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Shortchanging Our National Treasures

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State and national parks alike are underfunded in this era of tight budgets

By Jill Richardson / Other Words

Fabulous vacations don’t come cheap. Hotels often run at least $100 a night, if not higher. Add in airfare, a rental car, and restaurant meals, and a family vacation becomes a privilege for those with the cash to afford them.

What’s a more affordable option? Heading to a national park, state park, or national forest.

America’s greatest vacation destinations are also our most egalitarian. You still need to get the time off work and transportation, but if you can do that, you can almost certainly afford the price tag of admission — even to the likes of the Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon.   [Read more…]

San Ysidro Bi-National Multi-Modal Transit Center

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By Beryl Forman

The City of San Diego’s 700 block of East San Ysidro Boulevard is likely the most integral property to activate the San Diego/Tijuana Bi-national Border Region, as high level economic dialogue between the U.S. and Mexico unfolds. This block is not only home to the world’s busiest pedestrian border crossing, but also San Diego’s most heavily traveled trolley station, by far.

With up to three hours delay at the border nearly every day, and 7 billion dollars a year lost in economic productivity due to border delays, a grand opportunity lies ahead for this strategically located property. In order to realize this potential, it is important to understand some of the current issues and proposed plans for this site.   [Read more…]

The Unist’ot’en Camp – Preparation: Home, Language, Self

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By Will Falk

It is almost time to go.

I am going to the Unist’ot’en Camp in northern British Columbia. The Unist’ot’en Camp is a resistance camp built by the Wet’suwet’en people on the path of seven proposed pipelines from the Tar Sands Gigaproject and where corporations are extracting liquid natural gas from the Horn River Basin Fracturing Projects.

I am nervous. I am excited. I am scared. Mostly, I just want to get started. Writing helps me organize my thoughts, sift through my emotions, and steel my heart, so I offer this up as my trip approaches.   [Read more…]

Managing the Planet One Organizer at a Time: A Kenyan Initiative

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By Jim Bliesner

Editors note: Jim Bliesner spent the last month traveling through Africa. This post from the road is about a trip from Nairobi to the Lale’enok research camp near the Tanzania border.

You drive for four hours, south out of Nairobi on a two lane rutted road that spirals down into the South Rift Valley. By the time you reach the bottom of the winding decline and into the Valley floor the “city” has receded into the background and plains stretch into the clouds in all directions.

Black sprinkles of cattle tended by figures robed in bright reds and blues break the landscape. Periodically the car stops while cattle are walked across the road to greener pastures. Now and then a speed bump slows the journey and we are introduced to local vendors selling vegetables, fruits, bright colored candies, tourist trinkets, mementoes of the culture and geography.

We arrive at Olorgesaile the sight of a regional meeting of Maasai landowners assembled to discuss their collective future at the First Annual Maasai Cultural Heritage Festival. The Maasai tribe dominates the geography in the South Rift Valley and is organized into the South Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO) headed by John Kamanga. The movement percolated through the African Conservation Center, a Kenyan national non-profit dedicated to “saving African biodiversity through sound science, local initiative and good governance”.   [Read more…]

San Diego Is Becoming One of America’s ‘Most Bicycle Friendly’ Cities

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Statistics from newly released American League of Bicycle report shows San Diego bicycle movement has momentum

From San Diego Loves Green

Bicycle-loving San Diego is more than an idea now – it’s a statistic. In a League of American Bicyclists report released this week, San Diego consistently ranks amongst the top American cities for bicycle commuters and ridership.

San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, an organization that advocates for and protects the rights of all people who ride bicycles, has spearheaded the movement to create a strong bicycling culture in San Diego County.

In the report, Where we ride: An Analysis of bicycling in American cities, the League of American Bicyclists looks at bicycle commuting trends and specific analyses throughout national cities.

Statistics reported on San Diego include:   [Read more…]

OB Bamboo Bicyclist Lives to Inspire “Earth-Friendly Lifestyles”

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Activist to Give Away Free Seeds

By Rob Greenfield

This spring I left my comfortable beachside home in sleepy Ocean Beach to wake America up. On April 16th I hopped into a van with a stranger from a Craigslist.com rideshare board, stopped in Santa Cruz to pick up a bamboo bike, and arrived in San Francisco a with a few days to prepare for a 4,700 mile bike ride across the USA.

The journey, coined Off the Grid Across America, was designed to inspire Americans to start living a more earth-friendly lifestyle for themselves, their community, and the earth.

To lead by example I followed a set of rigorous ground rules:   [Read more…]

Bicycle Expressways for San Diego

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By JEC

August 11th was CicloSDias in San Diego. Sections of 30th and Fern streets were closed to motor vehicles; cross streets were blocked off and traffic monitors helped motorists cross the river of bicycles. Some say not quite a river, more like a creek.

Bicycling in San Diego has some serious advocates, including the San Diego Bike Coalition. They see benefits for San Diegans if we switch to using bikes more often than cars. As a bike rider, I agree with them. The challenge in front of us is how to grow a bicycle culture.

Along 30th Street I saw many fancy bikes with riders dressed in those colorful skin tight outfits. I also saw some unique forms of self-propelled transportation. I was hoping see folks wearing regular clothes as if they were going to school or work – but then it was Sunday plus CicloSDias is only once a year at that.

