OB Rag

It’s not easy being a small businesperson, shopkeeper, store or office owner on the commercial streets of Ocean Beach. Rents are high in this popular, sunny, beach outpost from the rest of the world.

The commercial streets, Newport Avenue, Voltaire Street and Point Loma Avenue are tough for the unwary business enterpriser who takes a gamble opening up any kind of establishment on them. That’s why small businesses are always coming and going, and why empty storefronts remain vacant for months.

The commercial streets of OB are some mean streets and here’s what’s happening on them in mid-March 2017.

March (and sing!) for homeless San Diegans on March 18, be an advocate for compassion and solutions on March 20

By Women Occupy San Diego

On Saturday, March 18, join the “March of Voices” for a Safe Living Space for Every San Diegan. People will begin gathering at 10 a.m. at the San Diego Civic Concourse/City Hall (3rd Avenue & B Street).

The march begins at 10:30 a.m., and will be led by the San Diego Women’s Drum Circle.

From the Ocean Beach Town Council

In the past few months there has been an explosion of political activism across the country. Grassroots advocacy organizations are steadily gaining new members and civic engagement is high. A national discussion is taking place, and it is our responsibility as citizens to be fully engaged through voting, representation in Congress, and actively speaking out on the direction of our nation. …

To foster democracy and further our civic engagement and community activism, the Ocean Beach Town Council is hosting an Engage OB forum to invite individuals and organizations to speak on ways in which community members can get involved in political advocacy at the local and national levels. The next OB Town Council public meeting, held 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, will be dedicated in part to hearing from activists on a wide variety of current political issues.

Amikas Emergency Housing Expo March 15 – 26

By Anna Daniels /San Diego Free Press

The super bloom of wild flowers in the most inhospitable of places–the Anza Borrego desert– has captured the attention of San Diegans, who are flocking to get a glimpse of this short lived phenomenon.

Closer to home, an equally remarkable blossoming takes the form of the cluster of cabins that has sprung up like wild flowers at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park. San Diego has been the most inhospitable of places for enacting solutions to our growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness. Volunteer activists from Amikas have stepped into the leadership vacuum, displaying what can be done to address the immediate housing needs of the most vulnerable among us.

(Thinking Black History Beyond February)

By Ernie McCray

Charlie Chatman woke up one morning saying to himself, as he had for so many mornings, for eternities: “Lord, give me the strength to put up with these damn peckerwoods one more day.”

The only thing he cared about in his godforsaken life, on a Hawkinsville, Georgia sharecropping plantation, was breakfast, whatever it happened to be, cornbread and scraps of pork, a potato or two, a cup of milk (maybe) – or some stolen boiled corn that the pigs were fed.

From Save San Diego Neighborhoods:

City Attorney: Short-term vacation rentals not permitted under City’s Municipal Code

San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott has issued a memorandum of law advising the City Council and Mayor that short-term vacation rentals (STVR) are illegal in the city’s residential zones.

“The City has a “permissive zoning ordinance.” This means that any use that is not listed in the City’s zoning ordinance is prohibited. Short-term vacation rentals are not specifically defined, expressly permitted, or listed in any of the zone use categories, including residential or commercial,” Elliott said in her memo, issued on March 15.

By Michael Winn

A real estate speculator has proposed to replace a single family home on Kellogg Street in La Playa with a concrete sea wall and 9 condominiums, where there is now a beach.

How can the community assess this proposed development without consensus about the fate of this beach? Colloquially called, Kellogg Beach it’s actually the last remaining part of the beach for which this community was originally named, La Playa, perhaps, in the 17th century.

The Frustration Is Mounting!

There is no question that the results of the Presidential Election sent me into a tailspin. And I can’t help but feel that I am in an eddy, spinning, spinning, spinning out of control.

No, I am not going to do anything that I will regret – except change my party affiliation to that of a Republican in the election in 2018 so I can vote against all the “balless” people running for office. That I might regret – temporarily, but I can always change it back if I can even find a candidate that I support. (Just to throw it out – how about Robert Kennedy Jr?)

What has really pissed me off – and I use the word advisedly – is the number of petitions that have come my way in the last TWENTY-FOUR hours.

By Freewayblogger / Daily Kos

How mad do you need to get? How many lies do you have delivered straight to your face by this administration? How long do you just sit there and take it?

San Diego Congressman Duncan Hunter just said some crazy sh*t at his Ramona town hall meeting on March 11th over last weekend. And he said it in front of a raucous crowd of hundreds.

There’s a good transcript and video of what he said, thanks to Indivisible San Diego’s four and half minute video and Dan Weisman’s annotated transcript at Escondido Grapevine’s Duncan Duane Hunter town hall (annotated).

You have to see it to believe it (the video is inside). But read the crazy stuff first.

Another life-saving incident occurred recently that San Diego lifeguards say shows that a new dispatch system installed by San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Brian Fennessy is causing problems. The new system is confusing dispatchers and adding to response times for first-responders.

The new system has water-rescue calls routed to the firefighters and not to lifeguards, as had previously been the system.

Sgt. Ed Harris, head of the lifeguard union, said that over last weekend a small child had to be rescued from the Model Yacht Pond in Mission Bay Park.

Neighbors in and around a property on the 4900 block of Saratoga Avenue are mobilizing tonight, Wednesday March 15th, at the OB Planning Board’s subcommittee meeting.

They aim to speak out against planned additions to the property at 4925 Saratoga, because the recently rehabbed main house is being used as a short term vacation rental – and they view this permit to add a garage and a house over the garage as an expansion of yet another STVR and a threat to their neighborhood.