Posted 3 years, 1 month ago in the late afternoon by oso
Update:
Well, I obviously put this one up in a hurry this afternoon. Now the Breen comic is below, I linked to HP’s post on Racial Tensions in LA, and I just copied and pasted the election results below. Looks like it’s gonna be a runoff election between Donna Frye and Jerry Sanders. Probably the two most qualified candidates.
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MAYOR - UNEXPIRED TERM
713 of 721 precincts – 98.9 percent
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| DONNA FRYE | 103925 | 43.28% |
| JERRY SANDERS | 64896 | 27.02% |
| STEVE FRANCIS | 56485 | 23.52% |
| PAT SHEA | 5690 | 2.37% |
| RICHARD RIDER | 3733 | 1.55% |
| MYKE SHELBY | 3506 | 1.46% |
| SHAWN A. MC MILLAN | 559 | 0.23% |
| JIM BELL | 469 | 0.20% |
| ED KOLKER | 413 | 0.17% |
| JEREMY LEDFORD | 376 | 0.16% |
| THOMAS KNAPP | 98 | 0.04% |
I just got done voting. Maybe you’ve heard about this, maybe you haven’t, but San Diego is in shambles. It’s pretty amazing really. Last November the majority of San Diegans voted for a sorta wacky former “surfer chick” (the media cannot stop saying “surfer chick”), but a select view forgot to bubble in the little oval by the line where they wrote her name so the courts said they obviously didn’t really wanna vote for her, they just wrote her name in for fun.
Which means we got this guy named Dick Murphy to be our mayor again. Only thing exciting about this guy is his first name. Really, dead, floating goldfish are more stimulating. It took the courts a long time to decide whether or not to let Dick run San Diego. Then when they finished, Dick realized he gives the entire city narcolepsy when he speaks and resigns.
Then councilman, Michael Zucchet becomes his temporary replacement … for less than a week. Which is when another court made the obvious decision that homeboy got mad campaign donations from Las Vegas quasi-mafia for letting dirty old men touch dirty young strippers right next to my favorite greek restaurant.
Now Toni Atkins is acting mayor. People like her, but no one wants to have to look at her for an extended period of time (ok, that was mean, but it was the UT this morning that put such emphasis on the fact that she’s single). Which is why today we went to the polls.
Mine was pretty dead. It sure doesn’t feel like an election day. I think it’s cause most San Diegans (including me) don’t really give a shit any more and have no idea who these 11 people are that we’re supposed to choose among. Steve Breen’s comic below is pretty right on. The other day Sparsh and I were walking to our swim spot and he asks me who I’m gonna vote for assuming I’m up to date on this stuff. We try to make fun of the various candidates, but we’re so hopeless …
“I dunno dude, the surfer chick is really pretty out there. Do you get her Aloha Election Update emails?”
“No, I like some guy I heard on KPBS the other day.”
“Wait, is he the cop, the rich guy, or the Mexican hater?”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Yeah well, this guy sounded pretty smart. And he has a chance - unlike the crazy environmental dude.”
“Yeah, that guy’s pretty out there too.”
Then our eloquent discussion turns to how we will vote regarding a big cross on a big hill.
“What about the cross?” Sparsh inquires.
“I couldn’t give the slightest flying shit about the cross.”
“Is that how you’re going to vote?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to write, ‘I don’t give the slightest flying shit’ on the ballot?”
“Yes.”
Which is what I did.
The point is, my man Richard Louv is right. The topics that deserved discussion this campaign didn’t get any. Everything focused on the same talking points as always: leadership, pension funding, traffic, border, airport. But the part of San Diego that really needs attention - East of I-5 and South of MLK - never gets it. A good portion of San Diego doesn’t even know it exists.
I wish someone would write a post about gang life in San Diego as clear and insightful as HP’s (and the comments that follow) on gangs and race relations in L.A. I never realized until reading Louv’s column that there are Bloods at Lincoln and San Diego high even though those are two schools EAOP intensely worked with. What a lot of people call “hood” or “ghetto” culture is so hard for outsiders like me to dissect and understand, but it’s important that it happens so that politicians, media, and citizen groups will stop ignoring the problems. I hope more strong voices begin to emerge on the internet to help bridge the gap.
There are a few new city-funded, after-school computer labs in Sherman Heights and Chula Vista. Maybe I could convince HP that we should cruise down there and try and get some kids blogging. I dunno if I could convince him to help out anyone outside his family though. Especially at a place that is funded by government.
man, i love politics. this entry rocked my socks.
