Month: January 2020

One of the largest Ocean Beach apartment complexes in the community has just been sold for $18.3 million.

The 60-unit complex at 4464 Castelar Street in northeast OB was sold to Interstate Enquiries Corp. of Los Altos by the Groebli Revocable Trust of La Jolla. Supposedly the property had never been placed on the open market before.

The Groebli family developed the 45,302 square-foot complex in the early 1970’s and have owned and operated it ever since.

By Jim Miller

I took a week off from my soapbox for some holiday traveling and came home to a world on the brink of spiraling into a dangerous new global conflict. It wasn’t surprising.

In fact, crisis-all-the-time is our new normal, the zeitgeist of our era. While it would be easy to point to Trump as the central player in our increasingly overwrought national drama, the fact is that many of the trends that helped to shape the present preceded his presidency.

Thus, as we head into a new decade with the future on the line like it never has been before, it might be useful to consider some of the key moments of the last ten years along with the social, political, and economic forces that fostered them.

A custodian at Silver Gate Elementary in Point Loma, Sharon Wood, was seriously injured in a hit-and-run incident as she and two others were crossing Sports Arena Boulevard after a Gulls game at Pechanga Arena on January 3. A short time later, a suspect was arrested.

Wood was attending the game with friends and once it was over, they were crossing the 3500 block, reportedly outside the crosswalk. The driver of a silver 2000 Ford Mustang had exited the Home Depot parking lot on the south side of the street, turned right and struck the pedestrians in the No. 2 lane. Ms. Wood suffered a fractured pelvis and left ankle. The others were also injured.

The driver did not stop but continued eastbound on Sports Arena Boulevard.

A nude man was rescued by first responders clinging to the side of Sunset Cliffs Sunday morning, Jan. 12.

Around 10:40 am, San Diego Lifeguards received calls of a naked man clinging to the very sheer cliff near Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Guizot Street. A small crowd, as one can imagine, had gathered to observe the potentially dangerous situation. The man, unidentified as of yet, was gripping the cliff – where there isn’t much to hold on to – about 20 feet from the bottom.

Editordude: I dragged some ten-year old “news of OB” columns from our archives for your reading pleasure. The news column used to called “OB Flashes” – which is what the news column in the original, newspaper version of the OB Rag was titled back in the first half of the 1970s. So, below are “OB Flashes” from Jan. 4, 2010 and from Jan. 11, 2010.
Fire Pits On the Agenda of OB Planning Board – Jan 6th
The issue of the City’s plans to remove fire pits from San Diego’s beaches will be on the agenda of the next OB Planning Board meeting, scheduled for Wednesday January 6th. The planning board meeting begins at 6 pm and is held at the OB Rec Center located at 4726 Santa Monica Avenue. The issue is listed as Item #2 on the Board’s agenda, which can be viewed at their website.

Recent media attention and local support for saving OB’s fire pits have prompted the Board to raise the City’s plans for their removal as an issue to be discussed. Part of the purview of the Board is OB’s public recreational facilities – and the fire pits certainly would fall under that aspect of their jurisdiction.

Lime Scooter is pulling all of its scooters out of San Diego and says they will likely be gone by the end of January. The corporation is closing down its operations in 11 other markets as well.

Lime spokesperson Alex Youn said:

“As part of our path to profitability, Lime has made the difficult decision to exit San Diego and focus our resources on markets that allow us to meet our ambitious goals for 2020. We’re grateful to our team members, riders, Juicers and communities who supported us throughout this journey. We appreciate the partnership we’ve enjoyed with San Diego and remain hopeful we can reintroduce Lime back into the community when the time is right.”

Lime called San Diego one of the first cities to “welcome” their scooters but one of the last to develop rules. At its peak, Lime had 4500 scooters, or “devices” as some call them, in San Diego. So why is Lime leaving paradise?

By Marjorie Cohn

Trump has already committed the crime of aggression against Iran, and he is now threatening to commit a war crime if he carries through on his January 4 promise to target Iran’s cultural sites. The United States has violated the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on the use of military force. This is the time to raise our voices and demand that our congressional representatives put a halt to Trump’s illegal war-making.

It should be clear to any legal analyst that Donald Trump’s catastrophic decision to order the illegal assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani and Iraqi senior military leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis constituted the crime of aggression and violated both the United Nations Charter and the U.S. War Powers Resolution.

Labor Unions’ First Amendment Rights Upheld by Federal Judge

Bill Evans – the owner of Evans Hotels, which owns three major hotel resorts in San Diego, – wants to double the size of one of them, his Bahia Resort in Mission Bay. In order to accomplish this Evans would remove public parking and public access to the bay. The local community has been fighting him on this issue over the last couple of years, calling it a public-land grab. Remember, Mission Bay is public property – it belongs to all of us.

Joining the community fight against the Bahia expansion were a couple of San Diego labor organizations, Unite Here Local 30 and the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council.

Point Loma Library Art Makes “San Diego’s Finest Art” List

A painting at the Point Loma Library has made “Our Finest Art” list

Murder Trial Begins in Case Where Missing OB Man’s Body Never Found

A murder trial began Tuesday, Jan. 6 for a man accused of killing an Ocean Beach resident who went missing in 2017 and whose body was never found.
Police Foot Patrols Added to OB Last September

In September 2019, San Diego Police said they added two officers dedicated to patrolling the Ocean Beach area on foot, each working 40 hours a week in the area. In a tweet from January 7, 2020, SDPD stated:

OB Beach Clean-Up – Jan. 18

From Springboard West:

The Springboard West Music Festival is returning to Ocean Beach this week – January 9 through January 11 – and it’s all about providing aspiring musicians the opportunity to pitch their music to industry professionals plus it brings music lovers an event in what feels like a grassroots “American Idol” or South by Southwest.

The conference begins on January 9 with a two-day Band Bootcamp — an opportunity for emerging artists from all over the U.S. to take the stage and showcase their talents in front of veterans and professionals in the music industry — followed by intimate, VIP unplugged performances.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican who has been representing the 50th District in Congress, declared he will officially resign from Congress on Monday, January 13.

It was in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom sent Tuesday, Jan. 7 that he made the official notification.

On December 3 Hunter pleaded guilty to a felony involving campaign spending. He’s expected to be sentenced March 17.

Indicted in August 2018, after serving in Congress for ten years, he faced 60 federal counts as he and Margaret Hunter, his wife and former campaign manager, were accused of stealing $250,000 of campaign funds, using the monies for family vacations – including at least one to Italy – , groceries, his extramarital affairs and other non-campaign uses, including airfare for a pet rabbit.

It looks like Ocean Beach is becoming famous for being the hometown of “heroes” and protagonists in mystery novels these days. Forget “Almost Famous”, forget “Terriers”, for we have author G.M. Ford‘s mystery Heavy on the Dead. It’s hero, Leo Waterman, lives in OB – as does Ford.

And now we have another mystery thriller, The Fourth Rising by Martin Hill where “The hero of The Fourth Rising, Peter Brandt is a war-scarred freelance journalist living in San Diego’s Ocean Beach.”

Hill, a former journalist and military analyst, is the author of seven novels and one book on military history.