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San Diego inches closer to abolishing bicycle licensing law
The fee to be paid for registration and licensing of any bicycle in San Diego is $2.00. There is a $1.00 fee for transfer of ownership. Up here, the LA City Council repealed a requirement to license bikes in the city,at a charge of $3.00, about 3 yrs ago.— October 10, 2012 11:14 p.m.
Ocean Beach Pier Jump Goes Unpunished
L.A. county lifeguards, yes they do. They can issue citations and make arrests. OC, I don't know, some are city, some are county, and at HB state beach they are the State Parks Lifeguard Service.. According to the SD city website, " In 1952, the Municipal Code made it unlawful to refuse to follow or comply with any lawful order, signal, or other direction of a lifeguard. In 1972, a Municipal Code section was added to give lifeguards the specific title of public officer; with the right to arrest for misdemeanors and infractions. This also gave lifeguards the right to release those arrested on their written promise to appear in court at a future time. In other words, lifeguards were given the right to issue citations. In the same year, lifeguards assigned to harbor patrol functions were designated as harbor police, which eventually made these lifeguards peace officers."— October 9, 2012 2:57 p.m.
SD Gas Prices Soar Past 94-Year Record
Don Bauder, what commodities AREN'T manipulated? That's exactly why I stay away from them, for the most part, anyway.— October 9, 2012 9:23 a.m.
Ocean Beach Pier Jump Goes Unpunished
Virtually no one arrest pier or bridge jumpers. Most of the time, it's the LG's and they might or might not give out a citation; just depends on your attitude. I don't know bout SD, but LA and OC cops don't want the bother of hooking someone up, unless they are intoxicated or obviously a danger to themselves. I did read a couple of summers ago that some guy got hit with a $500 fine, but I think he was a serial jumper. Over the years, I've seen a lot of guys jump off Huntington with their boards, just to take a short cut to get outside. Usually the LG's will just wait for them to come in and give them a warning and unless they do it again, they're fine.— October 9, 2012 9:20 a.m.
Lawsuit filed to block construction of new stadium for Padres' AAA team
Maybe it's just the way I read the headline, but the lawsuit wasn't filed to block the construction of the stadium. The lawsuit asks for a permanent injunction ordering the city to halt its plans to raze City Hall, and to allow voters to decide whether to build the Triple-A baseball stadium at the site. Yeah, I know maybe it's just semantics, but the two bring completely different pictures to mind. I haven't read about the reference you make in your second paragraph. What I have read that the El Paso City Council in September approved the contract with MountainStar Sports Group for the lease of the ballpark, which the council in June agreed to build if the investors secured the team. The allegations that I have read are that city manager Wilson and city reps Niland and Ortega "connived, conspired, counseled with and willfully acted in concert with each other, specifically to deny, abrogate, diminish or otherwise impair" the plaintiffs' "liberty interest and right to effective suffrage under the Voting Rights Act.", that other city representatives who voted in favor of the ballpark and building it where City Hall now stands violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights to vote on the matter and by not vetoing the vote, so did Mayor Cook. They also allege that city manager Wilson's "personal and political activities are grounded in animus which she feels and displays toward Mexican-American-Chicano members of the city's population", claiming that Wilson conspired with several non-Hispanic marketing and architectural firms to direct the revitalization plans for Downtown El Paso, including to use the city's powers of eminent domain to take over several neighborhoods in the Segundo Barrio. As I said, all of that paints a completely different picture of the situation to me.— October 9, 2012 9 a.m.
SD Gas Prices Soar Past 94-Year Record
I agree that the "problems" are not politically inspired. I believe part of the problem is their age. The last new oil refinery in California was built at least 35 yrs ago. There was a new refinery being proposed for the Yuma area, but it stalled out last year. Another was being talked about for South Dakota, but that company let it's land options expire at the end of last month. There is a lawsuit over the air quality permits that is before the state supreme court that might have had something to do with it. Either of those 2 refineries would have been the first to be go online since 1976. I think there are about 135 refineries in the US, give or take a couple, which is down from somewhere around 250 about 30 yrs ago. The figure is a little misleading, because even though the number of refineries is down, according to DOE, capacity has increased by about 800k barrels per day. I think part of the issue id than when you are running fewer refineries at higher level of operating capacity, when one goes down, for either scheduled or unscheduled reasons, the drain on the rest of the system is greater. Plus operating the plants at a higher capacity requires more frequent "routine" maintenance and , so it seems, more frequent breakdowns because they are being operated at a higher capacity. You add to that the lack of refining capacity here in California and the relative dirth of pipelines gasoline pipelines into Ca. and you get what we have right now. Just my opinion. Opinions vary.— October 8, 2012 11:07 a.m.
Party with Centerfolds
We had the opportunity to chat with Pete Thorkelson earlier this year. He was at Barret-Jackson in Scottsdale. Someone was selling a copy of the Monkee Mobile and he was there with that. He had said back then that Davey was working on a reunion tour for next year and that it looked good for Mike to be there. We will be going the the Monkees show at the Greek next month.— October 8, 2012 10 a.m.
San Diego, one of the five richest cities in the U.S. Wow. Details?
Well, It's about 30ish miles down to Cupertino where one of our friends works and I guess about 20 miles or so into into SF where the other one works. And yeah the cost of living is pretty much sky high. I think the total index is around 190. Most everything is pretty close to the rest of Ca., which means it's above the national average, except for housing, which is totally outrageous. Our friends have lived here for at least 20 yrs, probably closer to 25. They are lucky though. We remember when they bought their house. I think they looked for a coupe of years before they found what they wanted. They bought an old Victorian. I don't know how much they paid, but I know they bought it fairly cheaply because it needed a lot of work. By a lot, I mean to us it was barely liveable, imo. But that's what they were looking for. We've put in some hard hours with them on more than one occasion, but it turned out really nice. It took them probably ten years to do everything they wanted. When they were finished, they had a big party for all of their friends that helped to celebrate that it was finally done and that they had also paid off their mortgage. So with no house payment, they would be looking pretty good even if they didn't make a lot of money In any case, as far as I'm concerned, cost of living would be a small factor in deciding where to live. I don't care how cheap it is, if it doesn't have what I want I wouldn't live there regardless.— October 8, 2012 9:41 a.m.
San Diego, one of the five richest cities in the U.S. Wow. Details?
To each their own. We've been to all of them since about mid June, and as I said they aren't bad places, it's just for us, having a lower cost of living than the national average, which is what began the conversation, wouldn't be enough to entice us to live in any of them. We're up in Burlingame right now, and personally, for my money, I would choose to live here before choosing either of the four cities I mentioned. More enticements here, I suppose.— October 7, 2012 10:07 p.m.
San Diego, one of the five richest cities in the U.S. Wow. Details?
Yuma's not a bad little place; been there many times. Heat is no problem for us. We used to drive down from Palm Springs when the Padres held spring training there when the Angels weren't at home in PS.— October 6, 2012 1:20 p.m.