Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Mayor a No-Show at Second Community Forum
Did Dep COO Jarrell show up at the second meeting? If so, did he mention again, as in the first meeting, cutting off the Community Plan Updates? From what I've seen of all of the CPUs and the work of their highly paid consultants, that could be money well saved. In all of these CPUs, the City's only goal is to change zoning and ordinances to allow more dense development (infill) in older neighborhoods ringing downtown. The warm and fuzzy kindergarten classroom exercises created by the consultants, at"visioning" public meetings, is pretense. The vision has already been defined by the developers and by ULI.— October 20, 2010 10:20 a.m.
San Diego’s pension fund expects to earn 7.75 percent a year
Thanks, Don, for providing the important distinctions between public and private unions.— October 13, 2010 1:41 p.m.
Heartless & Uneasy
NPP - the best buys on veggies, hands down. Next best, with less diversity but some things NPP doesn't have, is Gala. PV is great, too. I'm a loyal fan of NPP and accept the sometimes grubby atmosphere and all. The customers are diverse, the checkers and workers are for real, and the items are from all over the world. They have some Russian bread that is so hard and heavy that you could use it for self-defense. Haven't tried it yet...anyone have a review?— October 12, 2010 1:27 p.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
HC: I think our respective eponymous creations say it all. You are worlds apart from what I believe is good or what I deem worthy of much attention. Coyness will get you a nest of raccoons.— October 1, 2010 7:25 p.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
#16, Just about everything in San Diego is paid for, one way or another, by developers...including SOHO. The Grand Jury, however, is not an arm of the developer community, even if some developer was on the GJ. Get honest about your claims. Among SOHO's members are many, many builders, architects, and developers, all of whom make a living by remodeling, building, and developing. Some of what is done is great, and much appreciated. But the abuse of the Mills Act in San Diego by these same people, courtesy of their friends in the City, is unprecedented and harmful. These SOHO-loyal Mills Act tax-break recipients have a network of developer/realtor friends who make a living "researching" properties and obtaining the necessary info at the ridiculously low bar-level set by the City to get the tax break. They blatantly advertise the great deal that can be had due to this tax break in the real estate ads. Even "Mills Act eligible!" is proffered as a justification for exorbitant pricing for-sale properties. Almost every one of the tax-break recipients can well afford to enhance their properties without the tax break. One of them whom I personally know receives over $7000/year in tax break, and still has plenty of money to vacation several times a year - the Galapagos, Japan, and Hawaii, just this year. They could and should pay their tax share, too.— October 1, 2010 10:27 a.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
The saddest loss in San Diego was the 1899 Carnegie Library: https://www.sandiegohistory.org/timeline/images/f… Andrew Carnegie donated $60,000 to build San Diego Public Library, the first of his libraries west of the Mississippi. It opened in 1902 at Eighth and E. It was demolished in 1952, to build our current downtown library. Unbelievable. We could have retained it and built a new, larger library. Anyone know why that didn't happen that way?— September 30, 2010 9:28 a.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
The SOHO link: http://sohosandiego.org/endangered/mel2009/founta…— September 30, 2010 9:13 a.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
Fred, I agree that SOHO is a valuable organization. But as usual in San Diego, even the good things are tainted by self-serving people. SOHO has members from Greater Golden Hill who are also on the board of, or are members of, the GGH Community Development Corp. Thus SOHO published an article (author unnamed, but pretty sure it was one of the CDC people) that had incorrect historical info, to further a particular goal of the CDC. The GGHCDC people had long wanted to "restore" the remains of an old fountain that was installed in Golden Hill park in 1907/1908. They obtained grant money for the fountain from San Diego Foundation in 1998, but no one seems to know where that money went, and the fountain wasn't restored. In 2007, the GGHCDC got a maintenance assessment district imposed on 3500 property owners in GGH (~488K/year), and published their plan to use some of those assessment funds to restore the fountain. That was not legal, of course, being that the fountain is on City-owned property and outside of the assessment district. Nevertheless, the PR campaign was full speed ahead, employing Ken Kramer (who reported that it would require over $100K to restore the fountain)and SOHO. The SOHO article (http://sohosandiego.org/endangered/mel2009/founta…) incorrectly stated that the fountain was on the National Register. It is not. The article incorrectly attributes the fountain (a 4-foot-diameter non-native rock pit down in a ravine) "site" to architect Henry Lord Gay, but there is no proof of that. It says the "native stone and concrete stairs are decomposing" but they are not: they are as solid and ugly as they always were. And laughably, the article complains that the "view from the road is blocked by random, rogue bushes." Well, that's because the whole thing was originally constructed in a ravine. When SOHO allows itself to be used for propaganda, and publishes historically incorrect PR puff pieces, to benefit groups who want tax dollars to pay for some project, they destroy their credibility as a true historic preservation group.— September 30, 2010 9:12 a.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
Re the Mills Act and taxes ["a significant and growing loss of tax revenue to the city via the Mills Act property tax reassessments (20%-70% per parcel)]": everyone should go back a few years and read the March 2008 Grand Jury Report findings: "Our investigation revealed that the main reasons for individual property owners to seek historic designation for their property are: 1. Large houses that are out of scale for the neighborhood. 2. Nostalgia for a relative’s family house. 3. A real interest in history. 4. For speculative purposes. (After reassessment the owner can sell the property at a significant profit due to a lowered property tax assessment.) 5. To save on taxes. The fourth reason given above seems to be the most prevalent: a significant number of the properties that the HRB investigates have been recently purchased. While the first reason might have its own logic, we fail to see what it has to do with history. Family estates may hold lots of fond memories for the immediate family, but how much history does it contain for San Diego? According to figures provided by the San Diego County Tax Assessors Office, with respect to the number of properties designated as historic, the City of San Diego compares with some other cities in the state of California as follows: San Diego 676 Los Angeles 265 Glendale 20 San Francisco 2 Coronado 27"— September 30, 2010 7:28 a.m.
SOHO vs. Developers: What’s Worth Saving in San Diego?
Great article: I have a good example of SOHO's phony positioning, in order to promote one of their friend's political goals. Will post it tomorrow or soon, when I get the time.— September 29, 2010 6:14 p.m.