From Facebook to Latte mi Corazon

Use with caution

As with every panacea, caution is needed in interpreting your story about the closure of Latte mi Corazon [“The Front Lines,” Nov. 24]. Our friends in the southeastern San Diego Community Plan area might have been well served if they had had a mixed-use zone at that location. Mixed-use zoning might have worked well and could have spot-zoned the parcel involved.

Our friends in the southeastern area and all other poor communities should be very wary, however, when mixed-use zoning is used more broadly. In the hands of SANDAG and the city Planning Department, mixed-use zones aren’t chosen in order to help communities realize their dreams. SANDAG and the city use them as a device to add residential density in old, poor, fully built communities, without having to put in the amenities needed to make the added residential density tolerable. It’s a sweetheart zone for planners, exactly because it allows more density without having to spend a dime on more amenities.

The devil, as always, is in the details.

Jim Varnador, City Heights

Stop, smell the technology

To Aaryn Belfer, about “I quit, part two,” your “Backwards & in High Heels” column of Nov. 25: I can see that you have developed a very rigid concept about how people ought to enjoy life in your old age—your way or the highway! According to you, if you enjoy Facebook and have meaningful experiences with it, you are gross. (Elitism mentality much?) Did you consider that perhaps you simply failed to make use of a modern technology and that frustrated you terribly? And you overreacted to it by throwing Facebook under the bus and writing a column about it?

Facebook is just a fact of life, just as living is a fact of life. Both offer an extremely diverse and often complex grid of potentialities. Potentially, you might have another Facebook account someday. Potentially, I might not. Not that I care—I just wanted to spread another perspective to your readers who might have already mastered achieving a “stop and smell the roses” mentality whilst enjoying their internet communications, too.

Marc Emmelmann, Webster

With friends like these...

I enjoyed Aaryn Belfer’s Nov. 24 “Backwards & in High Heels” column regarding the phoniness of Facebook. Perhaps Bob Dylan said it best in one of his songs from 45 years ago, “I Shall Be Free No. 10”:

“Now I gotta friend who spends his life / stabbing my picture with a bowie-knife / Dreams of strangling me with a scarf / When my name comes up he pretends to barf / I’ve got a million friends!”

Mark Richardson, Encinitas

Enviros for Lightner

Her hard work led the City Council to reject approval of contracts that would have wasted millions on a new EIR for the environmentally destructive Regents Road bridge project, a road project that would be devastating to Rose Canyon Open Space Park. This project has been opposed for years by a long list of environmental organizations but has been pushed by city staff for eight years. It took Sherri to finally stop this project in its tracks.

She also played a leadership role in getting the California High Speed Rail Authority to agree to consider alternative routes to its initially proposed route through Rose Canyon.

That route would be devastating to Rose Canyon Open Space Park and was also opposed by a number of environmental organizations.

She was also extremely receptive when representatives from a number of environmental groups met with her about our concerns regarding an EIR by the Storm Water Department that proposed bulldozing a large number of creeks citywide.

She is smart and detail-oriented. She has stood up for Rose Canyon Open Space Park Preserve when it has been under assault from multiple directions, and that has been a tough environmental battle.

Deborah Knight, Friends of Rose Canyon

Corrections

In last week’s editorial, we said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has long hair. He doesn’t. Also, in our “Nightgeist” section, we mistakenly credited the “Shot on Scene” photo to James Norton. It was actually shot by Jeff “Turbo” Corrigan. We’re terribly sorry.