A man who reportedly calls himself “Mr. Watchdog” was thrown out of the Carlsbadistan City Council Meeting on Tuesday June 22, 2010 after he apparently referred to the Carlsbad Police Department’s handing of homeless people as “bullshit,” according to a story in the San Diego Reader.
Mr. Watchdog was the first citizen to address the council. He claimed that Carlsbad police are harassing homeless people, especially those living in their vehicles. He asserted that police accuse the homeless of camping illegally when, in fact, they’re trying to keep a roof over their heads. . . Mr. Watchdog didn’t get much further on this point after saying the policing approach was “bullsh-t.” Mayor Claude “Bud” Lewis interrupted. A courtroom officer approached the speaker and stood next to him. “I have three minutes. What is this? Show me the law that says cussing is illegal,” he yelled as the officer escorted him out. “You’re done,” said Lewis, to which Mr. Watchdog responded, “Okay, another lawsuit. Thank you.” As he was led out, he said “f— you” multiple times.
Now the man claims he is going to file a lawsuit.
The City should certainly take this seriously. A similar case in Santa Cruz, California in which homeless advocate Robert Norse was removed from council chambers in 2002 for giving the mayor a Nazi salute resulted in a free speech lawsuit that is currently being heard in a federal appeals court and could end up in the Supreme Court.
This morning at the Apple Store at Carlsbadistan’sForum Shops nearly 500 people were cued up and waiting for the doors to open at 7 AM. Some had been waiting all night, others had arrived in the early morning hours. The line for those without a reserved phone ordered was cut off by employees at approximately 6:30 PM.
The hot tip for those of us who lag–at 5 PM all the phone that people reserved but didn’t pick up will be up for grabs to the first customer. We may have to try that.
Apple fans are posted up and ready to spend the night at the Carlsbadistan Apple store at the Forum Stores to be the first to get the new Apple iPhone 4.0. By 10:15 PM tonight (June 23, 2010) there were close to 80 people waiting. Some in chairs, others in sleeping bags, and a few even brought aero beds so they could sleep on the sidewalk in comfort.
“I’ve been here since 2:30 this afternoon,” said the girl at the front of the line. She was in a chair with her laptop and wrapped in a Snuggie blanket ready to stay all night in front of the store.
The rest in the crowd were doing much the same thing. Some played cards, others worked on laptops while their batteries lasted. Apple for there part had done nothing but put up a couple signs and covered the front windows with heavy black drapes. Inside, Apple employees busily set up the store for tomorrow morning’s sales rush.
Apple, which has sold 3 million iPads in the last 80 days, pre-sold 600,000 on June 15 and could sell and estimated 42 million of the phones during 2010, according to story in Fortune. With the looks of the line in Carlsbad, Apple seems to be right on track.
Founding directors from left are: Jacquie Thye, President; Harriet Norris and Edna Gibson, Vice Presidents; Tom Hersant, Secretary and Kim Miller, Treasurer. Not shown are directors Bernard Doughty and Rich Paulsen.
CSCA has formed a nonprofit corporation to continue Carlsbad’s 20-year sister city relationships with Futtsu, Japan and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. It will also search out other world cities to promote peace, cultural awareness and economic opportunities for Carlsbad residents and businesses. Your ideas and support are welcomed to showcase the many faces of Carlsbad to the world through delegation visits, student home stays, group travel, seminars and other exchanges.
It’s nice to see private citizens taking action when the City drops the ball. For more information of the Carlsbad Ambassadors, click the link.
Food is the theme of this year’s San Diego County Fair in Del Mar. Food, cooking, produce, products, and anything edible from San Diego County. Organizers what all of us to “Taste The Fun.” We did and this is what we discovered:
Do not arrive early on Free For The Unemployed Day at the fair. Those people are so eager for a handout that they begin lining up at the front gate a half hour before the doors even open.
The veggie Hot Dogs On A Stick taste just as fun as the turkey dogs (we always support Carlsbadistan businesses).
Deep fried butter along with chocolate covered bacon is available and popular.
Hot girls ride English style.
Mini donuts rock.
The best place to drink is inside the air-conditioned Taste The Fun building in the back right hand corner. We saw a lot of frazzled mom’s up against the back wall sipping a little mother’s helper.
For more info on the rest of the fair click the link.
After getting a little long in the tooth (25 years to be exact) and getting some complaints from guests Carlbadistan’sCarlsbad Inn is getting some much needed improvements according to Winners Circle Resorts CEO Jim Watkins.
“We heard what our guests were saying behind our back. They love the Carlsbad Inn. It’s steps from the beautiful Pacific Ocean and the staff is warm, friendly and helpful. But perhaps we were getting a bit “tired.” So, after 25 years, we decided on a facelift.”
The top floor of the resort is now the “Premier Level” and will feature king and double queen rooms with marble walk-in showers, microwaves, flat screen TVs, WI-Fi and best of all plush robes. But they’re not going to let a little construction keep away the paying customers so they’re just going to build right around the guests.
Randy Chapin, General Manager of the property adds “During the renovation, everyone on-site is taking great care not to interrupt the guests and the phases are carefully sectioned such as to make the least impact on our guests and owners.”
Really, with the beach right across the street who is going to be spending time in their rooms during the day anyway, right?
The quilt was sewn by Caroline Barnes in memory of Connie E. Costantino, a former children’s librarian. From left, Vicky Tarulis, a member of the Friends of the Carlsbad Library board, and Anne Linehan, a member of the Carlsbad Library and Arts Foundation board, presented the check to Barbara Chung and Marsha Weeks, both senior librarians in the library’s Children’s Department.
Three years ago in one of our first posts on the Carlsbadistan blog (hard to believe we’re growing up so quickly, huh?) we mentioned the “motor homeless problem.” Here’s a little of what we said:
Like the swallows to San Juan Capistrano, each summer sees the return of a handful of motorhomeless to Carlsbad. Each day they make their migration from one free parking spot in the neighborhood to the sea wall. We believe it’s time for a “No Vehicles Over Seven Feet Tall” ordinance.
Now, according a story last week to the North County Times, the City of Carlsbadistan might actually doing something about the problem. San Diego’s Fox 5 was even on the scene yesterday. So we’ll repeat it again: all the city needs to do is put in a maximum height requirement of seven feet on all the streets. How hard is that?
The deal would value Merlin Entertainments at about 2.5 billion pounds ($3.71 billion), one of the sources said, with CVC Capital Partners, Blackstone and Kirkbi A/S — the Danish investment company owned by the family behind the Lego brand — owning about 30 percent of the business each. . . Management will own the remaining portion, while Dubai International Capital, which reduced its stake earlier this year from about 16.5 percent to single digits will fully exit the business that counts Madame Tussauds and Legoland among its attractions, sources said.
It’s totally confusing and has little effect on the Carlsbadistan park, but we like to stay current just for fun.
McLellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad recently unveiled a program called Lochard WebTrak. The online program is free, available to anyone and it allows users to see where planes are, how high they are flying and how fast they are going. The program also tells users the plane’s tail identification number. The WebTrak information is based on air traffic control radar information.
If for instance if you happen to see a low-hovering blue helicopter drop three dark bags into your neighbors yard you can click on WebTrak a few minutes later and replay the airspace to see if that helicopter shows up. If it does then so will all it information including aircraft number, elevation and speed. . . you know just for your information.
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