WHO’S IN TOWN?
Lettuce isn’t the only big thing the Salinas Valley exports – it produces some great athletes too. In town this week are nine sports stars from the valley’s past for induction into the Salinas Valley Sports Hall of Fame. They include college football offensive coach Al Borges, who started his career at Salinas High School andBrewster Thompson, a three-sport athlete at North Salinas High School. Fun fact: Brewster appeared in a David Letterman “Stupid Human Tricks” segment, jumping rope with two women on his back. All nine will be honored at the Hall’s induction dinner followed by a ceremony to unveil bronze plaques of each. The plaques will hang on the Hall of Fame Memorial Wall in the Rabobank Stadium, located at the Salinas Sports Complex.
5pm Saturday, Aug. 24. The Storm House, 185 Maryal Drive, Salinas. $90/adults; $60/children 12 and under. salinasvalleysportshalloffame.com.
FREE SPEECH
Internet trolls sometimes claim free speech rights protect their ability to say anything – including spreading hate – but there are limits. That’s the takeaway from three separate court judgements issued in recent weeks against Andrew Anglin, the publisher of a neo-Nazi website called The Daily Stormer. Anglin has been ordered to pay a total of $20 million to three people targeted on the site. They are Taylor Dumpson, who in 2017 became American University’s first black student body president. After she was sworn in, bananas on nooses were hung around campus, according to the New York Times. Anglin called on readers to harass her, and they did, until she developed PTSD. In a separate case, Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent, won a $14 million judgment over an anti-Semitic campaign Anglin launched against her. And radio host/comedian Dean Obeidallah was awarded $4.1 million based on false accusations that he masterminded a terrorist attack in Manchester, England, which resulted in threats against him.
GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK
GOOD:
Decades after the Army left, the Fort Ord area is still teeming with dilapidated and abandoned buildings with high levels of asbestos and lead paint. Now, the Fort Ord Reuse Authority is preparing to borrow up to $37 million on the bond market to fund the removal of most of the remaining blight. On Aug. 15, the FORA board voted unanimously to have private-sector financial advisers prepare bond issuance plans. The final dollar amount and selection of which buildings will be demolished in what order are decisions that FORA will make in the coming months. FORA Economic Development Manager Josh Metz says that candidates for removal include hundreds of abandoned homes at Cypress Knolls in Marina; eight Vietnam War-era cement buildings on the site of the proposed Campus Townproject in Seaside; and the former Fort Ord jail known as the Stockade.
BAD:
Despite warnings that Carmel Police would crack down during Car Week, the tiny town was “inundated” by an ad hoc exotic sports car show along Ocean Avenue on the evening of Friday, Aug. 16, according to Chief Paul Tomasi. He blames car clubs and “Youtubers” on social media for inviting more than 1,000 spectators and 100 noisy sports cars. Cars and crowds started showing up around 8:30pm, hitting their peak around 10pm. “It was definitely a more aggressive crowd,” Tomasi says. Drivers performed burnouts and donuts in intersections. Carmel Police called for help from the California Highway Patrol, Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, and Monterey and Pacific Grove police. Officers issued 14 citations and shut down the show by 11:30. Police caught wind of follow-up plans for the next night, and officials installed traffic control barriers that funneled cars away from Ocean Avenue.