Author: Frank and Patty

The Ocean Beach Historical Society held their annual “Wisteria Garden Party” last Saturday, and by the looks of it, the party was a total success!

OB Ragster Patty Jones got the camera out and kept the shutter going – so we have this great photo gallery of a wonderful event.

If you had attempted to come online to our site last Friday or Saturday, you would have found a blank screen. For hours, the OB Rag was down – “suspended” – due to an internet attack against us. That’s right – we’ve been in somebody’s cross-hairs and they disrupted our service – at least 4 times over the last week. Technically called a DDOS – a dedicated denial of service – somebody swarmed our server with hundreds, maybe thousands of different IP addresses sending us stuff – and in the process overwhelming our server, who then suspends us until the problem is removed.

When we spoke to our tech support late last week and Saturday, he said that the attack is directly targeting the Rag. He can’t tell us where the attack is originating because the incoming connections change constantly and come from legit IP addresses. The attacker is using zombie or bot computers to accomplish this. Zombie or bot computers are computers like yours or mine that have been breached in some small way and contribute to the attack without the knowledge of the individual user.

After setting up a table at Civic Center Plaza this afternoon to do voter registration, an Occupy San Diego organizer was arrested by police for “trespass and refusing to leave”.

At approximately 1:30 pm, Ray Lutz was sitting at a table with several signs stating “Register to vote”, and was in the process of registering a man, when a half dozen police officers approached him – including Captain Mark Jones – .

It was a slightly sunny Sunday when we captured these glimpses into Ocean Beach.

Hundreds of San Diegans yelled “No more cuts!” repeatedly. It was Saturday, May 8th, and it was the Educate for the Future rally in Balboa Park, at Sixth and Laurel, a traditional protest site. Teachers spoke, children sang and spoke, principals spoke, Congressman Bob Filner spoke, School Board President Richard Barrera spoke.

Between cloud bursts, sixty San Diego progressives sang songs during the counter rally to the Tea Party gathering today near the Star of India.

Activists with the OB Rag and other local groups had tried to mobilize one hundred progressives to stand witness to the rally of Tea Party factions. But Mother Nature decided to drench the county and undoubtedly many stayed away due to the rain. Still, many stubborn people showed up today between 10:30 and noon just west of the County Administration building to show opposition.

Meanwhile, approximately 320 Tea partiers gathered across Harbor Drive.

The OB Town Council is holding a meeting tonight at the Masonic Temple,which includes a candidate forum for candidates of the OB Planning Board, plus a public forum on homeless.

Two of our bloggers, Cindi and Lane, are texting us and we will be sharing with you what they report:

7:23 pm LANE: handful of PB candidates that sit on TC as well –

7:16 – there is a woman speaking … she says she handles homeless issues like vandalism, drunk in public, … insinuating that only homeless do these things.

7:11 – they are allowing the homeless youth to submit speaker requests! they are going to hear our voice!

7:10 pm – talking about housing workshop, student loan workshop, but my thought is what about the homeless shelter workshop?

7:08 pm – The meeting just started !

For a week, we ran a poll asking the reader whether Ocean Beach is becoming gentrified. 63% of the respondents said ‘yes.’ Most of those – 2/3rds – believed it was a very slow process. 33% of the respondents asked us back – in answer number 4 – “What does gentrified mean?”

So, here it is: GENTRIFICATION:

– the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. …

by Frank Gormlie

Reposted from July 6, 2008

OCEAN BEACH, CA. There are secret caves along the cliffs in Ocean Beach. It just so happens that the stretch of cliffs next to the boulevard of the same name, from Point Loma Boulevard south to Ladera Street, contain an array of beautiful, hidden and fairly inaccessible caves.

Only during real low tides are some of them reachable. But these hidden geological grottoes and cuts in the sandstone cliffs and the beaches and pools inside them are nature’s displays of the wondrous interplay of land and sea that has occurred over time – right here on our front porch.

by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones

When we heard what the Encinitas tree-sitter was doing, Patty and I wanted to meet him. So we drove up the coast on a beautiful day to do just that. We found Orpheus Park – about halfway between the freeway and the coast – denuded of most of its trees.

And there was Andrew Watkins hanging upside down from a large branch, along with a few other friends who had climbed up to the platform that Watkins had assembled.

Ocean Beach Library – citizens rally to keep libraries open. GO HERE FOR LATEST UPDATE (Click on the pictures to…