Tempers are flaring over Ocean Beach\u2019s escalating marshmallow war and the costly cleanup associated with it.
\nThe annual Ocean Beach Marshmallow Fight \u2014 a beach tradition that follows the Fourth of July community fireworks show from the OB Pier \u2014 has seemingly turned from frivolous fun to tasteless controversy in the eyes of some.
\nWhat began in 1985 as a small, interfamily affair between the Grosch and Zounes families, who hosted rival Fourth of July holiday parties, has morphed over time into a large-scale, frenzied event leaving the community to clean up the gooey mess.
\nFun is fun, but some merchants and residents are beginning to wonder whether it\u2019s time for the party to be over.
\n“What started out as a friendly thing with OB kids has just gotten out of hand,” said longtime Ocean Beach resident Bill Joyce, chef\/owner of Surfside Cuisine Catering. “I really was upset about it this year. It was so much more than expected. Just massive amounts of marshmallows and the boardwalk literally caked.”
\nThe time \u2014 and expense \u2014 of cleaning marshmallows from the Fourth of July mess are mushrooming, said critics.
\n“We\u2019re attempting to deal with it as best we can,” said Denny Knox, executive director of the OB MainStreet Association, which has nothing to do with organizing the event. “We\u2019ve spent $3,000 [so far this year]. Once it (mess) was small, on the sand and could be raked up pretty easily. Now it\u2019s really gotten too big.”
\nKnox said the gooey, yucky marshmallow aftermath, which used to get cleaned up in a matter of hours, is now taking weeks or even months to eradicate.
\nThere are other problems associated with it, too.
\n“It\u2019s gumming up a lot of things \u2014 our cleaning equipment \u2014 costing dollars we could be spending on some truly nice things for the community, rather than cleaning up marshmallow goo,” Knox said.
\nKnox said she has gotten about 250 e-mails the past several days from businesses and residents complaining about the marshmallow mess and asking, “What are you going to do about it?”
\nHaley Haggerstone, chapter coordinator for the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, whose mission is to protect the oceanfront, spent July 5 with others at Ocean Beach trying to clean up after the Independence Day festivities.
\nHaggerstone said volunteer crews picked up 1,800 pounds of trash on July 5, “95 percent of which was probably marshmallows.”
\n“I\u2019ve seen it evolve. It\u2019s grown,” said Haggerstone, an Ocean Beach resident.
\nWhat to do about the annual tradition is problematic.
\n“How do you stop it?” asked Haggerstone. “I\u2019ve heard a lot of talk about shutting this down. But how do you shut down an unorganized thing that\u2019s been going on for 25 years? ”
\nThere could be at least one clear-cut solution though.
\n“If you contribute to it, you should be part of the cleanup effort the next morning,” Haggerstone said.
\nJoyce said the marshmallow madness has reached the point where it\u2019s become a community blight.
\n“It\u2019s just disgusting,” he said. “I think the majority of the locals don\u2019t want it after this year after seeing what it did to our community. There\u2019s still thousands and thousands of them (marshmallows) in the sand.”
\nJoyce offered another possible solution to address the mess: have people who are cited for Fourth of July weekend offenses help in the cleanup to teach them a lesson about social responsibility.
\n“We\u2019re looking for a solution,” said Knox.
\nShe added the next step in counteracting the marshmallow mess could be contacting the Ocean Beach Town Council and having the issue put on its next agenda, or to hold a special town hall meeting on the subject.
\nMeanwhile, a Facebook page titled “No Marshmallow Wars” has been set up to allow people to vent about Ocean Beach\u2019s “marshmallowing” problem.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tempers are flaring over Ocean Beach\u2019s escalating marshmallow war and the costly cleanup associated with it. The annual Ocean Beach Marshmallow Fight \u2014 a beach tradition that follows the Fourth of July community fireworks show from the OB Pier \u2014 has seemingly turned from frivolous fun to tasteless controversy in the eyes of some. What […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":267861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Annual marshmallow war\u2019s sticky mess has fed-up locals fired up","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}