OB Rag

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the San Diego public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, August 24: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 200: Proposed FY 2027 Statement of Budgetary Principles

Why it matters: Significant addition: “The Risk Management Department will provide an annual presentation … detailing City’s settlement and judgement payments, including settlements and claim count information for the San Diego Police Department.”

Item 201: Repeal of Measure C Amending Ordinance … to the San Diego Municipal Code and Local Coastal Program

Why it matters: This is an opportunity for the public to speak against Senator Akilah Weber Pierson’s legislative proposals to get around a CA Supreme Court decision that has upheld the 30-foot height limit on the gargantuan Midway Rising project.

By Donna Frye

Last year, four councilmembers (LaCava, Foster, Moreno and Elo-Rivera) supported charging non-residents to pay to park at our beaches and Mission Bay Park and included it in their budget priority memos. Paid parking was being seriously considered as a potential revenue source for this year’s budget.

After lots of public opposition and media coverage, the city council decided not to move forward with this very bad idea.

The issue of paid beach and bay parking remained a topic of public discussion, however, due to concerns that it could easily resurface at any time, especially during the budget hearings.

Those on the council who opposed it, such as Councilmember Campillo, brought forward a proposal for a ballot measure to ensure that parking at our beaches and Mission Bay Park remained free.

by Ernie McCray

I sat the other night
squirming in my seat
as a woman,
Tina Cordova,
a co-founder and executive director
of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium,
spoke about our country’s neglect
in respect
to protecting
people who suffered the effects
of the “Trinity Nuclear Test”
in New Mexico,
how since that day
in July, 1945,

by Dorian Hargrove / Times of San Diego / Aug. 18, 2026

Two California housing advocacy groups are suing the city of San Diego, alleging city planners illegally excluded properties from a state program meant to spur development near transit stations.

In a legal filing obtained by Times of San Diego, Californians for Homeownership and the California Housing Defense Fund say San Diego ran afoul of the state housing law by requiring that projects are connected to bus or rail stations by dedicated sidewalks to qualify.

Signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2025, Senate Bill 79 allows developers to build more housing than allowed by local zoning restrictions for projects that are near major transit stops.

In May, city officials adopted an ordinance that interpreted the state law to exclude any property within a mile from a transit stop that does not include a sidewalk connecting the project and the station.

Matt Gelfand, counsel for Californians for Homeownership, said that was a misinterpretation. The law calls for a “safe walkway,” but the housing groups say that does not require a dedicated sidewalk.

By Angelo Haynes

The city of San Diego is a diverse community, home to many cultures that define the identity of America’s finest city; whether it be your favorite local Pho restaurant on El Cajon Blvd. or the murals of Chicano Park and the World Beat Center. San Diego is an embarrassment of cultural riches.

In Southeast San Diego, one woman has been preserving her native Chamorro culture for over 27 years — using her passion for traditional Chamorro art to connect with neighbors in the Skyline Hills neighborhood, all the way to representing Guam in cultural delegations internationally.

Rosemary Mantanona is a local dance group leader or Fafa’nå’gue (Cultural Leader in the Chamorro language) and cultural activist. In this role, she leads by example as a role model for the young men and women who have the opportunity to be in her dance group or “Guma” in Chamorro.

Imåhen Taotao Tåno’, which means “Images of the People of the Land” in native Chamorro language, is the first Guma established in San Diego that focuses on Chamorro cultural preservation. Ms. Mantanona migrated to the US in 1995 and created her Guma in 1999.

by Dorian Hargrove / Times of San Diego / Aug. 18, 2026

The family of a young girl who was severely injured when a drunk driver drove onto a pedestrian pathway in Liberty Station in September and plowed into her is now suing the city of San Diego, the driver and a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform.

The collision occurred Sept. 6, 2025, just after 4:30 p.m.

Alex and Leann Tomasevic, their young son and 5-year-old daughter were standing on the pedestrian pathway near the flagpole circle at Liberty Park in Liberty Station when Savannah Monique Taylor, 22, drove onto the promenade, striking the girl.

Taylor was drunk at the time and has since been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Times of San Diego Staff / August 20, 2026

Changes are coming to the heart of Pacific Beach.

Less than a month after the sale of the former IHOP at Grand and Mission Avenues, and word that the location would likely be transformed into a mixed-use development, a new proposal has surfaced to demolish three small commercial buildings and a residence-turned-business next door to the former IHOP to build a three-story, 11,231-square-foot housing project with a total of 17 units, two of which are designated as affordable. If approved, as is proposed, the project will include a three-space carport on the bottom floor.

On Aug. 7, Golba Architecture submitted plans to turn the properties at 866 to 872 Grand on behalf of the developer.

Architect Tim Golba told Times of San Diego that the three small commercial buildings and the adjacent former residence appear to have been intended for housing and will not return to that use.

By Jake Peterson / The Reader / Aug. 20, 2026

End of the 8 is a sitcom that follows a rock band around Ocean Beach, spotlighting the neighborhood’s eclectic vibe. For those who didn’t catch the pilot episode on YouTube last year, the show climaxed with the End of the 8 band (imagine if Spinal Tap and Grateful Dead birthed a surfer love child) playing to packed house at Winstons. The shots of the crowd featured a who’s who of Obeacians, and this was no accident. Highlighting the real-life characters and scenery of Ocean Beach was one of the main objectives of show creator Daniel M. Dyer.

