Month: January 2019

The man rescued off the OB Jetty by lifeguards Wednesday has died, reports the San Diego Fire Rescue-Department and County Medical Examiner’s Office today, Thursday, Jan. 10.

Identified as Gregg Owens, the man was rushed to UCSD Medical Center intensive care unit but was later pronounced dead.

Reports have Owens – visiting from Nevada – entering the rough ocean around 2pm to retrieve his dogs.

The Cox technician came out today to perform the necessary changes to fix my land line. [Editordude: please see Judi’s earlier complaints about COX.]

I had several things I wanted to have done:

(1) the modem needed to be changed;

(2) whenever someone called me with an unlisted phone number they had to dial “*82” in order to reach me. That meant that they were dialing 13 numbers to ask me a question.

(3) Somehow Cox has their own “answering machine” and it had circumvented my own answering machine. It frequently told people that I was too busy to talk to them; that the phone was disconnected; their number was blocked, etc.

OB photographer Joe Ewing captured Jeff Timons surfing at lunchtime on Wednesday, Jan. 9.

Here’s a few updates and photos of various businesses and projects around town in Ocean Beach.

Green Center to Open in New Location by End of January

The OB Green Center has moved into Jim Bell’s building, and according to Kip Kruegar, will reopen by the end of this month – January. Bell’s building is directly across Voltaire from the store’s former location. There’s a bunch of interior dry-walling to be done, Kip said – and many boxes to be emptied and items to be re-organized in the front space of the one-story site. The ‘end-of-the-month’ seemed optimistic.

Ebers and Greene Monstrosity Exposed to the Elements

Black tarps covering parts of the infamous Ebers and Greene building have been shredded and dislodged by the wind and are now exposing the interior to the elements – which is not easy on unprotected wood structures.

Carl Weidetz – the owner of the OB Hardware store on Newport Avenue – gave this reporter hope that there may yet be a positive end result in the current saga of the future of the store.

On Tuesday, the 8th, as I entered one of the most popular storefronts on OB’s main commercial drag – one that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year as a business, Carl had a friendly smile and outstretched hand for this reporter.

And in a few minutes of discussion, Carl – who is definitely retiring very soon – told me that there are two possible groups of buyers who want his store. But there’s been a hang-up, he said, in talks between “the lawyers”.

“There’s no sense in buying my business,” he said, “if you can’t get the lease too.”

One of the most famous personages in Ocean Beach has returned to his corner at Newport and Cable – Willie is back. An absolute OB legend, Willie is back in front of his Shoe Shine shack behind the coffee kiosk at the corner.

Having been hospitalized for a year, he appeared to this reporter in good spirits and ready to chat with anyone who stops by to say hello. He told me he was 85 years old. He’s a former Marine and was in Korea in the early -50s. But Willie has been a mainstay on Newport Avenue for decades.

Our Constitution does not give President Trump “emergency powers” and he can’t suspend it whenever he perceives there’s a national emergency. So says Constitutional expert and Dean of UC Berkeley Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky. And I believe him over Trump and any of his sycophants.

If Trump tries to simply invoke emergency powers and build a wall between the United States and Mexico without congressional approval, it would “constitute an unconstitutional and dangerous expansion of presidential power,”

by Ernie McCray

Note: I found an old piece I wrote for the San Diego Tribune in November of 1994, twenty-four years ago. The piece was about Proposition 187, a ballot measure that required me, a school principal, to rat on families who were in the country illegally. And, as I read it, I felt as though we, as a society, had been frozen in time, because what I wrote, with all the talk nowadays about caravans and building walls and such, would speak to these times:

Despite the passage of Proposition 187, my disposition remains the same. I will not, in any way, play a role in willfully hurting another person.

I have sat at the back of the bus. I’ve had someone tell me to get my “black ass” out of a hotel where there were plenty of rooms available. I’ve skaked at the rink on special “Negro” days.

Every year, SOHO – Save Our Heritage Organization – puts out a list of the most endangered historic resources of the county. Here’s their latest:

2018 Most Endangered List of Historic Resources – And one lost site from the 2017 list

SOHO’s annual reckoning with the state of preservation in San Diego County is again a bleak one. This year’s list, which is intended to raise public awareness about landmarks and feasible options, and to bolster political will for crucial historic preservation and restoration, includes 9 significant sites. Two of them—the Villa Montezuma in San Diego and Big Stone Lodge in Poway—did not appear on the 2017 MEL. Tragically, one from last year’s MEL was needlessly demolished by Southwestern College in December 2017. [Ed: for links to each site, go to SOHO here.]

Originally posted Jan. 8, 2019

Ocean Beach is in the very first scene of Murder Mountain – a new docuseries in 6 parts now streaming on Netflix – and we immediately view the iconic image of OB: the Ocean Beach Pier and surfers.

Yet apart from the beauty of the opening, the series is a tragic one – as it follows what happened to Garret Rodriguez, a 29-year old OB surfer – his trip up to northern California to cash in on the marijuana industry, his subsequent disappearance into Humboldt County and murder.

The OB Rag had been following Garret’s disappearance since July 2013 when we reposted an article from Lost Coast Outpost by Kym Kemp. A number of OBceans responded in comments that they recall seeing him around OB. That December we published an update by Kemp – one year after his disappearance. Even then it looked like he had been murdered.

Then the bad news came around mid-December 2013:

Is this the San Diego County we know?

The Sierra Club is claiming victory in a court ruling that came down the day after Christmas against the County’s efforts to allow developers to buy their way out of restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, while North County slow-growth advocates are ecstatic over what it all could mean for large projects planned for their area.

And in the process Superior Court Judge Timothy B. Taylor rejected the County’s Climate Action Plan as being woefully inadequate in meeting the commitment to reach greenhouse gas emissions reduction standards mandated by the state of California. .

Judge Taylor ruled the County’s plan for developers to be able to use carbon credits, or offsets from outside the County, or outside the state and or even somewhere else in the world, was not only unacceptable, it was unverifiable and unenforceable.