Posts by Mark McDermott
Manhattan Beach School district will consider parcel tax
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District is considering a parcel tax to address a slew of oncoming financial challenges. Farnaz Flechner, the executive director of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, gave a presentation at the school board last week in which she outlined the predicament MBUSD finds itself in. Despite the community’s relative wealth,…
Read MoreThe return of Vicente Amigo
One of the world’s great living guitarists plays Redondo Beach Music has coursed through Vicente Amigo since he was a child. At age 3, he saw Paco De Lucia, the greatest flamenco guitarist of this age, playing on television. Something about the sound never again escaped him. As a boy growing up in Cordoba, Spain,…
Read MoreMBPD Explorer program looking for a few good kids
Manhattan Beach Police Department Sgt. Tim Zins remembers what it was like to be 16. The Manhattan Beach native had no real idea what he wanted to do with his life. “I was kind of in that lost land,” Zins recalled. “Okay, do I want to go to college? Go to El Camino? What am…
Read MoreMiller sentenced to nine months in jail after Judge rejects plea for probation
Manhattan Beach resident Jim Miller was sentenced to nine months jail time Monday morning in United States District Court. Miller, 68, a former attorney for the Securities Exchange Commission and later for Body Glove International, was convicted in June on five counts of wire fraud and four counts of filing false tax returns after a…
Read MoreMB Local Produce Market Hit Hard by SCE Power Outage
A Labor Day weekend nightmare
Read MoreManhattan Beach, MBUSD on a mission to help a small town in Texas
Ben Dale left Cleveland, Texas in 1985 with a truckload of memories. He played football on both sides of the ball, as tight end and defensive end, under the Friday night lights of rural Texas for the Cleveland High School Indians. He worked in a BBQ joint, The Shack, owned by his dad’s fishing buddy,…
Read MoreSeven new administrators head up 17-18 school year at MBUSD
There are a lot of new faces within the Manhattan Beach Unified School District as the school year commences. According to a staffing report given to the MBUSD Board of Education by Brian Lucas, assistant superintendent of human resources, 62 vacancies were filled between the end of the last school year and now. The new…
Read MoreManhattan Beach Police Beat
Burglars busted A call from a vigilant neighbor led to the arrest of three men caught ransacking a parked, unlocked car on Pine Avenue last week, according to Manhattan Beach Police Department reports. On August 7 at about 2 a.m., police responded to what appeared to be a burglary in progress on Pine Avenue,…
Read MoreMBUSD students’ AP scores confound expectations
Mira Costa High School students are pulling off an unlikely academic feat, according to a report given to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education last week. More students are taking Advanced Placement coursework, which usually means a lower percentage score well on AP testing. But since 2009, Mira Costa has seen…
Read MoreMB/X, MBUSD unveil new West Field
The MB/X Foundation last week unveiled Mira Costa West Field, a new multi-sport, state-of-the-art turf field that will be ready for use by late September. The $5 million project, which was jointly funded by the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, has been in the planning stages for seven years. Construction began last November with…
Read MoreManhattan Beach Police Beat
Burglars busted A call from a vigilant neighbor led to the arrest of three men caught ransacking a parked, unlocked car on Pine Avenue last week, according to Manhattan Beach Police Department reports. On August 7 at about 2 a.m., police responded to what appeared to be a burglary in progress on Pine Avenue, near…
Read MoreManhattan Beach Mustang turned Marine Chad Jensen remembered
Chad Jensen led as Mustang, then as a Marine Members of the Mira Costa family will gather Saturday afternoon to remember Chad Jensen, a member of the 2009 state championship Mustang football squad who went on to become a U.S. Marine Corps special operations commando. Jensen was one of 15 Marines who died en…
Read MoreSix Man, Team Fletch prosper once more
Late Saturday afternoon, not long after Team Fletch had won the 56th Annual Charlie Saikley Six Man Volleyball Tournament in epic fashion, the only game still being played featured a team of over-40 men dressed as World Wrestling Federation stars. A few courts away a man was rolling down nets by himself, almost meditatively. Jay…
Read MoreMoratorium declared on medical offices on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach
by Mark McDermott The City Council on Monday enacted an emergency ordinance declaring a 45-day moratorium on new medical office uses on Sepulveda Boulevard. The moratorium precludes planning approval for six types of use, including medical or dental offices and laboratories; emergency and urgent care facilities and health clinics; assisted care facilities; residential or adult…
Read More“To the Bone” is a worthy debut from one of TV’s fiercest, funniest female writers [MOVIE REVIEW]
by Kailee Andrews/Cinemacy.com Marti Noxon is a television visionary, but you probably haven’t heard of her. As a screenwriter and producer, she shaped two of television’s modern classics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mad Men, and even stepped in as show-runner for Buffy’s controversial, ambitious final seasons. Clearly a force to be recognized, Noxon’s debut feature film, To The Bone,…
Read MoreNew Roundhouse Aquarium, Scout House designs approved for Manhattan Beach
The Manhattan Beach City Council on Tuesday night approved a final design for a new Roundhouse Aquarium and an initial design for the Scout House, two public-private partnerships that each will restore vitality to the city’s most historic remaining infrastructure. Both are passion projects. The Harrison Greenberg Foundation Roundhouse Aquarium Beautification Project, which will modernize…
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