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Riding the Rails in the West – The State of Amtrak

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Part 1: Are We There Yet?

By JEC / Special to the San Diego Free Press

Its 6am – still dark with a morning fog when we board the Pacific Surfliner in San Diego. While there is a train leaving at 6:35 am, Amtrak urges passengers booked on the Coast Starlight to take the first train out at 6 am, likely based on experience with frequent delays. But today’s train leaves on time with a few dozen blurry eyed passengers. We were bound for Chicago via Oakland.

Days before we departed, I had mentioned to my doctor I was about to leave on a train trip, from San Diego to Chicago via Oakland. He looked up, surprised, “what, you can do that, take a train from here to Chicago?”

  [Read more…]

San Diego For Free: Walking – It Does a Body (and Mind) Good

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Walking – It Does a Body (and Mind) Good

Address & Neighborhood: Anywhere
Best For: Ramblers, wanderers, cubicle dwellers, homebodies, lost souls
Free times: Anytime

In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.
– John Muir

One of the most simple and enjoyable activities that is good for both body and mind is walking. Living in San Diego affords the opportunity to stretch your legs anytime of year, indeed any day.   [Read more…]

Celebrating the 30 Foot Height Limit As It Turns 40

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The room was packed, standing room only the other night as the OB Historical Society led all of us in a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit. The downstairs community room of the Methodist Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. opens its doors every month to the OBHS presentations, and the night of November 15th was no exception as Society president Pat James welcomed the crowd.

Nearly 50 OBceans and friends had come to hear speakers and presentations on this historic fight four decades ago to preserve San Diego’s coast, and I saw many people in the audience who had waged their own battles to save OB over the years.

After a few brief announcements, Pat introduced the main speaker, Alex Leondis, who was one of the main organizers in the effort to place the thirty-foot limit on coastal construction onto conservative San Diego’s ballot – way back in the early 1970’s. The initiative did pass in 1972 – marking this year as its 40th birthday.   [Read more…]

Dancing on the Playing Fields

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The other day I turned a game on just as some dude was standing over a quarterback he had sacked and before I could sit down he commenced to prancing around like James Cagney portraying George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy or, to the young crowd, like Chris Brown doing the James Brown. Then I saw the score and this guy’s team was about 30 points down.

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Readers Write: San Diego Community and Workers Stand Up and Speak Out Against Walmart

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This article was submitted to us via our Facebook Page.

On Friday, November 23, 2012, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, community members and workers protested outside of several Wal-Mart locations throughout the country.

In San Diego the community focused on ten locations including one located in the College Grove shopping center.  As shoppers came into the store community members greeted them with stickers for shoppers to wear inside the store that read “We Support Wal-Mart Workers”.  Many of the community were very supportive and one shopper said “she would wear the sticker proudly and ask management why they retaliated against it’s own employees”.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Sorry Republicans, Being Nice to Latinos Won’t Save You from Extinction

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Tax fighter and former libertarian Richard Rider took the virtual podium at conserve blog SDRostra this weekend to ruminate about and refute the notion that the Republican Party is headed for extinction.

He starts out by comparing the GOP’s defeat with Barry Goldwater with its most recent losses, noting that, despite predictions of doom and gloom, the party did rise again. In the 1964 election LBJ received 61.1% of the national popular vote

And I agree with Rider that one electoral loss, no matter how lopsided, does not equate with the death of a political party.   [Read more…]

Christmas on Earth? Try Buying Nothing

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Here we go again: the day after Black Friday was filled with the now all-too-familiar news of shopping mayhem.

There was the man who threatened to stab his fellow shoppers for pushing his kids outside a Sacramento K-mart, the melee of frenzied Georgia shoppers mauling each other to get at a stack of cell phones in a Walmart, the trampling that followed after a man brandished a gun in a line outside a Sears in Texas, the gang fight in a Michigan mall, arrests of hysterical consumers in Florida, the vicious brawling over lingerie, etc. etc.

This ritual has come to define us as much or more than Thanksgiving.   [Read more…]

Twinkies’ Twisted Tale: Junk Food Devoured By Junk Bonds

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All the late night talk shows laughed it up over the supposed demise of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread etc as the news came out that Hostess Brands was going bankrupt. But delve beneath the surface and you will find something more akin to a Shakespearean tragedy than talk show banter. It’s a tale involving two unions, one private equity fund, two hedge funds and a whole cast of former CEOs. There is sacrifice, greed and betrayal. 18,000 workers will be losing their jobs while some vulture capitalists will be walking away with millions. Another vulture capitalist will itself have been devoured in the process.   [Read more…]

Spreckels Organ Concerts – Outdoor Auditory Enjoyment in Balboa Park

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Spreckels Organ Concerts – Outdoor Auditory Enjoyment in Balboa Park

Best For: Music players, music listeners, picnickers, people watchers

Free concert times: Sundays at 2pm, see Website for additional special performances

2215 Pan American Road San Diego, CA 92101, Balboa Park

Every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park is the site of a free organ concert, performed by Dr. Carol Williams, the San Diego Civic Organist since 2001.   [Read more…]

Labor Council Head Lorena Gonzalez: ‘San Diego Progressives Have a Lot to Be Thankful For’

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Passage of Prop 30, Defeat of Prop 32 and Bilbray, Filner and Roberts Victories All Are Cause to Celebrate

By Lorena Gonzalez

San Diego’s progressive community has a lot to be thankful for this November. We passed Proposition 30, defeated Proposition 32, took down Brian Bilbray and elected Bob Filner our next mayor! And for good measure, we elected Dave Roberts as the first Democrat and first fresh blood of any kind on the county Board of Supervisors in two decades.

In the process, we swept through dozens of school board and city council races across the region and elected leaders like Dr. Shirley Weber to continue the good work in Sacramento – now with a supermajority that has the ability to break the stranglehold of Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge.
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The Elections are Over. Will City Heights Get “Stuff” with their Pizza?

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Last Tuesday I walked the four blocks from my house to Euclid Elementary School in City Heights to vote. The election notices were in five different languages and the citizens lined up in the hallway were conversing in those languages. Young people had small children in tow and pushed baby carriages. Elderly people moved slowly using canes and walkers. The poll workers were all young and ethnically and racially diverse; the voting process went smoothly and quickly. Despite all of my anxieties regarding the electoral outcomes, I felt that “rush of democracy” Megan Burks described so well in her Speak City Heights article about election day in City Heights.   [Read more…]

Down the San Diego County Ballot – Results of Races Endorsed by Labor and Democrats

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A week or so after the November 6th election, we can now decipher a more whole picture of how San Diego County voted – and look at the results of those races where candidates were endorsed by the San Diego Labor Council* and/ or the Democratic Party. And we also can see just how extensive Barack Obama’s coattails were. Just who were the winners and losers down the ballot – the lesser knowns running in those smaller cities and school boards scattered across this huge county?
City Races

Chula Vista – Both candidates endorsed by Labor and the Dems won handily: Pamela Bensoussan with 60% of the vote and Mary Salas with 58%.

Coronado – Casey Tanaka, endorsed by the Labor Council and the Democratic Party for mayor, won in a landslide with 70%.
  [Read more…]

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