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The Best Bicycle Ride Around Mission Bay

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A Tour of the Best Bicycle Route Around San Diego’s Aquatic Playland

By Frank Gormlie

This started out as a chronicle – complete with a photo journal – of the best bicycle ride around Mission Bay. I had planned to post nearly one hundred photos with complete descriptions and commentary – but due to a glitch in our programs, I was having too many problems to present all the pics. So, I temporarily shelved that idea and gravitated to a briefer version, this one. (As you peruse the photos, be sure to click on them for larger versions to view.)

The tour I now present around Mission Bay is a great one and it is a ride that has been honed by me and a few riding friends over the last three decades – since the early Eighties.

It is a ride along a route that has a minimum of traffic and street exposure, and it is a route that is practically 13 miles round trip from the Ocean Beach Skateboard Park in Robb Field.

  [Read more…]

Pacific Beach Planning Group and Local Residents Fight Bar Expansions

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By Sub-committee

Wednesday, April 10, Bill Allen – owner of the Crystal Pier Motel – and other residents called a press conference at the pier to help expose a simmering problem in Pacific Beach to the larger community. Allen and many other concerned residents have over the last while voiced their complaints about Scott Slaga – owner of the 710 Club (ex-Blind Melons) near the Crystal Pier – in his efforts to obtain a sidewalk encroachment variance for his establishment.

Allen and the complaining residents have issues caused, they contend, by encroachments for bars, problems such as the high crime stats and high noise impact, to lowered property values to no room on the sidewalks for people to walk to the beach.

This is all in preparation for the city council vote today, April 11, on whether or not to allow Slaga to obtain his sidewalk encroachment variance.
  [Read more…]

Shout-out at the PB Corral – Residents Fight for Conditional Booze Permits

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By sub-committee

The corral for easy police DUI checkpoints, and multi-other crime/infractions, from public urination and vandalism, to armed robberies and violence, (sponsored the city penal industry) due to the alcohol party ambiance that been the sustained reputation of Pacific Beach for the past 20+ years , has become the focus for a grassroots citizen protest in the form of, yes, a good old PUBLIC PETITION to request/demand the city and the state to establish local control of alcohol licensing, in the form of the “C.U.P.” (Conditional Use Permit).

“After years of protest to the officials in both state and local agencies, including our own judicial forum, and getting no responsible answers from them to a problem that was getting worse and worse, we have decided to organize THE PEOPLE,” said Scott Chipman, one of the chief organizers of this grassroots endeavor.   [Read more…]

SDFP Exclusive – Jean Marc Barr: Cruise Control, Soul Grind, and Jack Kerouac

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By Micaela Shafer Porte

Jean Marc Barr, international French/American film actor and director, and part-time Pacific Beach, California local, loves Pacific Beach for its mellowness and great skateboarding.  “San Diego is the place where ‘nothing’ is supposed to happen.  It is a nice break from my hectic life, living out of suitcase, travelling around the world. “  He is here for the holidays, in preparation for attending the Sundance  Independent Film Festival 2013, in his latest role as Jack Kerouac  in the film, Big Sur, which is being presented on January 23.

“I started skateboarding late in life, at the age of 42, because I was inspired by my nephew, Oliver, and I needed a physical activity to keep me in shape during my stays with my family in California.  Entering my 40’s, I felt “vulnerable,” so wanted to try a new sport, a dangerous one, as a challenge…”   [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…]

Pacific Beach Sub-Committee Report: October 2012

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By Sub-Committee/Special to the San Diego Free Press

The Destiny of Density

Shoulders were shrugged as the Pacific Beach sub-committee for commercial and residential projects approved a new 4 bedroom+den/4 bath single family town house, with 2 “carport” parking spaces, on Oliver Avenue by the bay. No closed “garage” as to allow the maximum square footage for the habitation. Minimum required “yard.” Discussion as to how many cars will actually be “living there” ensued, but as the plans were in compliance with the existing building codes, shoulders were shrugged, and plans were approved. All expectations are for an increase in density in this zone.   [Read more…]

Pacific Beach or “Pee Beach”: Common Sense – You drink a lot, you pee a lot.

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By Sub-Committee

Thank God for the recent rains (and I mean that, God) because Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach after 6 rainless months smelled like a dirty toilet. After the heavenly cleaning, the sidewalks are much brighter and even the scraped off vomit stains are slightly improved, and most of all it cut down on the underlying stench. It is not God’s fault that all the filth washed right down the storm drains 5,4,3,2,1 blocks to dump right on the beautiful sandy beaches of Pacific Beach, it is our fault.

Y’all understand that you shouldn’t really go swimming in the ocean after a rain because of unsanitary microbes, right? I would go so far as to say, don’t be touching the sand in the drain pipe areas either if you know what’s good for you and your children.

Welcome to Pacific Beach, or Pee Beach as we have begun calling it around here.   [Read more…]

Pacific Beach Planning Board Resists City Builders’ Plans for Beach Development

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For the moment, city plans to develop the coastal cliff beach at Law St. in North Pacific Beach, with another new live-in lifeguard tower and garages, have met with an equally divided planning board, 7-7, with the tie vote cast by the board president, in a heated debate at the last PB Planning Board meeting, July 25, 2012, at the PB library community room.

Planning Board members, trying to balance the needs of the lifeguards and public safety, and city contractor jobs, with the obvious coastal erosion and rising ocean level concerns evident at this beach, decided to delay consideration of this project until more information can be provided. Questions as to the true nature and need of the project before a site could be chosen were at the forefront of the dilemma.   [Read more…]

Pacific Beach Planning Board Tackles “Garage Morphing”, Lifeguard Stations, and Less Beach

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By Sub-Committee / Special to San Diego Free Press

The second, and last, item on the agenda of the very recent Pacific Beach Planning Board sub-committee for the re-development of the North Pacific Beach lifeguard station at Law St. was to do with a complaint from some local resident at some other local resident for erecting a temporary car shelter, of the canopy type, I imagine, and morphing it into a more permanent garage in their driveway or front yard, without a permit, of course.

This must also be the sub-committee for code compliance. The committee members seemed of a mind to propose a change in the city “garage morphing” building codes, rather than trying to enforce existing city ordinances, (“morphing” anything into something else is the best way to get around all these ridiculous governmental laws they keep making!) and as a second thought, suggested calling “the TURKO Files” to complain, as Mr. Turko seems to be the only one willing to question bureaucratic policies, and actually get something done about it… thank you Mr. Turko!   [Read more…]

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