OB Rag

Join hundreds of your neighbors as we create a human banner spelling out VOTE! on the sands of Ocean Beach San Diego and simultaneously in conjunction with folks up at Ocean Beach San Francisco.

We hope to create a 50 foot long human VOTE! banner on the sands at Dog Beach at 10am, Saturday, April 21st.

This year we will be coordinating with our friends in Ocean Beach San Francisco who will be creating a VOTE! banner simultaneously. Catch the Blue Wave and turn the tide by getting out the VOTE!

Actually, it was more than “technical” – around 11:15 this morning apparently a fiber optic cable was cut near San Antonia, Texas.

Book Release: “Last Days in Ocean Beach”- By Jim Miller, Friday, April 20th

The Ocean Beach Green Center is hosting Jim Miller, author, teacher and activist. He will read from his new novel that deals with climate change that is based in our community of Ocean Beach.

“Last Days in Ocean Beach” is the story of William, a scientist working at the Center for Extinction Studies, a think tank at the College of the Sun funded by a green billionaire. William desperately works to raise the alarm about climate change and its dire consequences to an apathetic public, learns to live with grief, and hold on to love. Along the way, we meet the residents of his wonderfully shabby apartment complex in Ocean Beach–bikers, hippies, skate punks, adventure tourists, reggae singers, aimless young professionals, Iraq war veterans, decadent retirees, a hospice nurse, and a Buddhist monk, all of whom are searching for something, looking to live more fully. Last Days in Ocean Beach is a blues song moaning and rocking the beach party at the end of the world.

Proceeds from the book sales will be donated to the Ocean Beach Green Center!

According to Indivisible activists, about 100 – 150 people rallied this morning at a press conference held on the steps of the County Administration Building to protest opposition to the anticipated Supervisor vote on whether to oppose Brown’s sanctuary laws.

After the rally – where a number of people spoke – the crowd went upstairs to the Supervisor’s chambers on the 3rd floor. There were so many people that the spill-over room had to be used.

The OB Planning Board sub-committee called the Project Review Committee meets Wednesday night, April 18th at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica Ave, at 6pm.

The Project Review Committee does just what its title suggests – it reviews development projects prior to the full Board meeting on them, and usually gives a recommendation about the project to the full board. Board vice-chair Andrea Slageter chairs the meeting. The Board and its sub-committee are instituting a new process to hear project presentations. The presentation will be limited to 10 minutes, then 5 minutes for public comment and lastly 10 minutes for board discussion and motion.

On the panel’s agenda are 2 projects – one at 4715 Cape May and the other at 4629 Coronado.

Still Loving After All These 80 Years
(The Formative Years: More to Come)

If I’m breathing April 18th, 2018,
I will be 80 years old.
And to brag a little bit,
I lived those years
with a lot of love in my soul
and that’s quite an ac-com-plish-ment
for someone with
COLORED written on his birth cer-ti-ficate
if the truth be told,
considering I first said “Hello”
to the world
in Tucson, Arizona,

Can things get much worse for SeaWorld?

SeaWorld San Diego is experiencing crashing attendance numbers, the parent company is under a criminal SEC investigation, the top leadership was recently removed for failing to stop the slide, revenues are down, shares are falling, there’s an investors’ lawsuit, and 350 workers were recently fired – a bunch here in San Diego.

Ignore the fact San Diego SeaWorld marine park suffered an astounding 14 per cent drop in attendance in 2017 – that’s more than half a million less people than the year before.

But don’t mind all that – get ready for SeaWorld San Diego’s latest thrill ride, the “Electric Eel” coaster! Please.

More than 60 people rallied near the Bahia Hotel on Sunday, April 15th – protesting Evans Hotels’ plans to nearly double the size of the private resort – by taking public parking and public access to Mission Bay.

For those demonstrating, one of the main issue is the elimination of the main parking lot, which now allows anybody, locals and visitors, direct access to the water. Their fear is the near-doubling of what’s there now will turn Bahia Point into a private beach for hotel guests.

This is the latest grassroots event in what has been an on-going battle over the site.

Editor’s Note: We’re giving Jim Miller’s column a week off to celebrate the publication of his new book.

By Ian Duckles

Jim Miller’s new book Last Days in Ocean Beach (City Works Press, 2018), explores the question of how to live one’s life in the face of looming catastrophic climate change. The novel, like life, is challenging, depressing, hopeful, sad, and filled with moments of incredible beauty and incredible tragedy and is highly recommended.

In this piece, however, I want to take a more philosophical look at the novel by stripping away some of its rhetorical beauty to focus on the responses to catastrophic climate change suggested by its various characters. One of the more interesting aspects of the novel is its formal structure. Divided into 19 chapters, each odd-numbered chapter focuses on the character of William, a marine biologist, who works at the fictional Center for Extinction Studies housed at the equally fictional College of the Sun.

The San Diego County Superior Court has formally ordered the San Diego Association of Governments to decertify its defective Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for 2011 the Regional Transportation Plan. SANDAG has also agreed to cover attorney’s fees in the amount of $1.7 million for the petitioners in this public interest case.

It has taken six long years to reach this point, with the lawsuit going to the California Supreme Court. The two precedent-setting court opinions arising from this case will guide SANDAG and other agencies in addressing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and public health impacts of regional transportation planning.

Wednesday morning, April 12th, a crew was all set to plow under the Point Loma bike track when a local neighbor raised questions about whether the San Diego Housing Commission actually owned the property the crew was working on. It was a crew hired by the Housing Commission as the Commission is planning to build 78 units on the land.

At the dirt tract this particular morning, Kate Bendixen, the neighbor, approached Anthony George of Mayor Faulconer’s office – who was at the site Wednesday morning –

Here’s the plan of action in the likely event President Trump fires Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as is widely expected. We’ll publish updates as information becomes available.