymember Chris Ward, Mayor Todd Gloria, and staff;

I write to you regarding the Ocean Beach Pier, which as you may know is the longest concrete pier on the West Coast. Due in part to sea level rise, coupled with large wave events from winter storms, the pier has sustained repeated damage and has been closed to the public on and off for several years.

A structural assessment report has recently come to light stating that the pier is at the end of it’s useful life, and must be either permanently closed, repaired, or rebuilt.

By Liz Ruskin / Alaska Public Media / May 19, 2021

The cost of lumber and other building materials is sky-high, and it’s even more expensive when shipped to small coastal communities in Alaska.

Patrick Simpson of Anchorage has an idea that might help. He wants to create artificial lumber from an abundant material no one wants: Plastic ocean debris.

Simpson, an engineer, began by considering the global blight of waste plastic in the marine environment. “As I thought about it, well, why can’t we convert it into something that locally could be usable?” Simpson said.

The EPA has given Patrick Simpson a $100,000 grant to develop his idea of a mobile plastic-waste recycler that could deploy to coastal communities in Alaska and produce building materials.

Two local, Point Loma artists have just won awards at an exhibition at The San Diego Watercolor Society gallery in Liberty Station.

Julie Anderson won the first-place award in the competitive May 2021 Member’s exhibition “Shape Zone” held as a gallery show in May 2021.

Anderson’s painting entitled “Always the Protector” was selected by prominent local artist and juror

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria revised his budget, released Tuesday, which now keeps libraries open seven days a week. This is a testament to the pushback he received from City Council members and the public about his initial cut-backs in the library budget.

However, to library advocates, Gloria’s numbers are still disappointing. The new budget removed funding for a pilot program to extend morning and evening access in communities that would benefit from this the most.

Patrick Stewart of the San Diego Public Library Foundation made this statement in response:

“We thank the Mayor for restoring the Library’s budget at a time when San Diegans need its essential and free services, programs and resources more than ever, especially in those communities hit harder during the pandemic. We’re happy to see new investments in electronic resources and systemwide programs.

By Geoff Page

While the rest of the news media was doing nothing more than reporting what The OB Rag had already reported on the sad state of the OB Pier, The Rag kept digging. The news stories focused on several things, the major one being that the western end of the pier will be closed to the public indefinitely.

In fact, the engineering firm’s April 23, 2021, recommendation on vehicle traffic at the west end of the pier was almost the same as the recommendation Moffatt & Nichol gave the city five years ago in September 21, 2016. These recommendations were detailed in a memo from the city’s Director of Public Works.

By Laura Nunn / San Diego Union-Tribune Op-Ed / May 18, 2021

Housing is a top concern for citizens, a basic need and a public good.

At a time when the housing and homelessness crisis continues to deepen, the public is served by prioritizing affordable housing in new developments.

The COVID-19 pandemic put on display how unprepared our housing system is to meet one of the most basic of human needs. When staying home was a matter of public health, many people had no home to go to or found themselves insecure in their housing situation. When schools closed, home became the primary space for kids of all ages to learn, study and complete homework. We’ve all learned a deeper meaning to the word “home” and its importance in our life.

This past year, we saw the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time in San Diego County double and a decline in California’s population for the first time in recorded history.

Editordude: Here is nearly a 30 year old article about OB Spaceman – Clint Gary – one of the most colorful characters to cross the stage of Ocean Beach.

By Thomas Arnold / San Diego Reader / December 23, 1993

Hey, Mr. Spaceman
Won’t you please take me along?
I won’t do anything wrong
Hey, Mr. Spaceman
Won’t you please take me along for a ride?

Whether or not the classic 1960s rock tune by the Byrds really was about him — he said it was, but he said a lot of things — one thing is certain: Clinton Beverage Cary, better known as the Spaceman of O.B., took Ocean Beach residents and visitors on a 30-year ride as cosmic artist, agent of the planet Rillispore, and belligerent town drunk. That ride came to a sad

Please join the Ocean Beach Historical Society in their presentation “Anyone Talked History, Today?” about early San Diego historian Winifred Davidson. The Zoom teleconference will be Thursday May 20, 2021 at 7 pm.

Early San Diego historian Winifred Davidson is described as the woman who discovered San Diego’s Lost History. Davidson was a poet, a musician, an educator, a journalist, one of one of San Diego’s first preservationists, and a longtime resident of Point Loma.

The OB Rag first raised the issue back in March: “Are Ocean Beach Restaurants Ready to Give Back Our Public Spaces?”

We wondered whether OB eateries were ready to give back all that public space taken during the pandemic in order to keep their doors open. We simply raised the question. …

A good number of readers’ comments suggested shutting down Newport Avenue permanently to auto traffic and allow the outdoor structures to continue. But shutting down Newport

From Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy / April 2, 2021

At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020.