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Teresa Gunn and the Bridge from the Mean Streets to a Street of Dreams

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Street of Dreams Spoken Word Concert
7:00 pm Friday July 13
Seville Theater San Diego City College
1450 C Street San Diego CA 92101
Donation at door

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives—the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it at times—truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. Salman Rushdie, novelist

City Heights resident Teresa Gunn is a songwriter, a singer and an activist. She knows about the power of stories to connect us to each other and to lost and hidden parts of ourselves. Above all, she knows that our stories can heal us.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘Foreclosure Storm’ Set to Hit San Diego Social Media Today

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July 10, 2012- At long last….The Property Value Protection Ordinance (PVPO) will come before San Diego’s Land Use and Housing Committee tomorrow (July 11th) at City Hall, 202 C Street (12th floor) starting at 2pm. The act is aimed at reducing the negative impacts of foreclosures on surrounding neighborhoods by requiring banks to register with the city when they take action to foreclose a home and fining them $1000 a day to recover costs to the city and taxpayers when they fail to maintain their foreclosed properties.

Supporters of the measure, including the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), are cooking up a “social media storm” today between 5:30 and 6:30pm on Twitter (hashtag: #StopBankBlight) and Facebook (RSVPhere). The idea is to send positive messages to Land Use and Housing committee members Lori Zapf, Sherri Lightner, Todd Gloria and David Alvarez. For more information on the costs to neighborhoods and taxpayers caused by blighted foreclosures, visit: StopBankBlight.org.   [Read more…]

Obama 2012: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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After a flurry of anxiety that Mitt Romney was surging it appears that the Obama campaign has righted the ship, leading handily in a recent Bloomberg poll and by narrower margins in other polls. More importantly, Obama appears to be doing quite well in most of the battleground states as his campaign hits Romney hard as the “outsourcer in chief.” Certainly, it doesn’t hurt Team Obama to be running against a guy who at times seems to be trying to mimic the cartoon capitalist in the board game Monopoly.

The bottom line is that Romney is a laughably terrible candidate, so distanced from the average Joe that he wouldn’t know what to do if he had to sit next to him during a game of “sport.” His presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country, a full-court press effort to further reward the plutocrats at the expense of everyone else while dishing out a few reactionary social policy moves to appease the rubes in the Tea Party and the Christian Right. But he will be the recipient of untold millions of dollars of help from the Koch brothers et al and stranger things have happened than Americans electing an unthinkably horrible President.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – It’s D-Day for Balboa Park as the San Diego City Council Votes on Parking Garage

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Today’s the Day…. The San Diego City Council will vote this afternoon at 2pm on the Irwin Jacobs sponsored proposal to building a by-pass roadway coming off the Cabrillo Bridge and a fee based parking garage.  Should the anticipated revenues from the parking structure fall short of expectations, city taxpayers will be expected to pony up for day-to-day operating costs and payments for bonds used to finance the deal. As part of its on-going campaign to support the use of taxpayer dollars for big and shiny structures that pump up the egos of our City’s mega-rich, the local daily paper has endorsed the plan, with editorial page editor William Osborne tweeting “A big opportunity that won’t come again. Don’t let it slip by, San Diego.”

There are plenty of people opposed to the Balboa Park plan, despite its promise to remove traffic congestion from Plaza de Panama.  Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner has promised to speak out against the plan at today’s hearings. A protest outside City Hall is scheduled for noon and preservationist groups are urging people to attend the hearing and speak out against the proposal.  Additionally there is a petition against the plan circulating that you can sign here. Additional coverage in the San Diego Free Press can be found here.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – League of Women Voters Stymied by UT-SD’s “Two Bumper Stickers and a Tweet” Letter Policy

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July 6, 2012—The miniaturization of the UT-SD letters to the editor. Yesterday we heard from some friends associated with the League of Women Voters who were aghast because our local daily had rejected their letter to the editor due to its length. Meh, we said at first, you ought to be able to express yourself in 250 words or less (which used to be the standard at the paper) so there’s room for more letters. Then we learned that UT-SD’s rules have changed—letters to the editor are now limited to 125 words. Here’s the UT’s rejection letter:

We limit letters for print publication to 125 words. If you would like to shorten your letter and resubmit it to letters@utsandiego.com it will be considered for publication. We will retain your original for possible posting online.

 Thank you for taking the time to submit your comments

 Joe Taylor | Letters Editor 

 As one of our sources said, “that’s two bumper stickers and a tweet”. Of course, when our contacts started counting the number of words in yesterday’s letters, they came up with three missives that exceeded that limit, with 128, 142, and 157 words respectively. So, as a public service, we’re going to publish the original letter in its entirety here today. The public deserves to hear more than UT publisher Doug Manchester’s vision for our city.   [Read more…]

Field of View: A Marshmallow Fight on the Fourth of July

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Thousands congregated in Ocean Beach for a colorful fireworks show – even more so considering the malfunctioning mishap Downtown – and the decades-long traditional marshmallow fight. Young couples, teens, older folks and families all took part, armed either with their own bags of marshmallows (sold for $3.99 or less from various prepared vendors along Newport Avenue) or scooping up whatever fallen artillery they could find. The warfare didn’t wait until the fireworks finale, though things heated up dramatically afterward.

