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Not All Kids Steal

Re: “Steal Beer and Die,” June 30 cover story

Let me tell you something. “Just over the point of not being a misdemeanor” is grand theft, okay? If I had not read your article where he was caught running at her in an attack position, I still would have not have found for her or her kid.

My children did not steal when they were teens. One daughter stole when she was ten years old. I took her to the store and made an example out of her, and the others were too damn afraid to do anything. Not all children steal, and not all mothers tell their children that it’s okay, that “my four brothers did it.”

I’m tired of people who think they can break the law, and so is the jury.

• Kae Dean
• via voicemail

Meanwhile in La Mesa...

Just a note about your La Mesa Neighborhood News. While you’re up there celebrating the Eiffel Tower and the new park, four businesses have closed their shops this week. Gee, what are you smoking?

• Jerry Lester
• via voicemail

The Usurping of Public Land

I read with interest your recent story on boulders and revetement (rip-rap) on the beach.

I worked on a project about 15 years ago for Port of San Diego. We had to map the boundary and property lines of Imperial Beach in relation to houses on the beach. (One property was owned by a former IB mayor.) It turned out that the majority of houses (not condos or apartments) encroached on public lands, in this case, the beach.

The beachfront is “owned” by the property owner, including boulders. However, revetement is owned by California Coastal Commission, not by the property owner. You should look into this issue by going to www.californiacoastline.org to see an aerial view. You can superimpose boundary lines by getting a map from Port and comparing. The real story is the usurping of public lands by private ownership.

• Name withheld
• Otay Mesa

Circus-Style Football Stadiums

I’m calling about Don Bauder’s article, “Combined Convention Centers, Stadiums Don’t Work”

As a kid, we always looked forward to the circus coming to town. For free tickets, we’d go out early and help the rowdies raise up the big top. I think we should apply this same concept to football, which is now called “American group sumo” — you can take that to its logical conclusion: Why not have mobile circuses? Only now, make them stadiums and convention centers.

Get rid of the two small rings of the circus and make it just one giant ring in the center, which would be the football field where the game is played. You could set up and tear down the enormous tents (big tops — really big tops!) and trot them around to the cities that need a novel stadium or convention center.

What’s not to like with the so-called entitled, white- bread, billionaire owners? They’d be lowering the costs of sticking the taxpayers with an innovative venue. You wouldn’t have all the costs of the brick and mortar and asphalt of new stadiums.

How about the players? Seventy percent now are black in the NFL. The vast majority of the players trade a few days of big paydays for rest-of-their-life grief: concussions, plus. I bet you that, before long, the greedy capitalist owners would have the mangled-for-life ex-players drop out and set up just outside the big top in freak sideshows for the jump-crowd fans who are out for blood, and could enjoy the fruits of the hits, hits, and more hits.

• Teddy Rodosovich
• via voicemail

Agenda 21

What to do with De Anza Cove? I think we should turn it back into a sloppy, mosquito-infested swampland. I mean, that’s what the new world order wants, isn’t it? Agenda 21? Or maybe put in a stack-and-pack, 5000-unit high-density housing condo-type place Pack everybody in like rats. Whatever we say won’t make a difference.

• John
• via voicemail

Unreal Property Tax

I’m checking out the section you call “Unreal Estate,” that you run every month about gnarly mansions. Any chance you guys could tell us what the property taxes are on these properties when you list them?

• Ronald
• Barrio Logan