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Frank Gormlie

OB FLASHES – News, Calendar, Whatever – July 30, 2010

July 30, 2010
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ALL DETAILS AND LINKS INSIDE:

OB Library Gets a New Rug
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“Terriers” airs on September 8th
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World War Two Weather ?
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3 Out of 4 Readers Against Publicly Funded Downtown Football Stadium
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Police Praise OB Heathens
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Woman Jogger Hassled Along Sunset Cliffs
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Ground-breaking on New OB Entryway in October
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$7000 From Supervisor Cox for Abbott Street Trees
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Who were Dusty Rhodes and Bob Kenny anyhow? (Help us out.)
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OBMA Historical Tour – Online
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OB Town Council to hold elections in August
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Planning Board General Meeting August 4th
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OB Centric: Creating community – one art project at a time – August 5th, 17th and 23th
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Pepe’s Annual Tomato Contest – August 15th
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Historical Society: “Hot Curl” Cartoonist Michael Dormer – August 19th
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Get Ready for the Jazz 88 OB Music & Art Festival! – September 11th

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OB Town Council Guest Speaker Peppered by Salty Audience

July 29, 2010
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Nearly every chair was filled last night at the OB Town Council monthly general meeting. Many of the some thirty folks in the audience had come to hear Scott Himelstein speak about his group’s “reform” plans for City schools.

Himelstein had invited himself to deliver another spiel about “San Diegans 4 Great Schools” and was the night’s guest speaker. The group is going around town in an effort to get their message out to community groups. OB was the second stop on Himelstein’s rounds. Last week he had been in Tierrasanta.

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Education “reformer” scheduled to speak at OB Town Council not received well in Tierrasanta

July 23, 2010
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The same guy who will be speaking about “education reform” at the next OB Town Council meeting on July 28th, spoke at a Tierrasanta community meeting Wednesday night (7/21/10). He wasn’t received all that well by local residents there.

Scott Himelstein, the leader of the newly named “San Diegans 4 Great Schools”, told the residents gathered at the Tierrasanta meeting that his group was disappointed with test scores in San Diego Unified schools and that “governance” was the problem. “Governance” is a cloaked term for “how the school board works”.

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OB FLASHES – News, Calendar, and Whatever – July 22, 2010

July 22, 2010
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ALL DETAILS AND LINKS INSIDE:

* Community Meeting on Recent Small Dog Deaths Tonight – July 22nd
* Heathen Party and Park-to-Beach Procession on Saturday July 24th
* OB Town Council guest speaker from controversial ‘San Diegans 4 Great Schools’ – July 28th
* Lifeguards and off-duty OB firefighter pull man from ocean off Sunset Cliffs
* Sunset Cliffs Benches: $3000 X 15 = $45,000 – YIKES!
* Flash from the past: trapped would-be burglar gives Gary Gilmore the business
* New homeless sticker is seeking a home

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Community Meeting on Recent Small Dog Deaths Tonight – July 22nd- at the OB Rec Center

July 22, 2010

There has been troubles at OB’s dog parks recently – there have been maulings and deaths of small dogs at both Dusty Rhodes Dog Park and at Dog Beach. In response, a community meeting is being held tonight, July 22nd, at the OB Recreation Center at 5:30pm. The Rec Center is at the corner of Santa Monica and Ebers.

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OB Planning Board to review remodel request for Colburn cottages at foot of the Pier.

July 20, 2010
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The Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board will be determining whether to authorize a request to remodel cottages on Niagara next to the OB Pier, on Wednesday, July 21.

The owner of the cottages – called the Colburn Residences and located at 5072 Niagara Avenue – wants to remodel an existing residence and add 288 square feet. The site is .23 of an acre and has an additional five residences.

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Saratoga Park Condo Site Sold for a Cool $3.8 Million

July 16, 2010
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Well, it’s finally happened. The condo site at the corner of Abbott and Saratoga has been sold. We knew it could happen – we’ve been documenting what’s been happening to this fabled corner for awhile.

And the new owners seem to be serious. They paid $3.8 million for the property – cash. The 2009 assessment for this property was on a total value of $3,284,438.

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OB FLASHES: News, Calendar and Whatever – July 14

July 14, 2010
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ALL LINKS AND DETAILS INSIDE:

* Volunteer(s) Needed to Update Websites of Town Council and Planning Board
* Stand Up Is Dead Comedy Tour at Winston’s Friday July 16th
* A Historian’s View on Growing Up in OB – July 15th
* Join OB Historical Society on their Annual OB Historical Walk – July 17th
* New Homeless Sticker Going On Sale
* Ocean Beach’s “Don’t feed the bums” sticker taken to a new level in Miami
* Voices of OB’s Homeless
* “Hodad’s Too” to Open in “Sept-ober”
* Top Chef winner turned away from South Beach Bar & Grille
* New Restaurant Bar on Voltaire Offers 16 Craft Beers and Late Night Kitchen
* Jazz 88 OB Music & Art Festival September 11th

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July 14th: Viva Bastille Day! Viva la France! Viva Revolution! Viva the modern world!

July 14, 2010
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July 14th is Frances’ July 4th -a national holiday, as it commemorates the storming of the hated Bastille – a fortress like prison in Paris – in 1789. The date celebrates the victory of the French people in their revolution that overthrew the king and feudal system. The storming of the prison is seen as a symbol of the uprising of the first modern nation and the beginning of a constitutional government for France.

(The American revolution preceded this, of course, but our struggle was not technically a revolution per se but more of a colonial war against an imperial power. See this earlier post explaining the origin of modern politics.)

