Month: December 2014

The editordude of the OB Rag will be on KOGO radio this afternoon, Tuesday, Dec. 30th, helping out talk-show host Sully as he fields incoming calls on a variety of San Diego and national topics.

Frank Gormlie will be on from 1 to 4 pm on KOGO radio 600 on your am dial.

Any OBcean – or other earth inhabitant – is urged to call in with questions or comments. Gormlie would love to talk about the OB Community Plan. The numbers to call are:

1-800-600-KOGO or 619-569-8255

Whether it’s the season or the industry itself, it’s unclear, but a whole host of OB restaurants are looking to hire people right now.

At least 5 eateries in Ocean Beach have ads up at various places, including Craigslist. All the following job offers are listed in the OB Rag’s free classified section under “Help Wanted“.

Leading off the group is the Cohn family Restaurant Group, which has two high-end restaurants in the coastal village of OB.

Their latest, the OB Warehouse on Newport Avenue, is looking for everybody: bartenders, all kinds of cooks – saute, grill, prep, and hosts and dishwashers. Interested people should apply online or in person daily between 2pm and 4pm. …

Doesn’t take much to get my goat any more.

And it has nothing to do with the amount of time I am spending in North Dakota with Cowboy and his herd of goats. No, in this case it has to do with a stupid “rule” that might make a difference in my shopping habits. This is what happened.

I have shopped at Stumps on Voltaire for years. I like their meat, deli and produce departments. I seldom purchase the regular staples, because their prices are higher than I pay at Ralphs or Vons. But their meat is exceptionally tasty; and their prices are better than the other supermarkets.

Over the past years, Stump’s has offered incentive programs that I have taken advantage of – items like Tupperware containers (or similar). Apparently, Stumps now – after a hiatus of many months – has brought back a new incentive program – Chicago Cutlery. …

Yearly totals indicate a troubling trend of inland trash making its way to the ocean

From Coastkeeper and Surfrider Media Release

Condoms. Tampons. Glow sticks. A stethoscope.

These items topped the list of unusual pieces of trash removed from San Diego County beaches during a suite of cleanups hosted in 2014 by the Surfrider Foundation San Diego County Chapter and San Diego Coastkeeper. The environmental groups train volunteers to track the type and number of items they pick up during cleanups, ask them to note unique items and help them weigh the total contents.

This year, more than 7,000 volunteers removed nearly 10,500 pounds of debris from coastal areas, capturing it before it could pollute the ocean.

More alarming than the unusual items, says cleanup organizers, is that volunteers removed nearly 207,800 pieces of trash including more than 75,000 cigarette butts, 23,500 plastic pieces and 17,500 bits of plastic foam (the top three items removed).

By John Lawrence

In a huge victory for the environmental movement, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has banned fracking. I guess President Obama is not the only one that can get things accomplished by executive order. Experts have made analyses that identified contamination threats to water, soil and air, the absence of reliable health studies or proof that drillers can protect the public, as well as diminishing economic prospects. All good reasons for the public to demand a fracking ban.

Fracking is also being delivered a death knell by market forces. Since it costs more to access oil by fracking than it does by conventionsl drilling, if the price per barrel falls below a certain point, fracking becomes uneconomical. Lo and behold, thanks to the Saudis who have been keeping production up, the cost per barrel has fallen to around $60. It has to be higher than $80. for fracking to be profitable.

Hooray and Halleluja! Who would have thought that market forces, the Saudis and the environmental movement would all have combined with remarkable synergy to put an end to fracking?

There’s a missing 12-year-old girl from Chula Vista whom police are asking for help to find. Autumn Fink has been missing since Monday afternoon, Dec. 29th.

And police were able to ping her cellphone around 8:30 p.m. to determine she was near Robb Field in Ocean Beach. (FoxNews described it as “Rob Roy Park”.) Fink did not give any information about who she was with.