The event is a wonderful thing to have so close to home. One significant downside was the amount of trash – especially the plastic – that was left on the beach. If something could be done about that, this would the harmless, uniquely OBcean experience it was meant to be.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — UT- San Diego Recycles Two Week Old Story on Front Page

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July 5, 2012- The story on the front page of today’s daily newspaper looked familiar. So familiar, in fact, that I initially thought the paper had lifted it—at least in part—from some other local source, possibly the Reader or KPBS. The article told the tale of an ascendant duo of mystery writers, Michele Scott and Andrew E. Kaufman, who recently discovered quite by accident that they lived within a quarter mile of each other in Jamul and have now decided to collaborate on a book. The lede to the story was so memorable (“Fresh from the freaky-but-true files:…) that I went ahead and searched the web, thinking surely there must be some kind of plagiarism going on. But that turned out not to be the case. What I discovered was that the story was originally published in the UT-SD on June 19th.  In other words, the paper was re-cycling the news. That’s one way to save money, I guess. UPDATE The UT has told Poynter.org that the story was only published online June 19th. That still doesn’t explain away recycling a two plus week old story and putting it on the front page of your print edition. It’s called a NEWSpaper, not a recycling bin for online features.   [Read more…]

“Go Pee Pee for Daddy” and Other Tales of the Dog

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San Diego seems to be in love with dogs. We have dog parks for big dogs and dog parks for small dogs. Dog owners, complete strangers to each other, stand on street corners in North Park with their pets and discuss the details of life with a shar pei or bichon frise while said animals enthusiastically explore each others nether portions. One acquaintance in Bankers Hill launched into a discourse on her mastiff’s lineage when I innocently asked, “Tell me something about your dog!” Perhaps I am only imagining that the very long account stretched back to the signing of the Magna Carta.

Here on my street in City Heights we only have two kinds of dogs- big dogs and little yippi dogs. And then there are the Chihuahuas which are more attitude than dog. They act as if they are really big dogs trapped by some cruel cosmic joke in the wrong size fur package. The little yippi dogs come in two styles– white fluffy and wiener. The fact that the little guys have won the popularity contest here is a subtle yet significant shift from the past.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The Increasing Desire for Male Birth Control

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Men should have an option beyond condoms and vasectomy.

By Irin Carmon / Salon/ Originally published June 14, 2012

Lenny Smalls, whose Facebook page says he lives in Chicago and works as a transportation analyst, is very interested in long-acting, reversible male contraception. According to his posts on a fan page for one form being tested — known as RISUG or Vasalgel — Smalls is sufficiently frustrated by the pace of such drugs coming to the U.S. market to have begun personally testing an Indonesian herbal product called gandarusa.

“I plan to become the guinea pig and test this products effect on myself and my sperm,” he wrote recently. “I will take 1 pill daily and record how I feel everyday. After 30 days, I will see my doctor and have my sperm tested to see if it was effected by the supplement.” Earlier this week, Smalls’ plan ran into a hitch when the first doctor he saw refused to cooperate. (Smalls did not respond to interview requests, though he did agree to friend this reporter on Facebook.)

  [Read more…]

The Number 7 Bus

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The number 7 bus is
The Tower of Babel turned on its side
The Tower of Babble with wheels
It’s articulated in the middle
For maneuvering corners
Although most of the maneuvering
Happens on the inside
& it’s not easy

The number 7 bus stops on every corner
Picks up everybody, everybody being
The passenger who searches her purse his pockets her bags
For the correct change
& comes up a quarter short
The elderly white woman struggling up the steps
Her shopping cart half -filled with her Social Security check’s munificence
Twelve rolls of generic toilet paper
Single ply   [Read more…]

One HELL of a Sunday (Thoughts About Religion)

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Early on in my life, as a child, as far as religion goes, HELL plagued me like a recurring nightmarish dream. The first time I heard of that infernal place my heart sank in fear. “You burn forever?” I asked, followed by “forever forever?” And since the answer was always in the affirmative, HELL weighed heavily in the farthest corners and deepest canyons of my imagination, fueling my apprehensions pretty much on a daily basis and one Sunday morning, a few days before my 9th birthday, I became “saved” – somewhat in the manner of a soldier with bombs dropping all around him waving a white flag.

I can still see myself sitting in the pews, waiting like I did every Sunday for Reverend Kendricks to entertain with the cadence and rituals of Black Baptist Ministers, the play with words, the rhythmic prancing, the blotting of handkerchiefs against a sweaty brow.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Wingnuttia on Parade; Vignettes from the Fringe

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July 3, 2012 – The politics of the absurd… No matter what the issue, from health care to immigration, conspiracy theories email chain letters, and lies direct from the mouths of politicians abound. We’ve been saving up little snippets from these alternative realties for a while now, and today seems as good as any to air them out. After all, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of this great nation tomorrow and what better way to do it than to take a walk on the wild side of free speech. Remember, just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Kindergarten crime wave…Let’s start up in the great state of New Hampshire, where Representative Bob Kingsbury reported that, after careful study, he had concluded that kindergarten attendance contributes to higher crime rates, among other things. Kingsley told his colleagues in the state legislature last week that he’s been working on a theory since 1996, when he analyzed local crime rates and compared them to a list of communities that offered public kindergarten. “We’re taking children away from their mothers too soon,” Kingsbury concluded.  Kingsbury also associated the rise of crime to the decline of gun ownership and the fact that boxing is no longer taught in school or offered as a sport. Perhaps that’s why kids who attend kindergarten earn an extra $39,100 over a lifetime–they steal it.   [Read more…]

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