Month: August 2013

“O.B. Fisher’s SeaFood and Mexican Grill”
1424 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.,
Ocean Beach, CA 92107
619-426-5463

In the past several weeks, I have been asked my no fewer than 4 people if I have tried the “O.B. Fisher’s”. I had not, but when Riccardo, my student from Italy told me he had a great fish taco there I decided it was time to try it out. After all, it is only steps from my house, and I have been to the “Pt. Loma Beach Café” for smoothies, so I called my neighbor Jim and asked him to try it out with me. (The Pt. Loma Beach Café is open in the mornings and early afternoon; the “OB Fisher’s” opens at 4:00pm in the same location.)

By Emilie Astolat

I don’t mind the fact that my hubby watches porn, partly, I guess, because it’s inversely related to how often we have sex. Just because I’m not in the mood doesn’t mean that he has to remain sexually abstinent. Plus, I watch it, too, when the mood strikes.

What does bother me, however, is the often unrealistic portrayal of sex that pornography perpetuates for men and women. Being a woman, I can only speak for my gender and, while porn can be fun, it definitely has the potential to take its toll on the self esteem. I mean, there are just some so-called standards I just can’t live up to.

Point Loma Marketplace (Fresh & Easy shopping center) Up for 3-Year Review

From Next Door Sunset Cliffs

The Peninsula Community Planning Board has notified residents that a Project Review Board meeting on Tuesday, August 13 will discuss a 3 year extension request for the plan approved by City Planning 3 years ago to construct Phase Two of the Point Loma Marketplace.

Specifically:

“This item (request for a time extension on the approved project) will be heard at the next PCPB Project Review Committee meeting on 8/13/13 at 1:30pm at the Pt. Loma Library. The agenda for this meeting should be posted by now at pcpb.net.

The item is also scheduled for the next PCPB meeting on [Thursday] 8/15/13 at 6:30pm at the Pt. Loma Library.

Thursday, Aug. 15th at 7pm
Point Loma United Methodist Church
1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd, OB

Step back in tome with Jim Bregante’s historical presentation of San Diego’s waterfront and Little Italy. Take this historical journey with an experienced speaker and Docent for the San Diego Maritime Museum and his PowerPoint presentation.

Nearly half of the respondents in our OB Rag poll on the future of the Marshmallow Wars want to ban it or ban the fireworks on July 4th in order to get rid of the gooey controversy. A total of 45% of those who did respond said ban the fireworks or ban the marshmallow fight.

A plurality of those polled – 25% – picked “Ban the fireworks and you’ll stop the marshmallows” option. Another 20% want to “just ban the marshmallow war”.

Another significant number – 16% – want to keep the tradition but contain it and control it. They picked the option: “Keep the traditiion, but contain it in a “superdome”, “thunderdome” or “Marshmallow Areana”, with controlled access, limited time, and control what is brought in.”

Yet OBceans are still as divided as ever. Four per cent voted to move it to Dog Beach, another 2% want to deal with it by having police officers cite anyone who throws marshmallows on the beach. Only 2% wanted to keep the war.

Kona Kai Resort
1551 Shelter Island Drive
San Diego, CA 92106
(619) 221-8000

It is not often that I am invited out to lunch to a place as beautiful – and costly – as the Kona Kai Resort. I think it has been at least 30 years since I was here last, and although the Resort has recently been remodeled and reopened on July 4th of this year, it is still breathtakingly beautiful. And, surprisingly, it was not as expensive as I remembered it being.

Denise and I decided to eat outdoors facing the San Diego Bay and the swimming pool. At the time of our arrival at 12:45pm, we were the only ones in the restaurant; however when we left there were three other parties finishing up their meal.

We were greeted by Sean, the manager, and he was delightful. Apparently he is a new father and told us that he had an opportunity to have lunch today because the “baby gave him some free time.” He showed us to our table where Jesus immediately appeared asking for our drink order.

By Tom Hunter

I spent five years living in vehicles at the beach in San Diego.

I knew the cops, I knew the dealers and I knew the homeless.

I was upper class, because I managed to hang onto a vehicle. I made gas money by driving a hooker to her johns. I was elated when the courts told the SDPD to stop ticketing people for being on the streets. (The police have decided in practice that court order no longer applies).

