OB Rag

Join the the Ocean Beach Town Council at 7 pm tonight, Wednesday, March 24 for a facebook live video public meeting. They will have a presentation from PATH , an organization that has new homelessness outreach services in Ocean Beach starting up with new funding from the city.

By Colleen O’Connor

How can anyone justify needing an assault rifle for personal use?

How can anyone justify the horrific killings of people just shopping, going about their business, about their day, about their job in Colorado or any place else?

How can anyone justify cowardly silence and inaction in a moment of another mass killing?

No one can or should ever even try.

And no one can possibly find the words, the emotions, even the thoughts to describe what happened in Boulder, Colorado yesterday; or any of the other multiple mass murders of innocents. We, as a nation, have almost become numb.

So, I stand up and applaud the President of the United States, Joe Biden who has shown no hesitancy, whatsoever, on doing the right thing.

And I quote him:

San Diego officials – including Mayor Todd Gloria – are encouraging city residents to apply for an $83 million rental relief program that launched last week.

The City of San Diego COVID-19 Housing Stability Assistance Program can pay up to 80 percent of past-due rent and utility bills for families with household incomes at or below 80 percent of the area median income — which is about $92,400 a year for a family of four or $64,700 for an individual.

To qualify, renters must show that at least one member of the household lost wages due to COVID-19. The program will pay 80 percent of unpaid rent from April 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021 — if the landlord agrees to waive the remaining 20 percent.

If the landlord declines, the program pays 25 percent of the past-due rent.

Last Friday, March 19, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria opened up the bidding process for the city’s utility franchise agreements- the exclusive right to provide gas and electricity services to city residents and businesses.

Included among the terms for the invitations to bid is a 10-year period, plus an additional 10 years if the franchisee has been a good partner. Any new agreement would allow the franchisee to use the public right-of-way to install and maintain utility infrastructure, such as pipes, poles and wires.

Bids will be opened on April 16, after which the city may initiate negotiations with the responsive bidders, and tentatively, the franchises will be awarded in May.

Restaurant Review

StarFish Filipino Eatery
1830 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., Suite E
San Diego, CA 92107

By Judi Curry

I am always intrigued when a new ethnic restaurant opens nearby. I have long felt that Ocean Beach has enough Mexican, Pizza and Asian – read Japanese – restaurants and not enough “other” kinds. I was thrilled to hear that a Filipino restaurant has now opened right on Sunset Cliffs.

When I was working at Job Corps in Imperial Beach, I had several instructors and secretaries that were Filipino. When they brought in food for different occasions it was usually the first to go. They could never make enough Lumpia to satisfy the staff – you have to know that I had over 130 staff members! – and the Pancit was the best I had ever tasted. I “borrowed” Alicia’s recipe for Lumpia, and would spend hours cutting up the vegetables the way she taught me to but it never tasted as good as hers.

The pancit was interesting, because Alicia would put a layer of raw oysters on the top, and that stopped many of the staff from devouring the tasty dish. Other staff members did not put any topping on theirs at all and they were the first to be finished!

Now we have a Filipino restaurant in Ocean Beach. They have very limited hours – close their doors by 6:00 – which I am hoping will change as the pandemic decreases.

By Geoff Page

The Peninsula Community Planning Board held its first election in two years Thursday, March 18. Last year’s election was cancelled due to COVID. This election was also clearly affected by COVID and not in a good way.

Every year, five of the 15 seats on the PCPB are up for election. Because there was no election last year, 10 seats were up for election. Because a board member resigned last year without completing the term, there were 11 open seats. This was a large number of seats to fill but the election attracted 16 candidates.

There were 644 total ballots, which surprised the Board. In fact, that was the largest election turn out in many years. Is it possible that the complete relaxation of all voting rules was the reason?

A Comparison of How Local Planning Boards Handled Their 2021 Elections

The pandemic threw planning board operations and elections into a turmoil.

by Ernie McCray

Someone, unknown, once wrote “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.“

I can’t help but say amen to that just from having, the other day, read my journal about the past year and noticing how in between my comments about the enormous loss of human lives and a dangerous looney-ass president’.’ string of improvised lies, and wide political divides, and the like, there were so many entries that literally made me smile.

Especially one about me swatting a pesky fly just to see him die, borrowing from a Johnny Cash line.

And I sure smiled a lot at what I wrote about visiting Maria’s family and friends in San Antonio, home of the Alamo, and in Jalapa, Cuernavaca, Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo in the beautiful country of Mexico.

I couldn’t help but smile as my words made me recall how I, after being such a recluse, finally dared to go out during the pandemic and wined and dined and laughed outdoors with dear friends, wearing masks and keeping a distance.

Here are two events Saturday in Point Loma for the Campbell Recall campaign.

Saturday: Petition Drive at Famosa Canyon

Saturday, March 20th from 10 am – 1 pm

Famosa Canyon – 2320 Famosa Blvd. Across the street from Bill Cleator Park. Neighboring Sea Colony and Park Point Loma. We need lots of community support and positive energy! Time to Stand Up and Speak Out! This is our community!

With restaurants able to have 25% capacity now that San Diego County is in the Red Tier, we’re wondering whether OB eateries are ready to give back all that public space they grabbed during the pandemic in order to keep their doors open.

Anyone who has been on Newport Avenue or Voltaire Street knows what we’re talking about. Local restaurants commandeered parts of sidewalks and parking spaces to be able to offer outdoor dining, and those bars who were able to arrange food service are also in that same boat.

And many in the community have been sympathetic to their plight and understanding

Cruising down Newport Ave, it’s clear that a number of new Ocean Beach businesses are ready for the Grand Reopening – the county’s entry into the red tier allowing many businesses to reopen. Other newbies on Abbott and Sunset Cliffs will be joining them.

Here then, is a casual pictorial of many of these upstarts, ready to take on the world from their OB sites.

Teitan Tattoo

This new tat parlor offers “Neotradtional” skin engravings. The Las Vegas-transplant tattoo shop artists are also trained in customer service to provide a world-class experience for clients. Patrick DeMarco, founder, and chief artist at Teitan Tattoo, saw his new shop as the best logical step in their expansion, following their widely successful flagship shop in Las Vegas.

Locals involved with or observing planning and housing trends have been witness to a huge boom in the construction of so-called “granny flats” recently.

It seems there’s not a meeting of the OB Planning Board where there isn’t an application to build a granny flat somewhere in Ocean Beach. They’ve become a routine agenda item for the volunteers who run the planning panel.

None of them needed to read today’s Union-Tribune to know that the last two years have seen an explosion in granny flat approvals and completions, especially in OB and other beach neighborhoods.

Today, Thursday, March 18 is the annual election to the Peninsula Community Planning Board. There are eleven vacancies to fill in this modified election (see the procedures below).

According to the PCPB:

These eleven Board positions to be filled comprise over two-thirds of the Board’s fifteen positions. Board terms are typically three (3) years in length. Because the 2020 election was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the 2021 election will include several positions with shorter terms. Of the eleven PCPB positions to be filled, five will be for three-year terms, five will be for two-year terms and one will fill a current vacancy for the balance of a one-year term.

Here are the people running for the seats with a brief description.