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SD For Free: Brunch with Mayor Bob

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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.

  1. Location: City Hall Lobby – 202 C Street, San Diego, CA  92101 (Downtown)
  2. Free Hours: 1st Saturday of each month from 9:30 AM to Noon, starting February 2nd
  3. Best For: Pardon requests, autograph seekers, the politically active, pothole complaints
  4. Website: http://www.sandiego.gov/mayor/

In addition to many other items in his first State of the City address on January 15th, newly elected mayor of San Diego Bob Filner announced  that he will hold ‘open hours’ on the first Saturday of each month to be available to the public.  These open hours will take place in the lobby of San Diego City Hall and run from 9:30 AM to Noon.  Residents don’t need an appointment and are welcome to come and share whatever is on their mind.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Sound of One Hand Clapping at UT-San Diego

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We’ll start off today by talking about UT-San Diego, always one of my favorite topics. With advent of the New Year there are changes afoot at our local daily newspaper, changes that have me scratching my head… But hey, they’re the experts, right?

I learned via Twitter yesterday that Manchester’s minions are now required to gain management approval should any TV or radio station ask them to comment on pretty much anything. It seems as though UT-San Diego has done a deal with Clear Channel, one of the mega-corporate media meisters. Although they operate a half-dozen or so outlets locally, what we’re really talking about is giving KOGO (home to Rush Limbaugh and other righties in San Diego) and XTRA Sports radio first shot at any UT staffers.

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Will the NRA Advocate Bringing Along Your Weapons While Christmas Shopping?

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The news this morning is dominated by stories about a man in Oregon who wandered into a shopping mall dressed in camouflage and starting firing off rounds, killing two shoppers. Eventually, police told the news media, he was ‘neutralized’, which turns out to be policespeak for ‘he killed himself.’

Enough already, I say. There isn’t much we can do about that young man’s mental illness in retrospect, but there is plenty that can be done about the people enabling unfettered access to firearms. I say its time we scare those cockroaches out from under their rocks and take a close look at the damage they’ve wrought on our society.

Mind you, this little rant is not about gun control. That’s a subject that requires a little more nuanced conversation, one that’s impossible as long as people tolerate the pinheads that make up the leadership of the NRA.

I’m talking about the simply outrageous crap that gets passed off in the name of defending our “Second Amendment Rights”. While the tinfoil set has been stockpiling ammunition and sending mass emails to AOL accounts about the Obama administration’s plans to enforce a mythical United Nations mandate that will take everybody’s guns away, the gun lobby has been busy making sure that there are no reasonable (or discussions about) restrictions on firearms.   [Read more…]

Our Readers Write: Earthquakes, Faults, and Misguided Development in San Diego

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by Eleanora Robbins (La Mesa)

Italy isn’t the only place making dumb decisions over earthquake prediction. Here in San Diego, never-ending broken utility lines and stinky sewers are occurring because our local and state government officials have suspended their responsibility for oversight of development on known and suspected faults downtown.

Surprisingly, the City and Port of San Diego actually funded studies of downtown faults but refuse to release them. The reason? They probably don’t want to turn down potential development money and the resulting property taxes. Even non-geologists can see the cracks in the asphalt and cement adjacent to the Navy Broadway Complex and Tailgate Park. Geologists like myself see that the cracks have a distinctive pattern, thereby displaying the traces of some of these unmapped faults.
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Sordid Saga of Judicial Candidate Jim Miller, Jr.

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San Diego’s legal establishment is rolling out the big guns today at a noon press conference on the sidewalk in front of the Superior Court building downtown. They’re gathering a gaggle of retired judges, prominent attorneys and past heads of the local Bar Association to make sure that the public is aware that judicial candidate Jim Miller, Jr. has been rated as “Lacking qualifications” in the race for Office 25 of the San Diego Superior Court.

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Want to Make San Diego More Bike Friendly? Lose the Helmets!

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There’s been a lot of discussion in San Diego lately about making the city more bike friendly.  Mayor Sanders held a media event not long ago touting a public “bike sharing’ program, a low cost rental system that could encompass downtown, the beach areas and midtown by next spring.  Three bike ‘corrals” that allow riders to safely park their bicycle in crowded urban neighborhoods have been opened recently. And it would appear that the people in charge of the area’s roads are starting to take a more serious look at making the streets more user friendly to riders.

