The two happiest days of boat owners’ lives are the day they buy their boat and the day they sell it, or maybe the day they abandon it to rot in Morro Bay Harbor. The city by the big rock recently received a $15,750 SAVE (Surrendered and Abandoned Vessel Exchange) grant from the California State Parks’ Division of Boating and Waterways two remove and demolish abandoned and derelict boats.
If it seems crazy that taxpayers must fund a state program to deal with people’s broken-down shit, I agree. Morro Bay has participated in the SAVE program for more than a decade.
According to Harbor Business Manager Lori Thompson, “To date, together the Harbor Department has received and expended over $203,500 in 10 separate grants.”
That represents a lot of broken dreams of the call of the open sea and the romance of the boating life, but having this program and spending this grant money is better than the alternative of letting these vessels—many filled with diesel fuel and hazardous materials—sink into the bay and pollute our waterways.
Obviously, the registered owners should be made to foot the bill of demolition, but their boats are in disrepair for a reason. As the saying goes, a boat is a hole in the water into which you throw your money. It’s expensive to maintain a boat, especially an older one, and it costs money to rent a slip or mooring, and in some cases, the owners are hopelessly in arrears.
Longtime Morro Bay Yacht Club member Charlie Nichols noted, “I’ve seen demolished boats that are old and falling apart. People get into old boats, they may run into financial issues, and sometimes they just abandon them. It’s probably an OK thing for the harbor that they remove them.”
Fare thee well, Triton, Travel, Why Not, Starduster, and Kaifu. These five boats are the next to meet the wrecking ball but no doubt not the last.
Did someone say, “Ball!” Pant-pant, bark-bark. San Luis Obispo is scheduled to get another dog park—this one at Emerson Park—after dropping $1.5 million to upgrade the facility at Laguna Lake. Thanks to a $2.8 million California State Parks Proposition 68 grant that SLO received in 2021, the city plans to add restrooms, an expanded playground, and an upgraded basketball court, among other improvements, and an enclosed half-acre dog park with sections for large and small doggos.
That sounds amazing, amirite? Except … wait for it … NIMBYism! Neighbors are complaining about tearing up grass, reactive and poorly trained dogs, neighborhood parking, and like the ghost of past politics, even former SLO Mayor and SLO Board of Supervisors member Peg Pinard took to social media app Nextdoor to pooh-pooh the idea.
“Emerson Park has the only field within walking distance in our neighborhood. It’s where kids (and everyone else) can run around, play soccer, softball, etc.,” she posted on Oct. 29. “Every mental health study speaks to the importance of having open space for kids to run around—needed even more as our neighborhood gets more densely populated. Am I alone in thinking taking away the neighborhood’s only playing field is a bad idea?”
Obviously not, but City Parks and Recreation Director Greg Avakian is pushing back on the pushback, arguing, “The portion of the turf area that’s currently at Emerson Park is in really bad shape—it doesn’t have good irrigation and it’s not a regulation athletic field.”
He also noted the area is already being used—illegally—as an off-leash dog park.
“Off-leash dogs run around out there despite the municipal code and the county code saying you’re not supposed to have dogs off leash, and there’s no fenced area to make it safe,” Avakian said. “That’s the one reason we moved forward with the Laguna Lake Dog Park improvements that just opened up.”
Friends of SLO City Dog Parks President John McKenzie noted, “There’s no other place for dogs to go currently downtown. There are many other places where people can enjoy green, grassy areas, even though it may be further away, but still within walking distance.”
Come on, people! Stop pooh-poohing a place for dogs to run and sniff and make poo-poo, which weirdly no one has complained about … yet.
Speaking of poo-poo, eat shit, tRump. The voters have spoken, and your policies stink. Thankfully, enough California Democrats—who for decades have worked tirelessly to push back against Republican gerrymandering—realized it was time to fight fire with fire. Taking the high road has got them nowhere, but thanks to Proposition 50’s overwhelming landslide victory, California will temporarily abandon its anti-gerrymandering policy to push back on tRump’s pressuring red states into redistricting to create more Republican house seats.
It’s not just California. All over the country voters have swung blue, signaling a rejection of tRump’s anti-American, anti-immigrant, anti-free speech policies. What did he expect? While Democrats are holding out to demand Republicans rein in Americans’ health care costs—including for conservative Americans—tRump is throwing a lavish Great Gatsby-style party as people’s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits are being first withheld and then halved. Can he be more tone deaf?
In 2013, tRump said “a shutdown means the president is weak.” I couldn’t agree more. Hey, big talking dealmaker, why can’t you keep the government open? Weak. ∆
The Shredder wants a belly rub. Send one to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Nov 6-16, 2025.