Since then, excitement has been building around the show. Over the past year, the pilot made wound through the indie film circuit and even made it through the first round of Cannes Film Festival. It scored six nominations and won a couple of awards: Best Web/TV Pilot at the Los Angeles Film Awards and Best Ensemble Cast at the Independent Shorts Awards.

Now the moment is approaching for Episode 2. “There’s a lot of new characters,” Dyer says. “We’re anchored in the same cast, but also expanding the scale of the whole world of OB. There’s a lot more female-focused characters, too. If people can like the characters, or at least like to laugh at them — or with them — you’ve got something. That’s what matters.”

>Editordude: We asked D2 candidate Nicole Crosby to send us a position paper and we’d publish it without edit (we also asked Richard Bailey the same) — but at this date, she has not. So, here is a lengthy statement from her campaign website:

Make San Diego More Affordable

Nicole’s vision is for stronger neighborhoods that keep longtime residents in and connected to the heart of our communities by focusing on projects that are community-centered, close to schools, work, recreational spaces, and other essential amenities.

Rein in the cost of living by focusing on projects that expand opportunity for home ownership and keep rents affordable.

Work with the San Diego Housing Commission to create programs that expand housing opportunities and subsidies for seniors and working families.
Programs that help support families and seniors access childcare, healthcare, and essential services needed to thrive in their neighborhoods.

Fix San Diego’s Potholes, Sewers, Sidewalks, and Roads
Our infrastructure in District 2 is in desperate need of repair. As your next Councilmember, she will work alongside our County and State partners to ensure execution of a one year, five year, and ten year roadmap that will deliver world class streets service and infrastructure to our communities. Nicole’s safe street priorities include:

From Peninsula News

A small group of Mayor Gloria loyalists have attacked Frank Gormlie –“Editordude” at the OB Rag, the Rag itself and Ocean Beach in a recently published book — as well as in online interviews.

Authors Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew grouped a series of interviews of local San Diegans into a book published in 2025, which included interviews with three individuals who all disparaged the Rag and Gormlie. They include Doug Porter who Gormlie lifted from obscurity after a 30-year hiatus from San Diego into becoming an early writer for the online Rag, and Ricardo Ochoa, a local attorney whom Gormlie has never met and vice versa.

This clique of Gloriaistas has supported and endorsed the mayor over these last six or more years, despite any evidence that he has been worthy of their support, and have opposed those who are critical of the mayor — like Gormlie and the Rag. While the Rag supported Gloria’s opponents, like Democrat Barbara Bry and Geneviéve Jones-Wright (probably the most left-wing mayoral candidate in San Diego’s history), Miller and others dumped on those with the Rag.

The most inflammatory interview by Miller and Mayhew was with Gregg Robinson, a retired college professor, who went on a rant which attacked Gormlie and the Rag in a red-baiting, terrorist- baiting, defamatory screed, filled with lies, half-truths and hypocrisies. (In a 9-page rant, nearly a third was used to attack Gormlie and the Rag.)

For one example where Robinson personally attacked Gormlie, in the interview published online, Robinson without any proof accuses Gormlie of selling drugs at West Point — which Gormlie attended for a couple of years. This was a gross lie, which could be potentially actionable as defamation.

The charges of of red-baiting and worse stem from a series of accusations against Gormlie’s early history as a community organizer in Ocean Beach. Robinson accuses Editordude of being Weather Underground, a militant anti-war group that evolved out of the movements in the sixties and early seventies. Robinson uses the group’s name three times in an obvious attempt at smearing Gormlie. Many in those former movements understand what the group was, but Robinson plays on people’s fears and trepidation with hopes that people will equate the group as a domestic terrorist organization and then, nullify the community work Gormlie did, including launching the original OB Rag newspaper in 1971. This, then, is clearly red-baiting and an example of terrorist-baiting.

The disparagement of Gormlie and the Rag comes at a dangerous time in modern American history, as the Trump administration is going after journalists, progressive media, and attacking progressive groups like the ACLU, Southern Poverty Legal Center and the National Lawyers Guild. Not only that, but centrists Democrats are currently red-baiting Democratic Socialists who have been winning primary elections.

What’s going on here?

By Mat Wahlstrom

Last week was the second anniversary of the publication of this “satire but not really” piece. As the author, I am struck by how those who self-identify as YIMBY continue to double-down on the Orwellian appropriation of words to mean something different from what they are commonly understood. (Which will be familiar to those who remember the Soviet Union and how their definition of the word “peace” was far different from that of the the rest of the world.)

But at the same time, I am gratified to see so many people have learned not to fall for their bad faith arguments and intentional deception any longer.

Read it yourself and see if you agree that what our electeds and their developer fellow travelers say follows this exact pattern of deliberate misrepresentation. In fact, I created a handy bingo card that you can use the next time you listen to our current mayor or anyone in his regime.

Herewith are the common terms with their insider meanings that every YIMBY must know. They are not just received wisdom, but also rote rhetorical devices to denude meaning and nuance from any debate and appear more knowledgeable than our opponents.

ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANT: A state in human history that has only ever been achieved in short bursts as a result of social cooperation and environmental grace; the promise offered by every developer.

ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT (ADU): A granny flat, with four stories and seven other units having zero setbacks or parking.