Here’s how it goes down. The homeless get a ticket. They don’t go to court. They have a warrant issued. They are arrested and jailed. They learn from their fellow inmates how to steal, how to use stolen credit cards, and how to get along in jail. It would be much cheaper to send them to San Diego State, but that’s not going to happen.

Yesterday, Sunday, August 11th was CicloSDias in San Diego. Three friends and I – all on bikes – joined the celebrated 5.2 miles of open roads and streets just for bicycles and pedestrians, and we rode from Golden Hill, through North Park, over to City Heights – and back.

Weather was perfect, the streets were cleared of cars – except for the four that we counted along the way – and there was an enthusiastic turn-out for the event. Hundreds of San Diegans took part in the 6 hour free bike tour thr0ugh San Diego’s mid-city. Yes, hundreds – not the thousands that we wanted to see – came out. We wanted to see hordes on bikes – but were happy with what we saw and experienced.

Ever so often, there would be a few tents and the canopies of booths open to participants, some giving away gifts, others selling their bicycling-related products and services.

By Jim Miller

This summer few people outside of the Bay Area probably noted what was one of the most important stories about higher education in America: City College of San Francisco (CCSF) is losing its accreditation.

After years of wrangling, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), one of the seven regional accreditors in the western United States whose job it is to ensure the quality of higher education programs announced that CCSF was losing its accreditation in July of 2014.

Why should you care? Because ACCJC’s decision had very little to do with the quality of instruction and much more to do with imposing a new business model on community colleges that narrows their mission and opens the door to more privatization in American higher education. And San Francisco is being used as an example to intimidate other colleges to fall in line with ACCJC’s questionable “reform” agenda. Thus, what happened in San Francisco could happen in San Diego.

The reaction to this extreme punishment for CCSF, an institution that serves 90,000 students, many of them working class, immigrant, or in adult education, and had never been sanctioned before last year, was outrage.

A local ticket holder to the planet Rillispore remembers seeing Clint Carey

By Stephanie Denton / Special to the OB Rag

Some explain the OB Spaceman as an “artist who could have been, one who chucked his career for a life without possession.” Meaning the New Englander who found himself in Ocean Beach, Clint Carey was a self-proclaimed “Contactee” of the planet Rillispore. Clint portrayed his contact with planet Rillispore through the glowing medium of fluorescent paint on fiberglass. This was a progressive art form at the time; fluorescent paintings dubbed “Black light Art” had yet to take on the cultural identity of the hippie counterculture.

Regarding the Spaceman of OB, one native recollected “The Spaceman did some kind of art or music or something, played the Saxophone.”

Bob Oates provided the association of the Saxophone to the Spaceman of OB. An avid Jazz Saxophonist, from his OB Pier side bungalow he listened, created, recorded, and supported Clint for over 30 years. “This was friendship,” says Rick Bollinger, the writer and director of tonight’s – August 9th – opening of “The Spaceman of Ocean Beach” a Readers Theater taking place tonight At the Ocean Beach Playhouse, 8pm.

“Hair of the Dog”
4783 Narragansett Ave.
Ocean Beach, CA 92107
619-223-3080

The first time I googled “Hair of the Dog” I was taken to a lovely looking bar in Portland, Oregon that had a fascinating menu. Somehow, though, I did not think that they were also dog groomers, and I had to do a little more research. Perhaps you will be as surprised as I was to find that there is a dog groomer only 3 stores away from the cleaners on Sunset Cliffs and Narragansett. (There is the cleaners; then a house – I didn’t even know there was a house there and my daughter told me that one of her childhood friends used to live there.) Next to the house is an accountant’s office, and next to that office is Robin’s “Hair of the Dog” grooming place. And … she has been there 20 years! Who knew?

The OB Warehouse Will Feature Upstairs Casual Dining and Craft Beer

By Candice Woo / Eater San Diego

Wondering what David Cohn was planning to do with the Ocean Beach property he purchased earlier this year? Wonder no longer; Eater’s got the scoop on the Cohn Restaurant Group‘s next project which will transform the Newport Avenue space once occupied by Portugalia.

The CRG’s frequent collaborator, designer and restaurateur Philippe Beltran, is overseeing its metamorphosis into their new OB Warehouse Street Food + Bar, slated to make its debut this fall.