Ah, good ol’ culture war verbal detritus. After spilling gallons of ink, yet again, writing about important issues like dog parks, yachts, and the voting habits of the deluded, like most contributors of this gazette, he couldn’t bring himself to write about the issue more dear to most readers: JOBS. But, when you are one of the retired, well-to-do readers of this rag, jobs aren’t something that matters. If jobs actually do matter, as The Shredder touched on, it’s jobs for illegal aliens that matter. And why shouldn’t they? After all, who’s going to cut the grass, wipe the asses, or fix the roofs on the cheap of these retired Boomers? It certainly wouldn’t be a pesky American who, crazy enough, expects a living wage and who actually pays taxes. No, these aren’t the people who need jobs, it illegal aliens or, as I like to call them, “scabs” we need to be concerned about.
It’s great rotting boats are going to be removed. It’s great a dog park might be built. But do you know really should be created here on the coast? Factories. Yeah, that’s right. Mass employment. Americans need jobs. No one can buy a house. College degrees are worthless. Millions are moving into their cars. People are skipping meals. Medical costs are on par with mortgage payments. And all I hear is a whistling sound. It’s the sound of all our nation’s resources being sucked into the defense budget. It won’t matter which party gets into office. The US is broke and about to go under. Trump committed 100 billion dollars to ICE. Does the Shredder really think a Democrat is going to somehow be able to claw that back? Further, opening up our borders so the flood of illegals can return to the country our forefathers built and do nothing more than jack up rent prices because no matter how high it gets, when you have 12 (illegal) laborers sleeping in shifts in an apartment or houses, it doesn’t matter how high rent gets, they can always pay it. Not so much for a (legal) family making the garbage wages most jobs pay now. And liberals are aghast at the fact families are being started and no one can buy a house.
Shredder, it’s time you leave these boutique issues behind you and start advocating for issues that matter for Americans. At least that way, when the revolution kicks off, you can defend yourself. Until then, you, as well as the rest of the bleeding heart liberals reading this gazette, crying rivers of tears for the millions illegal aliens scaling border fences, digging tunnels, operating narco subs, and basically running amock in our country, are on the wrong side of history. When you wake up some day and your language, values, and culture relegated to a museum and you find yourself in some sort of human amalgamation, you have no one to blame but yourself. It was nice while it lasted, right? It was nice speaking English while it lasted. A living wage was nice while it lasted. Jobs were nice while they lasted. As a reminder, NYC isn’t the American heartland and the French Revolution began in the countryside, not cities. So gloat all you want about NYC. The American heartland is disgusted by NYC and New Yorkers, as they should be. The ones I grew up with lived up to their reputations as arrogant, racist, and smug. But to be fair, this is merely the flipside of their origins as European, poor, immigrant, flotsam no more than one generation prior to them.
FMO,
You paint a very different picture of life in the real world. I’ve busted my butt and have been able to purchase a home (paid for) in Prefumo Canyon. I’m 58 years old , life isn’t easy or fair sometimes. Every screed I seem to read from you is that you are bitter and a victim. The USA isn’t collapsing, we may or may not have a moron at the helm time will tell on that. In all appearances, you don’t like people who are successful. Yes, I’ve done well ; it took a lot of hard work and sacrifices. I’ve been with my husband for 30 years we shared in the sacrifices because we had a goal. Nobody was going to give us anything period full stop. I make donations of roughly 15% of my annual income to various local organizations but do tell me what do you do other than criticize. Before you go on some long winded rant… on how awful the United States is and how the people before you ruined everything for you, just stop. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west for everyone, it your own choice to make the best of it every day. I’m absolutely not ashamed for everything I have but anyone who knows me knows that I’ll give the shirt off my back, if I think it would help in someway. I truly hope you find some peace in your heart and life, your too intelligent and hopefully open minded to be this bitter.
Hi comrades.
Pinky:
Not everyone here is a leftist, but welcome anyway.
Everything is just so wonderful.
HM:
You don’t speak for a generation, what you are is the exception and not the rule. Your response is pretty typical for people so self-satisfied, they refuse to think critically. I spent from about 23yo to roughly 35yo trying to figure myself out of the hole my drug addict and alcoholic parents created for me. That would put it at about 2003 when I finished college at 33yo. I had no real work experience, our economy was a bubble, and what happened in 2008? Oh yeah, the GFC and bank bailouts leading to the death of the dollar. Are you proposing I shouldn’t have done national service in the army? Are you prosing I shouldn’t have gone to college? Are you saying it was a lie that these accomplishments lead to upward mobility? Maybe you are right, because they haven’t. I haven’t stopped working since I was 13yo picking up cigarette butts from the parking lot of the Merry Maker bar in Baywood Park in 1984. What you are doing is basically sticking your head in the sand instead of really seeing how bad our economy is. It will never recover and we it’s all over. Theres no way to get ahead, should I get a THIRD job? Perhaps I should just start flipping Tiffany lamps on eBay, right? Right?
Yes, SLO is a small town.
Great Shredder this week! Good for Morro Bay for getting those grants to remove those derelict boats.
The proposed dog park at Emerson Parks sounds good. That field is full of gopher holes and a good place to sprain an ankle. It has been that way for decades.
And I will say it, I don’t want to step in any of that stuff that smells like tRump’ and his extremely unpopular policies, by a “weak” dictator wannabe.