Aquaholics [site] is a homegrown documentary about surfing in the Bay Area, 7 years in the making, featuring local surfing spots: Ocean Beach, Mavericks, Santa Cruz and a few secret spots in between. Most of the surfers in the movie are from the coastside and Pacifica. Aquaholics reminds surfers why they are surfers…in search of the perfect wave and a lifestyle they hold sacred.

Featuring local SF surfers Ragnar Johnson and Peter Campbell as well as Pat ‘Ninja’ Bollinger & Dominic ‘Pelican’ Spinardi. This is a time-travel collection of scenes from the last 14 years as local HMB legend Ion Banner raises & teaches his son Skylar about the lifestyle of the ‘Soul’ surfer.

Also featuring current legendary surfers Shawn Rhodes, Matt Ambrose and Brent ‘Oil’ Hudson. Also included is a 15+ minute reel of Mavericks that will have you on the edge of your seat wondering if these guys are going to make the turn of their session or end up with the beatings of their lives.

Opens w/a Surf Short. (60m)

Fri & Mon: 7:15, 9:15
Sat & Sun: 2:00, 4:00, 7:15, 9:15

"Politics is the art of the possible."—Otto von Bismarck

"To open a show, I like to do one thing that is impossible.  So, right now, I’m going to suck this piano into my lungs." —Steve Martin, wielding a drinking straw

The Half Moon Bay City Council majority bet $18 million of taxpayers’ money that it could suck the piano of AB1991 through the drinking straw of the California legislature.

Now, having failed, they’re angry—at "people from outside this community", "people who had their lawyers and their lobbyists against us", and "people that don’t want it resolved".

"People from outside this community" didn’t pick this fight to hurt the city. By trying to sell out the Coastal Act as well as environmental and wetlands protections for cash, the city dared anyone who cared about the future of any portion of California coast to meet them in Sacramento for a rumble.

"People who had their lawyers and their lobbyists against us" are not at fault. Does anyone doubt that the city spent more on lawyers and lobbyists to support AB1991 than the environmentalists did to defeat it?

"People who don’t want it resolved" aren’t the problem. Those people don’t exist. Everyone who opposed AB1991 supported SB863, which was hastily thrown together to fill the gap left by the failure of AB1991. No one opposed relief for the city.

SB863 demonstrated that the city has more friends in Sacramento and the environmental community than they knew.  It’s too bad they hadn’t realized that sooner. Or yet.

Just wondering what it would be like to sit in my house with the windows open and a gentle breeze flowing through and to be able to hear the birds? All I hear are plane engines. I assume they are doing their take off and landing practice. I am not opposed to the airport or the planes, just would like to hear something other than engines all day long on beautiful days like today.

As I said, just a thought.

The Half Moon Bay Downtown Business Association has a new website: http://www.downtownhmb.com/

A unique blend of four-part guitar harmonies to jazz standards and original compositions from Perry Smith, John Storie, Brady Cohan, Matt Roberts.
Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
$30.  Tickets at the door. Reservations for members.
Doors Open at 3 PM, Music from 4:30 to 7:30 PM, with intermission.
 

Each year, the first rain event of the season washes urban pollutants off of the streets and into storm drains, eventually entering the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Critical Coastal Areas (CCA’s).

First Flush events take place up and down the coast from Carmel-by-the-sea all the way to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve CCA and Pillar Point Harbour (for the first time), tracking these pollutants. Your help is needed to collect water samples from storm drain outfalls in the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve Critical Coastal Area and Pillar Point Harbor.
 
There will be a training session/dry run taking place on Saturday, September 13, 2008 from 9:30 to noon at the Moss Beach Ranch Laboratory. 1862 Etheldore (RSVP for directions) RSVP or info:  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), San Mateo RCD and 650-712-7765

Sampling will occur on the first rain event of the season. Volunteers will be mobilized through a telephone tree.

A. Not proving in court that Beachwood always contained wetlands.

B. Failing to appeal the Beachwood decision.

C. Not working with environmental and other stakeholders to craft a bill that could pass the state legislature.

D. Making terms of the Beachwood settlement conditional on passage of AB1991.

E. Arbitrarily adding Glencree to the Beachwood settlement the day after Keenan optioned the property.

F. Misrepresenting threat of bankruptcy to Senator Leland Yee.

G. Getting Leland Yee to sign on to AB1991 without having seen the bill.

H. Delivering a settlement that required the state legislature to set a precedent for undermining decades of coastal, wetlands, environmental, and planning protection in exchange for cash.

I. Allowing, or not knowing of, Keenan’s sharing of the city’s lobbying expenses.

J. Spending six months and a million bucks trying to sell AB1991 in Sacramento.

K. Slandering Coastal Commission staff, who will rule on what the city can do with its newly-acquired Beachwood parcel.

L. Claiming that ABAG’s $5 million check could not be applied to the settlement cost.

M. Having no contingency plan if AB1991 were to fail, thereby wasting all of July and most of August.

N. All of the above.

O. None of the above—the city was ambushed by the nerds from the Sierra Club.

SB863, Senator Leland Yee’s bill to compensate Half Moon Bay with $10 million to buy Beachwood for parkland, failed to pass out of the state assembly before the end of the Labor Day weekend deadline, reports Julia Scott in the County Times. The city will owe $18 million to developer Charles "Chop" Keenan on June 20, 2009.

City officials have said the $18 million would take decades to repay. Contacted on Sunday, Half Moon Bay Councilman John Muller still hadn’t heard the news and reacted with sadness.

"I was afraid of that. I’m absolutely devastated, to be honest with you. We were working so hard for this, and we were anticipating that if we had to look for other funding to pay it off or declare bankruptcy, it’s going to take a long time to do," said Muller. The Half Moon Bay City Council was expected to discuss how to proceed at a scheduled meeting tonight .

Adam Keigwin, a spokesman for Yee’s office, suggested there would still be time to pass another bill by June 30, 2009, when the legislative session resumes in December. But it would need to start again with new language, new hearings and new letters of support. It will also need at least one new sponsor — Assemblyman Gene Mullin, D-South San Francisco, who championed an earlier, failed Beachwood bill, will be termed out at the end of 2008.

"It’s not an impossible deadline," declared Keigwin.