I say head on down to Chula, and while you’re down there have a California Burrito from Colimas Taco Shop, off of C street next to the Target. It’s by far the best hole in the wall taqueria in the WORLD!! ..give or take…df
Yeah, the 94 in San Diego is one of the best places to pick up girls. BlackPundit and I have been down there a few times to ‘parking lot pimp’. BlackPundit goes down there much more than I do though, since that is one of the few places in SD where you can find a high concentration of black girls. I, on the other hand, have many more options when I am in search of a Mexican girl.
As far as the bloods in SD go, I have always known that SD was a blood city. It’s a pretty well known fact, even amongst many people in LA. I remember when I was moving out of Compton, my next door neighbor, who are all crips, asked me where I was moving too. I told him SD, and he immediately responded with, “Damn Cuz, yo going to be with all them SLOBS over there”. SLOBS, for those that don’t know, is a derogatory way to refer to bloods. It’s like referring to crips as CRABS. Derogatory and very offensive to each group. (Kinda like calling a Mexican gangster a “leva”).
Now, as far as San Diego’s problems are concerned, I wish you would have given the full picture. Knowing the full picture of San Diego’s current problems will certainly shed some light on how one should go about fixing other problems in San Diego. Your quick ‘pension funding’ statement doesn’t give the full scope of the problem. Afterall, it was primarily the pension funding issue that caused the New York Times to refer to San Diego as the “Enron by the Sea”. The pension funding problem even caused the S&P to suspend its rating on San Diego City debt.
So for those that don’t know what is going on in SD, I plead with you to read this. Atleast those of you who wish to be educated and responsible voters. That is the 281 page report commissioned by the city of San Diego, explaining the screwed up pension funding. Reading it will help you understand how amazingly complicated government pension accounting is. More importantly, reading it will help you understand the evil interaction with the unions that brought on a lot of this mess.
I read some of the Enron report, yet this was way more complicated than the Enron report, so that should give you a feel for how much more complicated the San Diego fiasco is, even compared to Enron.
Another benefit of reading it, is that you will get to see just how economically ignorant both, politicans and unions are (it will also get you to see how defined-benefit plans are the worse, they depend on a supposition that investments will have a certain return in the future, among other assumptions. That’s just dumb).
As far as trying to get some kids to blog, that’d be cool. We can certainly do that.
I just read Louv’s post, and while I agree that it is a problem, a problem that will surely get worse with time, I think he is far too optimistic in his supposed solution of the problem. He writes,
Gang violence has very, very deep cultural dimensions. It certainly has poverty connections, but that is not all of it. One could provide example after example of a middle class area being infected with gangs.
As far as San Diego’s gang situation goes, it is most likely very similar to LA’s gang situation. All of California will have the same general structure as LA (with the exception of northern california being 14’s as opposed to 13’s), mainly because all of California shares the same prison systems, prisons that (try to) control everything that goes on in the streets. I don’t know if La Eme visited San Diego as well as LA, but regardless, if we go to Lincoln, I could guarantee you that the vast majority of bloods are black, and the Hispanic gangsters are 13’s. And since San Diego is predominantly a blood city (or so I have heard), you can pretty much guarantee that the fighting is between blacks and Hispanics, between bloods and 13’s, in other words, extremely racial, extremely violent, and extremely cultural.
EM,
Rocking socks is what I’m after.
Divafina,
Will definitely check it out.
HP,
Homie, you left your comment after the polling stations closed. You know I’m gonna be looking for your I Voted sticker.
I don’t really think I understood your comment #4. People join gangs because their racists? Is that the point? Maybe I just got confused about the 13 and 14 thing. An even dozen makes so much more sense to me.
I think HP really needs to get a life and stop reading 100+ page pdfs.
Oso, I didn’t tell you this but I thought your friends were pretty cool. Sparsh was a good guide when I was leaving. He didn’t get me lost or anything.
What are the neighborhoods east of the 5 and south of MLK? I’m not familiar enough with the city.
I haven’t lived in SD for quite some time, but sometime ago, everyone talked about the Bloods and Crips, but there were problems with other gangs: Filipinos, Samoans, Vietnamese, and yes, Mexicans. There were chola gangs in my school that were pretty viscious.
And yes, Euclid Ave. has been an ongoing problem for decades now.
No, I don’t think people join gangs because they are racist, but the gang that they do join usually is seperated along racial lines (hispanics in 13 gangs, blacks in blood or crip gangs), atleast that is how it is in Los Angeles. So that later starts to play a huge part in the escalation of violence between other gangs of a different race (’nationalism’ has a way of escalating violence and blinding people, IMHO).