Given the agreeable weather, San Diego has been a great place for recreational biking. In the 70’s a familiar (now unfriendly) voice advocated for building bike paths and adding bike lanes. Roger Hedgecock had some success, including getting a path around San Diego Bay built that was recently expanded and improved. Bike friendly policies were promoted. So workers could ride to work employers were encouraged to provide shower facilities and bike storage lockers. I rode 7 miles to work, for a while. Taking a shower at work was less than pleasant.
  [Read more…]

Field of View: A Walkabout in City Heights, Part I

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By Annie Lane

After spending a solid three hours wandering the streets of City Heights, I found that it’s possible to do so and still only see a fraction of what the charming, lived-in neighborhood has to offer.

Freeper and longtime City Heights resident Anna Daniels served as my guide, taking me on streets less traveled to see sights like the 47th Street Canyon, where a sign read, among other things, that no guns were allowed. We also visited the nearby Cambodian Buddhist Society of San Diego, its signature orange facade a stark contrast against the blue sky.   [Read more…]

In Search of the Chariot Fire Burn on Mt. Laguna

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By Frank Gormlie

Like many San Diegans I watched images of the recent Chariot Fire that began on July 6th destroy sections of Mt Laguna with great concern. That mountain is one of my favorite spots in the county and I waited for the local media to give us an update on the damages that the fire caused to the natural habitat of the area along Sunrise Highway. Not satisfied with the paltry amount of news of the burn since the fire was put out, I decided to head out there myself and do a photo gallery of the destructive havoc wreaked by a wildfire.

On Friday afternoon, August 2nd, I drove east on I-8, heading for Sunrise Highway – the road that traverses Mt Laguna. With camera at the ready, I took notes in my search for the burn, holding my fears in check as I hurried towards the 6000 foot plus ridges that separated the mountains from the desert. There were sections of the mountain that I worried had been destroyed, as reports of the fire had it crossing Sunrise Highway, and eating its way west through pine forest.   [Read more…]

Baja Justice at the Borderline

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By Bob Dorn

This week, my best friend and wife and I– the two of us– spent 48 hours on a quick trip to Baja; three of those were spent in line waiting to get back into the U.S.

It was 7:30 a.m. when we had finished looping around the center of TJ and entered the river bed east of the center. We didn’t know at this point that we’d followed “San Diego” signs until they’d disappeared. We were left to ourselves to learn that the left lane would turn into a Left Turn Only lane, withdrawing us from our salvation and guarantor of freedom, the U.S.   [Read more…]

Is Your Vacation Stealing Your Life?

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By Jim Miller

Upon returning from my travels it was with some amusement that I noted the tag at the end of my “greatest hits” series of columns in June: “We’re re-running some of the best of his columns while Jim takes this ‘vacation’ thing we keep hearing about.” I was amused because I hate “vacations.”

Hate vacations? What am I crazy? No, not crazy just not a fan of the way our consumer culture steals our lives and sells them back to us. As Michael Ventura notes in his seminal essay, “Report from El Dorado”:

Our idea of “a vacation” is an idea only about 100 years old. To “vacation” is to enter an image. Las Vegas is only the most shrill embodiment of this phenomenon … People come here to step into an image, a daydream, a film-like world where “everything” is promised. No matter that the Vegas definition of “everything” is severely limited, what thrills tourists is the sense of being surrounded in “real life” by the same images they see on TV. But the same is true of the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park or Yosemite or Death Valley or virtually any of our “natural” attractions.

Indeed, when we consume packaged experiences, even the most beautiful “natural” phenomenon can be drained of any wonder. When all that was once directly lived moves away into the realm of representation, we struggle to escape from the poverty of our experience. Thus, as the Situationists put it back in the 1960s, tourism is “the chance to go see what has been made banal.”   [Read more…]

A Visit to San Diego Amusement Scenes

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The good and the bad of two of San Diego’s most popular family attractions.

By Judi Curry

For the first time in many years, I had the opportunity to baby-sit two of my grandchildren. Actually, these were two of my four great-grandchildren, and, after swimming all day the first day they stayed with me, I realized we would have to do something else or all of us would go nuts in the remaining five days. Thanks to a great friend, I was given complimentary passes for three to Sea World and, in spite of my broken shoulder, decided to drive the short distance instead of taking a bus or taxi. The tickets also included the $15 parking fee.

We parked near the entrance – or what I thought was the entrance – only to find that there was a lot of construction going on and the entrance had been moved about an eighth of a mile from where we parked. (If you have ever had a broken shoulder you know that each step jiggles the two broken bones, and you keep feeling your shoulder to see if the bones are sticking out yet.)

The letter I received told me to pick up my passes at the “Will Call” but….there was no “will call.” I asked the guide where we should go to pick them up and he looked at the huge line where “ordinary” people were picking up their tickets and said “at the end of this line.” I must have looked like I was in pain; a sling on my left arm; a brace on my right arm for my carpal tunnel, and dragging two kids – 6 and 10 – and he took pity on me. He said, “stand right there and I’ll ‘sneak’ you into a fast moving line.” Which he did. Bless him!   [Read more…]

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