OB Rag

What’s Up With the Mayor’s App? – Part 4

By Colleen O’Connor

Today’s “What’s Up” episode deals with one of the nicest new libraries to grace the City. That being the new Mission Hills branch; done with taste and in keeping with that area’s craftsman-like architecture.

However, for months, and months, and months, now, there has been a broken window out front that has been boarded up and yet to be replaced.

Join the Ocean Beach Historical Society tonight, Wednesday, April 28, for a presentation by San Diego Historian and OB Favorite, Richard Carrico on “Women of the Presidio,” – stories rarely told of Colonial and Indigenous Women on the Frontier.

Wed. April 28 at 7 pm via Zoom Teleconference Lecture Link: Women of the Presidio

There’s been a number of developments in San Diego’s efforts to sign a new franchise agreement for its gas and electric utilities.

As you may know, the city’s 100 years with the SDG&E has ended – there’s a temporary extension right now with the giant utility company that has had a virtual monopoly for a century with the fair city. And two mayors, Faulconer and Todd Gloria had tried to re-establish a utility franchise contract with SDG&E, only to be met with intransigence from city council members and those pesky ratepayers. And it turns out, after Gloria opened a second round of bidding for the franchise, once again, SDG&E was the sole bidder:

It can even generate its own water.

By Adele Peters / Fast Company / May 2019

In a factory in Nevada, a large 3D printer prints the pieces of new prefab tiny homes that can work fully off the grid. When complete, the houses will run on solar power, including heating and cooling. An optional system generates water from moisture in the outdoor air so it isn’t necessary to connect to a city water supply. In the bathroom, the home is among the first in the U.S. to use a new shower that cleans and recycles water.

The house, from a startup called PassivDom, is designed to use as few resources as possible.

Editordude: the Ocean Beach Planning Board Parks Subcommittee has come with proposed improvements and recommendations for OB’s 7 parks: Veterans, Saratoga, Ebers Street, Collier, Dog Beach / Spray Street, Robb Field and Dusty Rhodes.

Introduction

The purview of the Ocean Beach Planning Board Parks Subcommittee is to review the accessible park space in the Ocean Beach area for the quality and usefulness of existing amenities and suggest upgrades focused on equity, safety, climate action goals, art, and promoting healthy and active lifestyles in accordance with the City of San Diego’s Parks Master Plan.

By Ernest McCray

Carlos, my youngest
and now only son,
has Covid-19.
But he’s got the battle won
it seems.

Yet, when the news reached me,
as quick as
a flash
of lightening
streaking across
the sky,
ghostly like images of
Debbie and Guy,
two children of mine
who have lived and died,
floated before my eyes
and I became weak.

Small backyard houses get a lot of attention as a solution to the housing crisis, but it’s a different idea in theory than it is when you try to put it into practice.

By Adele Peters / Fast Company

When I moved from Brooklyn back to the Bay Area a few years ago, I thought, at first, that the apartment I found was charming. It’s also very small: At the end of a long driveway, inside a former garage, it’s 240 square feet, or roughly the size of one and a half parking spaces.

By Pissed Off

I’ve been pissed off ever since the Maritime Museum has been allowed to continue to store stuff in between Spanish landing and Liberty Station.

They’ve been allowed to do this ever since the San Salvador replica was built and completed about 7 years ago.

They have fencing around their area with tarps that create a blind corner that’s very hazardous to bicyclists.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / April 22, 2021

Twenty years of studying education policy, politics and practices has been awakening. Seeing billionaires inflict their often misguided and unpopular beliefs on our nation’s public schools has made it clear how undemocratic and dangerous extreme wealth is.

They have established voucher programs routinely sending taxpayer money to religious schools even though these programs have lost decisively whenever submitted to voters. In her book Slaying Goliath, Diane Ravitch labeled these 0.1% of Americans as disrupters. She asked and answered the question “what do disrupters want?” They want:

SANDAG Presentation at Midway Planning Meeting Raises Questions

By Geoff Page

Presentations by SANDAG on the “Grand Central Station” project and the Climate Action Campaign were the items of interest at the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning Group’s monthly meeting Wednesday, April 21.

SANDAG

The SANDAG presentation was not on the agenda and came more as a Government Office Report on the agenda.

By David Helvarg / The Hill / April 19, 2021

Two movies nominated for Academy Awards for both “Best Picture” and ”Original Screenplay” are “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “Judas and the Black Messiah.” They capture an iconic time in our history in ways that few earlier cinematic efforts have managed with a couple of notable exceptions. These include Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” that revealed the tactical and strategic challenges of the 1960s civil rights movement for Martin Luther King and his fellow activists and Milos Forman’s “Hair” that explicitly connected the emergence of an exuberant hippie culture to the looming death culture of the Vietnam war.

by Ernie McCray

Dear Jury: Waiting for your verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was agonizing. No pun intended, because of what the trial was all about, but I could hardly breathe.

But when it was announced, regarding all charges, that you had found him guilty as guilty can be, air rushed from me like a river pouring into the sea.

I’ve never felt more relieved. But what does it really mean?