Although, Xolo, did say something that might change the whole dynamics of San Diego gangs.
I don’t know how Filipinos or Vietnamese would fit into this whole thing. In Compton there were a lot of Samoans, but Somoans ended up being the ‘neutral’ race. Some of them would get into the 13 gangs, thereby picking the hispanic gangs, and some of them would get into the blood or crip gangs, thereby picking the black gangs. So that is probably the same in SD.
But what about Filipinos or Vietnamese? Did they pick sides, or start their own groups? I don’t know.
Oh yeah, I voted for Francis and will vote for Sanders in the runoff.
Oso, a plurality wrote Donna’s name, if you include spoiled and incorrectly filled-out ballots (I bubbled mine when I voted for her last time, like the instructions said — because, you know, I read). Donna will never win a citywide majority though, and we’ll have to deal with Sanders as mayor because the most qualified guy came in third last night (Francis).
Divafina, I agree that 4th and C’s Colima is very good. I prefer the Colima on Bonita Road only because I’m closer to it.
Oso, first you have to know where and what Chula Vista is — and that it’s not a part of the city of San Diego — before you can go to a taco shop down there. Chula Vista is the second largest city in the county, about evenly populated on both sides of the 805, even though east of the 805 is about twice as large as west of the 805, and with a population probably twice as wealthy and homes twice as expensive and twice as large. It’s definitely something that would interest you: the growing pains of Chula Vista, and how it reconciles its older, grided, walkable street core with its newer, highly-planned, post-yuppie suburbs. It’s like a duplication of what the city of San Diego went through 30-40 years ago. Also, because the city’s so large, it would be a mistake to characterize it any moreso that you’d characterize the city of San Diego. (I don’t currently live in CV, although I did for a couple of years, and live so close to it now that I might as well. Maybe if you’re free on Saturday I can show you around.)
Cindylu, here’s a list of the neighborhoods south of the 94 and east of the 5 in the city of San Diego (from), inarguably the areas of the least median income in the city, parts of which are fairly bad and parts of which are not:
Southeastern: Alta Vista, Bay Terraces, Broadway Heights, Chollas View, Emerald Hills, Encanto, Jamacha-Lomita, Lincoln Park, Mountain View, Mt. Hope, Paradise Hills, Shelltown, Skyline, Southcrest, Valencia
Southern: Egger Highlands, Nestor, Ocean Crest, Otay Mesa, Otay Mesa West, Palm City, San Ysidro, Tijuana River Valley
My goodness D, someone obviously didn’t go to the Anger Management show a couple days ago.
That’s a good point I’d never thought of. Illiterate people obviously don’t deserve to vote.
Sorry, I should clarify that I wasn’t talking about official definitions of San Diego, but rather Oso’s definition which spreads North to South from Otay Mesa to Agua Hedionda Lagoon and West to East from the Pacific Ocean to El Cajon.
I feel like such a sucka that I’ve never tried Colima’s.
That’s not a woman, baby, that’s a man, man.
D’oh. Sorry for the angry tone.
EMC,
You lost me. Where’s that from?
D,
I was just kiddin’ playa. Oh wait, you’re getting married. Can’t call you playa anymore. Deepest sympathies.
Hey dude! The gangs had a bang so bad here at Serra High School last year that they locked it tight and called about a million cops. Yeah, here in dreadfully white, middle-class Tierrasanta. Of course, my teenage mole tells me that the gang members are all bused in from, well, probably south of the main east-west freeway.
My sister’s high school has a busing (you’d be the one to know if that’s a word or not) program too - what do you think about it?
A while back Da Goddess posted “French Frye” and I was the first to comment on how we got rid of the French, calling them freedom fries, but now it is time to get rid of the Frye. Well she is still here and we need to do something about that. Now, I suppose that (Colonel) Sanders and (French) Frye’s are both “finger licking good,” depending on individual preference, but, given a forced daily diet of one or the other I’ll bet that the Sanders diet will at least keep one healthy, while Frye alone shall naturally lead to obesity and death. Let’s make it our goal to get Sanders elected. Does Donna Frye care to be responsible for her role in the current fiasco?
As ever,
j
Good god, my dear man. Please do better with the jokes. Verbal aesthetics do count around here.
I prefer bussing any day.
As far as busing goes, it’s a terribly expensive, not environmentally friendly way to improve the educational experiences for some children. Seems to me it would be less expensive to fix up local schools, improve teaching, and increase discipline. But hey, I guess the courts know best.