She was last seen Monday at 4:00 p.m. on Monday when she told her family she was going to meet friends at a park in Chula Vista. Police said Fink was in touch with her family until about 8:30 p.m., but that’s when her cellphone either died or was shut off.

Autumn is described as 5-feet, 3-inches, weighing 120 pounds with brown hair, brown eyes, and braces, and has no history of running away. …

Hit and Run Victim Talks Katie Conner, the OBcean who was the victim of a hit-and-run driver in OB spoke to a local TV station on the crash that …

OB Surfers Part of Study of Health Problems from Post-Storm Polluted Ocean OB surfers are taking part in a study to evaluate medical and health problems that arise after they surf …
Stolen Christmas Presents Pose Possible Problem for OB Post Office Branch An OB couple are claiming that presents sent to family in Texas were tampered with by possibly by a postal clerk or someone “inside” the OB P.O. …

2nd Fatal Accident in Midway District Near I-8 Freeway Shows Dangers of Stretch

Pt Loma Nazarene Anthropology Prof Part of Study of Gangs and Sex-Trafficking

Police Renew Call for Info on Missing Pt Loma Mom San Diego police have renewed their call for information that could help find a 31-year-old mother of two who vanished from her Point Loma home more than two months ago.

“Backdoor Bandit” Who Robbed 13 Businesses Including Roberto’s in Ocean Beach Sentenced …
AND MORE INSIDE

By Jim Miller

We live in troubled times but are increasingly ill equipped to deal with them. The average American is awash in a sea of ghastly, contextless headlines punctuated by inane trivia and pointless titillation. Somewhere between the latest massacre and Kim Kardashian’s most recent booty shot we got lost.

Indeed, some studies have even shown that the more news we consume the less we actually know. That’s because so much of what we have come to think of as “news” is really a form of corporate propaganda, a depthless mass of factoids designed to not interfere with the bottom line. Thus we know less as we amuse ourselves to death.

Fig Tree Café
Liberty Station
2400 Historic Decatur Road
Suite 103
San Diego, California 92106
619-821-2044

Every Christmas season I go out to breakfast with two friends – Nancy and Stewart – and this year was no exception. We were deciding between the “Little Lion” and the “Fig Tree Café” this year and because Nancy and Stewart had been to the Fig Tree for their $5 breakfast special we decided to go there. Alas, the special was not available for the “holiday” – even though it was now Friday following Christmas. We ordered from the regular menu.

By Roy Little

Peregrine Falcons are well known for their acrobatic ability in the air and high speed dives to stun other flying birds, usually as prey. Not quite as well-known by the public is their long-range migration habit. “Peregrinus” means “wanderer” in Latin. In the Americas they tend to migrate north/south annually along the Pacific or Atlantic flyways.

On November 5, I photographed a Peregrine Falcon at the edge of the Kendall-Frost/Northern Wildlife Preserve in Pacific Beach at the northern side of Mission Bay.

Not sure of what to call this new movement, this movement that sprang off of the failure to indict the white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in the shooting death of Michael Brown, and which is now a nation-wide daily outpouring of militant demonstrations against the murders of Black men and police brutality and violence.

Despite the unprovoked shooting deaths last Saturday of two police officers in New York City by a Black man with mental problems unconnected with the protests, the movement must go on and it must go on daily. The movement cannot allow this shooting or the backlash against the protests to stall its journey.

Now that there’s only a week left in 2014, I’d like to take a moment and let you know some of what’s going on behind the scenes, either with us or with Ocean Beach.

The OB Planning Board needs you. First up, however, is a plea to get people to run for the OB Planning Board. Their election isn’t until March, but in order to be eligible to run as a candidate for one of the open seats, you must have been to at least one general meeting over the last year, and you need to have done this by February. There are 7 or 8 seats open this election, depending how you count. Their meetings are the first Wednesday of every month.

So, first, if you are even vaguely interested, check to see which OB planning district you live in.