For impartiality, we turn to wikipedia:

In France, it is formally called La Fête Nationale (National Celebration) and commonly le quatorze juillet (the fourteenth of July). …

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The ‘hate mail’ we received over our opposition to the ‘bum’ sticker

July 12, 2010
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It’s one thing to have the OB Rag blog on the front cover of both the Union-Tribune and the LA Times over the homeless and the ‘bums’ sticker controversies, and it’s quite another to monitor the hate mail, the mail filled with anger, and other vulgar comments that we have received over the past month because of our strident advocacy of the rights of the homeless.

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One year later, Chris Bowd’s assailant still MIA

July 12, 2010
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It’s been one year since OBcean Chris Bowd was knocked unconscious on July 4th, 2009, and left in a pool of his own blood. He was found leaning up against a telephone pole near the corner of Newport Ave and Bacon Street before midnight. An ambulance took him to the hospital where he remained in a coma for weeks. Upon his revival, he had no memory of what happened to him or who his assailant was.

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Ode to Blogger Lane Tobias As He Returns to His Roots

July 10, 2010
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We met Lane Tobias during the fight to save the Ocean Beach branch library back in the fall of 2008. He enthusiastically joined our staff as the youngest blogger at the time and wrote for us for a year and a half. One of his posts about the lack of food stamps in San Diego County remains one of our most popular articles of all time.

Alas, Lane, originally from New Jersey, and his partner Carianne, had to permanently return to their roots …

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4:54pm – whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on.

July 7, 2010
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YUp, another one, just now at 4:54 pm.

The livingroom here twisted. Patty felt it even before the big shake. She still has a sick feeling in her stomach.

Epicenter is our close desert, probably another one in a series of aftershocks from the Easter big one.

5.4 – (downgraded from a 5.9) 13 miles north of Borrego Springs.

Pat Abbott, PhD, a geologist interviewed by NBC local TV says this could be a brand new earthquake. On the San Jacinto Fault Zone – the Coyote Creek Fault.

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Community Forum On OB Homelessness Draws 250 People

July 7, 2010
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The church-sponsored community forum last night (Tuesday July 6) drew as many as 250 residents, merchants, homeless, and property owners to a discussion on OB homelessness.

Volunteers signed people in as they lined up entering the lengthy hall, some homeless guys played music on the front lawn. Reporters mingled with attendees on the sidewalk. Many of OB’s active residents and business-owners were there – this was the place to be in OB on July 6th. Town Council members, the community relations police officer, the woman who feeds homeless people every Monday, OB Rag bloggers, seniors, middle-aged property owners, church volunteers. Christine Shames, a homeless advocate, brought a half-dozen young people who were homeless to the forum.

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OB Marshmallow Fight to Be Closely Monitored by Police

July 2, 2010
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San Diego Police have announced to the media that they will monitor the annual OB marshmallow fight, held right after the fireworks. Police told channel 10News that they will be out in force to ensure the gooey event doesn’t get out of hand. They will be stepping up their patrols leading up to the July 4th celebratory day and night extravaganza held on the sand.

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News From Sandy Ego

July 1, 2010
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[ALL DETAILS AND LINKS INSIDE]

* Will the City Ban Floatopias?

* Petition puzzle: Pulling back the curtain on Carl DeMaio’s costly signature-gathering campaign

* San Diego City Council Gives Go-ahead to Central Library Construction

* Mayor Sanders Now Wants Half Cent Raise In Sales Tax

* Mayor sued to enforce rope barrier for seals in La Jolla

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Should Ocean Beach End Its Marshmallow Wars ?

July 1, 2010
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(Originally posted on July 16, 2009.)

by Frank Gormlie

For 24 years now, OBceans have been lobbing marshmallows at each other once the fireworks die down on July 4ths.

Since it began in 1985 with warring parties of neighbors at the beach all the way to this year, hundreds if not thousands of participants have joined the virtual free-for-all around the bonfires.

But now calls to end this particular brand of totally-local OB shenanigan have surfaced …

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OB FLASHES: News, calendar and whatever – June 30, 2010

June 30, 2010
Thumbnail image for OB FLASHES: News, calendar and whatever – June 30, 2010

DETAILS AND LINKS INSIDE:

*OB Fireworks to begin at 9pm on July 4th
*’Bum’ Sticker Not Popular on Newport Ave.
*Keep Your Dogs Inside During the Fireworks on the 4th
*”Morning-After Mess” Clean-up Scheduled
*Community Forum On Homelessness In OB On July 6th
*OB Library Performance Programs for the Summer
*A Historian’s View on Growing Up in OB
*Join OB Historical Society on their Annual OB Historical Walk – July 17th
*Jazz 88 OB Music & Art Festival September 11th

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Update on the ‘bum’ sticker controversy

June 25, 2010
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Here’s an update on the whole ‘bum’ sticker controversy.
Wednesday, June 23rd in front of The Black

* I started to write up a summary of what happened the other day in front of The Black but ended up deleting a lot of it. (It had been such a challenging two hours out there in front of a crowd, I almost didn’t want to relive it again by blogging about it. So, here’s an abbreviated version.)

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Ouch! We hit a nerve in exposing The Black’s anti-OB attitude

June 21, 2010
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Yeah, ouch! We really did touch a nerve with our posts and coverage about the anti-homeless sticker and merchandise the Black is selling in OB, and our subsequent call for a temporary boycott of The Black. Our posts and the coverage by local media have created a major story about this community.

The story went national on last Saturday, June 19th, what with the 10News story and the front-page article on the Union-Tribune / signonsandiego .

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