From the venerable New York Times Sunday Review comes an article suggesting that, if we truly want to succeed in making the San Diego area more bike-centric, we should look at what many will consider a heretical idea: lose the helmets.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Poll Shows Filner Gaining in Mayoral Race as The City Goes to Hell

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Mayoral candidate DeMaio continues to consolidate his support among the downtown business types that he campaigned against during the primary. The ‘reformer’ who was going to take on the ‘entrenched interests’ in San Diego is now actively courting the Chamber of Commerce types. So it came as no big surprise yesterday when current Mayor Jerry Sanders swallowed his pride and appeared before the press to bless DeMaio’s candidacy.
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Meanwhile, in the only good news I have to report today, a Survey USA poll released yesterday by TV 10News indicates Congressman Bob Filner is widening his lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio in the race for San Diego’s top spot.  Voters reached by telephone for the survey favored Filner over DeMaio by a 12 point margin, 50 to 38%, with the Congressman showing significant gains among women, Hispanic and white voters over the past month.  The poll says that 12 percent of voters remain undecided and that those who formerly supported candidate Nathan Fletcher now support Filner by a 2 to 1 margin..   [Read more…]

Ruocco Park – San Diego’s Newest Park, Right on the Waterfront

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An official ceremony at 10 a.m on Thursday, Sept. 20, featured San Diego officials cutting the ribbon to welcome the public to Ruocco Park. Located at the intersection of West Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway, the park covers 3.3 acres and offers views of the San Diego Bay, Coronado Island, and downtown San Diego.

Ruocco Park was funded jointly by the Port of San Diego, the San Diego Foundation, and the downtown Hyatt. The Port contributed $3.3 million and the Hyatt contributed $.5 million. The San Diego Foundation contributed $3.5 million, $1 million of which is reserved for funding future maintenance. The funds from the San Diego Foundation allowed for the installation of public art and upgrades to the park that would not have been possible with the Port and Hyatt funding alone. Ruocco Park is the 18th public park located on Port land and brings the total amount of land dedicated to parks to 153 acres.

(Photo gallery inside)   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Bubba-licious: Clinton Schools Republicans with Arithmetic, History

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“Now, people ask me all the time how we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic.”

 Former President Bill Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention last night and systematically dismembered the Republican Party’s memes, schemes and misrepresentations that make up the body of their work in building a case against the Obama administration and for electing the men at the top of their ticket. In a fifty minute speech that strayed significantly from the version released in advance to the press, the former chief executive effectively used all the rhetorical skills in his arsenal to argue for another four years of Democratic control of the White House.

I have plenty of reservations about Bill Clinton’s tenure as President; his role in de-regulation of the financial industry and his shortsightedness about the repercussions of NAFTA immediately come to mind. But when it comes to his ability to mount a political offensive, nobody in recent memory can top the combination of ah-shucks populism and wonk-like command of facts that was on display last night.   [Read more…]

Reader’s Response: Living Artists, Zombie Redevelopment, Community Pushback

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Editor: This is a Reader’s Response to Jim Bliesner’s article, “Whatever Happened to Downtown Artists? The Experiences of Three Creative Souls Who Survived .

By Remigia Bermúdez

I take my hat off to Jim Bliesner for all that he has done and continues to do for humanity, including but not limited to, the Arts (locally and globally), job creation, non-profits creation, financial institutions’ re-investments into our communities, higher level educational institutions and a host of other avaunt-guard ideas and ideologies that enhance our livelihoods in the San Diego-Baja California transnational region.   [Read more…]

Whatever Happened to Downtown Artists? The Experiences of Three Creative Souls Who Survived

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By Jim Bliesner

It is a familiar story to hear about how artists settle in unwanted areas of major cities, occupy unused space, and begin to create excitement and a sense of uniqueness and a creative spirit. Eventually developers arrive to capitalize on the aura. What happens to the artists who were the urban pioneers? I interviewed three artists who are downtown or were there in the past. Their experiences cover a period of twenty or thirty years and provide lessons for artists today.   [Read more…]

The San Diego Public Market – A Force for Good (Food) Rising in Barrio Logan

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It’s a project that many would say, for a city of San Diego’s size and agricultural abundance, is one long overdue.

By John P Anderson

UDATE: 10:15AM- The San Diego Public Market has surpassed its fundraising goal.

The Barrio Logan neighborhood, just on the south side of Downtown San Diego, has a history similar to Little Italy, just on the north side of downtown. Both communities were severely damaged by the construction of Interstate 5 in the early 1970s. In the case of Barrio Logan, the Interstate construction lead to the creation of Chicano Park as a protest response to the development of the highway and damage done to the community as a result.   [Read more…]

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