OB Rag

San Diego’s #4MILEMARCH
Monday, January 19, 2015 San Diego, Ca –

From Press Release of United Against

Please join United Against Police Terror – San Diego, ACTIVIST SAN DIEGO San Diego Branch of the ISO with the Coalition Against Police Violence for San Diego’s #4MILEMARCH.

The 4 Mile March will take place on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the rally will start at 1:00pm at the City Heights/Weingart Library and Performance Annex 3795 Fairmount Ave, San Diego, California 92105 ending at Malcolm X Library at 5148 Market Street, San Diego, CA 92114

By Jim Miller

It’s the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and we will be greeted, as is the case these days, with lots of empty gestures and vanilla rhetoric that erases the radical nature of King’s legacy and neuters the impact of his ideas. As I have noted in years past, King was not a moderate whose only idea was that we should all just get along and respect each other. He was a provocative thinker and activist who challenged the core values of our society both then and now.

Some folks associated with the OB Town Council have planned a “PopUp Picnic” to be held down at the end of Newport Avenue, near and around OB’s famous SeaWall, the Veterans’ Plaza and grassy area, this Saturday, January 17.

They see it as a “way of taking back the SeaWall for families, community members, and people that Respect OB.”

There’s a facebook page on this …

Complaints About Homeless Have Echoes

By John Lawrence

The solid citizenry of Ocean Beach are aroused. For some time now, there has been a virtual state of war existing between businessmen and merchants, on the one hand, and homeless on the other. The growing homeless community in OB has been met with growing alarm on the part of the established citizenry.

Those with Establishment interests want to drive the homeless out of OB …

Here’s one of our irregular updates on Ocean Beach construction and development.

CJ Catering Moving Into Former Voltaire Street Bakery – Some good news for those with a sweet tooth,

CVS Opens in Former Apple Tree

In the Meantime New Apple Tree on Newport Makes Progress

Saratoga Condos to Open February 1

New Poles at Site of Future Sunset Plaza

Fourth 3-Story Behemoth on West Pt Loma Makes a Fine Blocked View

OBceans Take Note: Group Will Mark Off New High Water Level Mark in Chalk in Mission Beach on Monday, Jan. 19th

By Bill Avrin / San Diego 350.org

As we burn more fossil fuels, and thus pump more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we are changing every aspect of earth’s climate system. One of the many consequences is that the sea is rising.

On January 19, San Diego 350 will stage a simple action to help make people more aware of what rising seas mean to San Diego right now, as well as in the future. We’re going to Mission Bay, which is pretty much ground-zero for sea-level rise in our county, to mark out where the high-water line is likely to be in about thirty years.

Veteran Librarian Advises OB on How to Proceed to Get OB Back on the List

By Anna Daniels

Here’s some historical info that may be helpful in presenting your case to Councilwoman Zapf, Mayor Faulconer AND new library director Misty Jones:

“In 2002, the City Council approved a program to build or improve 24 libraries throughout San Diego, including a New Central library.”

Ocean Beach was on that original expansion list.

As recently as 2008, Ocean Beach appeared on a list of City of San Diego & CCDC Projects. The construction costs were $10,186,500 for an expansion to 15,000 square feet.

In 2010, over $2M in capital improvement funds were (I vaguely remember) used to fix the roof and other maintenance.

Thirteen years have passed and why is Ocean Beach (and so many other branches) on hold?

By Matthew Smith

I was wondering if the OB Rag had ever done any investigation into the horrible state of the public bathrooms at the OB beaches?

I regularly visit the beaches and each day Parks and Rec staff clean the bathrooms at 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock in the morning – every morning. There are two toilets in the main lifeguard tower bathroom and two more in the bathrooms on the beach near Brighton Ave. I’ve only seen the men’s bathrooms so these are the ones I’m asking about.

Every single day by noon all four toilets are clogged and unusable. This happens every day.

King Tides Expected to Return to Coast Jan. 19-21

By Jeffrey Meyer / San Diego 350.org

A few weeks ago, San Diego coastal cities were given a stark reminder of the threat to public safety and our $15 billion a year tourism industry by increasing tides and coastal flooding. With this problem becoming more severe, year after year, the lack of substantive coastal infrastructure planning can become a countdown to disaster.

The latest combination of high astronomical tides and elevated surf caused strong rip currents and some flooding at low-lying areas along beaches. Known as king tides, they are expected to return to our coastline on January 19-21 and February 17-19. They have become a harbinger of damage to our coastline as we confront increasing sea levels during this century.

The warnings have been clear and consistent. …

In a kick to the gut to OB supporters of an expansion of the Ocean Beach library, San Diego just announced the next two “waves” of construction and expansions of libraries across town – and they do not include the OB branch.

This despite the promise by the city to expand the current and historic OB library into a two -story building complete with a courtyard. The city even purchased property next door in anticipation of the planned expansion. Architects were hired and models and plans of the new library were shown to members of the OB Planning Board. The plans included retaining the main historic building. This was back in 2003.

By Jon Linney

On Saturday January 10 we cleaned up the future walk-in park site at Avenida de Portugal and Scott Street. Gone are the dead acacia trees and tumbleweeds that represented a fire hazard. Gone are the cans, bottles and other urban trash. Now absent are the years of construction debris: steel girders, cinder blocks, blocks of concrete, dumploads of gravel and once-molten asphalt.

A dangerous blind curve along Canon Street is now much more visible thanks to our tree pruning. Water has been taking its toll on the park site. The cleanup also involved smoothing the surface to slow or stop the erosion while money is raised and planning done to develop the park.

By John Lawrence

The American Dream is the ideological underpinning of the middle class. Now that the middle class is disappearing, it no longer makes sense as historically defined.

Thom Hartmann (Rebooting the American Dream) and Hedrick Smith (Who Stole the American Dream) have defined the American Dream as a good job at good wages plus benefits. They bemoan the fact that this has pretty much gone by the wayside in today’s world.

Well, it’s time to get over it because the conditions that gave rise to middle class prosperity in America from 1945 to 1980 are not coming back.