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The Smell of Freedom in the Air: Guns in America

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by Jerry Farber / The Daily Kos

Let’s be honest. Haven’t you just about had it with this latest round of hand-wringing about guns? I mean, look, why don’t we just concede the point right up front? Yes, if you want the kind of government that runs your life, that comes into your home and tells you how sharp your kitchen knives can be, well then, sure, I suppose life can be made a little safer. But what about freedom? Isn’t that pretty much supposed to be the name of the game in this country.

And aren’t we all just sick and tired of hearing how America should try to be more like some other country—like this country or that country? Now it’s all about gun violence. People throw these ridiculous figures at you. Supposedly, in England, the death rate from guns is forty times less than it is here. (So in those London pubs they just have to come at each other with broken bottles, right?) Oh, and Japan. Yes, let’s be just like Japan. In Japan, nobody ever dies at all (except, of course, when a nuclear plant blows up in their face). So what is this all about? What are these Japan-lovers and these England-lovers trying to sell us? What are they after? I’ll tell you what they’re after. One more freedom down the drain.   [Read more…]

Growing up in North Park in the 1950s: Burlingame Memories

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by Evelyn Roy Kooperman

I was one of the lucky ones who grew up in Burlingame in the middle of the twentieth century. I cannot take credit for discovering Burlingame – I was only two years old when I moved there in 1948. Before that I lived with my parents, Elsie and Rex Roy, in a small house in Normal Heights, at 35th and Copley, two blocks north of Adams Avenue.

Six days a week my father would hop into our 1935 Willys and drive to his barbershop at 3020 Juniper street (now Laila Salon). In those days 3.3 miles was a l-o-n-g commute! So, on his lunch breaks he would walk around the neighborhood looking for a closer residence. Finally he found a house for sale on San Marcos Avenue. It was the two-story frame house at 2523. Why my parents bought such a large house I don’t know; perhaps it was the only one available. (People tend not to move away once they settle in Burlingame.)

Our house on San Marcos was a wonderful house. I believe my parents paid $12,000 for it in 1948, and sold it in 1955 for $18,000. I do not remember what it looked like when we moved in (as I said, I was only two), but my father gradually made improvements.   [Read more…]

Fathom Bistro, Bait and Tackle – An Instant San Diego Classic

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I’ve seen ads in CityBeat for the past couple of months featuring a large pink Lichtenstein-ian tentacle pouring a draft beer and the tagline “San Diego’s Only Tap House on the Water”.  Tentacles, beer, and an address on Shelter Island (1776 Shelter Island Drive, 92106) that I couldn’t immediately place.  Mysterious and involving beer?  I was intrigued and recently made a visit.

The mystery deepened when I arrived at the address (directed by my smartphone navigation app) and saw no bar or restaurant in sight, nor a sign directing me to one.  There was a hotel on one side of the street, a playground on the other, and a pier with a few fishermen on it.  My daughter was with me and insisting that Elmo needed to play on the slides so we headed to the playground.  I agreed under the circumstances that I could continue to search for Fathom on my phone.  (Yes, I use a phone while watching my child.  Distracted dad indeed.)

This was my first time at the Shelter Island playground and it is a great location to enjoy playing outside.  Views of Point Loma and the ocean, gulls and pelicans swooping over the bay just a few feet away, and to the east downtown San Diego with mountains in the background.  I studiously ignored the views and craned my head closer and closer to my phone, trying to solve my puzzle.  Google Maps gave me walking directions: Walk 46 feet along Shelter Island Drive and you will arrive at your destination.  Looking all around, there were clearly no buildings in that proximity to me.   [Read more…]

Awash Ethiopian Restaurant: A Home Away From Home for African Immigrants

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In 1980, Aster Keleta arrived in San Diego. It was just three months before the United States began granting Ethiopians refugee status. Seeking citizenship was more arduous, but it allowed her to settle in and be of assistance to other incoming Ethiopians, a passion of hers that has continued on for over 30 years.

With the stability she has gained in her professional career, she recently decided to plunge back into the restaurant business once again. Aster and her partner Dr Carrol Waymon are now the new owners of Awash, an Ethiopian restaurant on El Cajon Boulevard at 50th St. Aster admits that she has missed having the creative freedom of running her own business, which also allows her the opportunity to reconnect with her identity and culture.   [Read more…]

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

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By Liz Day / ProPublica / This story was co-produced with NPR.

Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes 2014 and for free. You’d open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.

It’s already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.

The idea, known as “return-free filing,” would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.   [Read more…]

It’s Not Just the LAPD: The Big Lie About Police Brutality Is Claiming It’s Not Rampant

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By Dave Lindorff / This Can’t Be Happening!

Police brutality is in the news, thanks to the widespread availability of amateur video and the omnipresence of security cameras.

We’ve seen scene after scene of police beating the crap out of, and even shooting and killing unarmed or minimally dangrous students, women, old men and crazy people, many of them after they have been handcuffed and checked for weapons.

