Scary situation
I would like to compliment both Paul Avery and Jim St Denis on their excellent Letters to the Editor in the Beacon last week. They brought into focus a subject long over-due.
Some time ago my l8 year old niece from New Jersey visited me, we walked out on the pier. She walks faster than I do when I caught up with her she was leaning on the car trying to shake off the grip on her arm of a sad looking specimen of a man who was urging her to go with him to a pot party on the beach. Both of us were a little scared, but managed to shake him off, get into the car and go home. I haven’t been on the pier since. That area hasn’t changed a bit. There are some very nice businesses in Ocean Beach, as well as Dentists and Doctors. Why they put up with this trash is beyond my comprehension.
Ada May Powers, Point Loma
Alcohol problems must go
There is was, another pro-alcohol-on-the-beach letter reminding us the Proposition G went down in flames in the beach communities (“Numbers show alcohol ban isn’t wanted,” Beach & Bay Press, Sept. 7).
Let’s revisit that proposition and why many of us who live here and would have otherwise voted to ban drinking on the beach voted “no” on Proposition G. That ballot measure would have imposed a 24-hour alcohol ban from the south Mission Beach jetty to Felspar Street on the ocean side and from Mission Point to Zanzibar Court on the bayside. In other words, the ban included Mission Beach and specified areas of Pacific Beach.
Needless to say, many Ocean Beach residents and -north-of-the-pier Pacific Beach residents where I live did not like the idea of our neighborhoods taking on an even higher percentage of alcohol consumption and misbehavior. As it is, drunken behavior is a big problem on our beaches in part because we are the only game on the West Coast. I doubt that beach communities north of Pacific Beach will ever open their beaches to drinking and share the burden for any amount of time. Consolidating the problem further, even for the test period from June 1, 2001, through December 31, 2002, was not appealing.
It is not accurate to assume citizens of the beach communities wanted to retain the right to drink on the beach and were therefore less enthusiastic about alcohol free beaches than other San Diegans. Many of us voted “no” to protect our neighborhoods.
Bonnie Austin, Pacific Beach