The police brass, and leading politicians who oversee the departments involved, nearly always have the same answer: This is not the norm, these are isolated incidents, police violence is not on the rise. Rarely is an abusive or murderous officer punished or even administratively disciplined for documented crimes.   [Read more…]

North Park to Ocean Beach by Bike – The Best Route

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I’ve only lived in North Park for a couple of months but have been working on finding the best route to get from here to Ocean Beach, my favorite San Diego beach, since I moved in.  The biggest issue is finding a good route from the mesa that North Park is on down into Mission Valley.  Once in Mission Valley the very solid path along the San Diego River takes you comfortably and quickly directly west to the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve tried various routes into Mission Valley – Texas Street in North Park, Fairmount Avenue between Kensington and City Heights, Bachman Place in Hillcrest – but found them all lacking.  Fairmount is very, very intense (read: dangerous) on a bike and Texas only slightly less so.  Bachman Place is a much better alternative although it is a meandering windy road down the hill, not bad for cruising down but quite a long haul back up.  Recently I was informed of a path through Old Town and it is my favorite by far.  After a couple of practice runs I took this trip “in earnest” this week.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Score One for the Taxpayers; Hoteliers Reach Agreement with Mayor Filner

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Oh, the sweet, sweet irony. Mayor Bob Filner’s refusal to sign off on an operating agreement for the San Diego Tourism Marketing District has led to a firestorm of criticism over the past two months. He’s been vilified at the UT-San Diego, which just this week ran an editorial cartoon depicting the Mayor as The Joker, a villain from the Batman comic/TV/Movie series.

Letters to editor have claimed Filner hates the tourism industry, that he’s purposely tried to cause job loss and even demanded a recall election.

Yesterday, after much posturing and pressure, the City Council endorsed an agreement that protected San Diego taxpayers, created more transparency and encouraged funding for the Balboa Park Exposition Centennial. It wasn’t everything Filner asked for, but his point was made. Business as it used to be conducted downtown will be operating under a different set of rules during his administration.

Credit goes to City Councilman David Alvarez, whose intervention led to the settlement. The “Joker” just saved San Diego taxpayers $30 million should the TMD scheme be ruled illegal.   [Read more…]

Your New House is a Car

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By Bob Dorn

Not so long ago, a car was regarded as the worst investment a person could make. It would lose about a third of its value as soon as you’d bought it. It was out of the question as an investment; you could only hope the manufacturer’s warranty would hold up for the first three years or 15,000 miles, whichever came first, and that after that warranty period expired you might be able to sell it on the used market for half what you paid for it.

Either that or you clung to it as it threw its bearings or burned its valves, driving you to despair when you weren’t driving it.

Worse were boats. I remember that definition: a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.

Nope, for an investment you instead counted on buying your North Park craftsman, or little Spanish style east of 805 so you could watch it climb up two or five or 10 percent a year, depending on the given moment in housing history here and how many people – folks pretty much like you and me — were moving south from LA or west from who knows where at those given moments.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego’s ‘Drone Zone’ Attracts National Protests

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For many months now San Diego Veterans for Peace have been staging a weekly vigil outside the General Atomics plant in southeasternPoway. It’s a difficult place to protest, parking is very limited, the elements can be harsh and some locals have been hostile.

None-the-less, the group shows up every Thursday afternoon. They stand by the side of the road holding signs reminding passers-by that drones are indeed weapons of war and not just some abstract toy the military plays with. The Vets for Peace say they’ve been surprised at how supportive people who working in the nearby plant have been.

It’s certainly not the flashiest demonstration; there are no celebrities, no acts of civil disobedience and news coverage is a rarity. But, like the drip-drip-drip of a leaking roof, the cumulative effect of the Vets for Peace presence is starting to be felt.

Today (3:30pm, Scripps Poway Parkway and General Atomics Way) there will be a TV crew from PBS, getting advance footage for next weeks’ national-wide April Anti-Drone Days of Action.

Next Wednesday (April 3) a nation-wide coalition of anti-war and privacy groups will kick off a month long series of protests with a rally in New York, followed by three days of protest outside the facilities of companies that make drones, including the local General Atomics facility, which makes Predator and Reaper drones.   [Read more…]

Springtime and the Art of Wisteria Hunting in San Diego

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People in the eastern part of the country tend to think that Southern California is the land of no seasons and perpetual sunshine. Those of us who live here can produce rubber rain boots and hefty heating bills as proof otherwise.

This is my twenty-sixth spring in our little house on 45th Street in City Heights. Every February I start sniffing the air like a winter crazed creature until one day I can smell….It! “It” is an almost imperceptible whiff of a delicate green freshness rising from the moist cold earth and carried on the wind. I can hear Colette’s words– “To sing of spring would never do for me; I must go to meet it when it first strikes out through the long shadows, feeling its way…”

By mid- February the immense jasmine vine outside my window is filled with slender claret colored buds. It will burst into a cloud of fragrant shooting stars within a few weeks if the weather is warm. Spring, like all of the other seasons, is unpinned from calendar reckoning.   [Read more…]

SDSU Grad’s Sundance Film “I Am Not A Hipster” Returns to North Park April 5-11

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By Victor Payan

It takes exactly 42 seconds to realize that Destin Daniel Cretton’s standout debut feature, I Am Not a Hipster, is a San Diego film.  That’s when the Casbah’s iconic black upholstered backdrop comes into view.  It’s also when you realize that the music is going to be good, and the film is not going to be about hipsters.

Set in and around the vibrant North Park indie music and art scene, I Am Not a Hipster is scheduled to return to its home community for a week of screenings April 5-11 at the Media Arts Center San Diego’s new Digital Gym Cinema, located at 2921 El Cajon Blvd.

This heartfelt feature, which premiered to capacity screenings at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of singer-songwriter Brook Hyde, an Ohio transplant who has developed a loyal following in the San Diego music scene.   [Read more…]

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