By Joni Halpern

We have just completed our Mother’s Day celebration without the traditional reliance on buying power to attest to our love of the women who have mothered us. We have sent online deliveries if we could and zoomed ourselves with varied success into the two-dimensional spaces of each other’s screens. We have texted, phoned, and snail-mailed our greetings. But we have not been able to hug.

How unexpectedly descriptive is the absence of a hug, for in not being available, it emphasizes the importance of an embrace. Two arms wrapped around us, pulling us closer to a loving heart, a gesture that could impart power and conflict, for it often occurs between two beings of varying strength. And yet our surrender to a hug is a relief, a comfort, an admission that we persist in life’s most strenuous endeavors because we are loved.

On the other side of a hug is the fact that we concede our need for others.

The Ocean Beach Planning Board will hole its regularly scheduled monthly meeting tonight, May 6 – and it will be held electronically. Interested persons need to pre-register for the meeting – details below. As usual, the meeting will start at 6 pm.

On the agenda is a Budget Request Revision as the city has reprioritized its fiscal year 2012 budget due to budget shortfalls from the COVID-19 crisis. The Board is set to review and prioritize its own budget goals.

There’s a Park’s Master Plan to review and make recommendations upon also on tap. For the “Slow Streets Initiative”, the Board is also supposed to put together a map of possible routes it could follow.

The last Action item is the establishment of an “Ad Hoc Committee” to go over recommendations regarding short-term vacation rentals regulations.

Register for the Meeting

For several nights now, there’s been bumper-to-bumper traffic and crowds at Sunset Cliffs – with many people trying to to catch bioluminescent waves in the ocean.

Problem is – according to news reports – people are not practicing social or physical distancing and many are not wearing masks.

Neighbors are also complaining about the traffic and crowds. Cars are circulating trying to find parking – but the small mini-lots are closed.

by Joaquin Antique

I tried to get up in time for the 6:05 AM sunrise and beach reopening but overslept. By the time I walked down to Dog Beach, the sun had been up for an hour though you couldn’t see any sunlight as Coastal Eddy was in town.

Ran into some guys schlepping their boards down Voltaire and spoke to them briefly. They were jonesing to get out in the water after a month of no surfing and smiling ear to ear.

“How was it?” they asked a dude who had just come out of the water. “Wet”, he replied in a jaded tone of voice. I guess some people are just glass-half-empty at seven in the morning. Still, he was the only person on the beach that I saw today that didn’t have a smile on his face.

Between the jetty and the pier I counted about 70-80 people in the water and more were arriving by the minute. The parking lots remain closed and most of the people seemed to be locals walking down. I did see a few people parking on the street as close as they could get to the beach.

by Bob Edwards

Earlier this week an OB RAG article noted that some San Diego City parks are starting to reopen with activity and physical distancing rules in place.

This reporter checked out Dusty Rhodes Park on Thursday, April 23 and took the accompanying photos.

The entry driveway on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. remains blocked off. Bike and foot traffic are the only ways to access the park at the present time.

By Kathy Blavatt

2020, the year of the coronavirus, is also the year of record-breaking rain, which could not have come at a better time, in the worst of times.

The rain helps keep us indoors during the storms, and we appreciate the outdoors much more when the sun is out!

A jungle surrounds me! My very healthy Spring garden is making me very healthy. My daily workout program consists of several hours of heavy-duty weeding, trimming, planting, and turning my huge compost pile. To top it all off, I’ve emptied countless buckets of rain-water into the garden. This routine is working every muscle in my body, which I can feel!

My fresh homegrown vegi-meals are spoiling me. Most restaurant meals may be a disappointment by the time they fully reopen when the lockdown lifts. But it will be enjoyable to sit at a table again and have someone else cook for me.

Corey Bruins has taken it upon himself to start a new podcast about Ocean Beach, and it’s called “The Obcean.”

It seems only fitting to kick off the first episode of the OBcean podcast with thoughts from OBceans about what it means to be an OBcean.

We hear stories from Mike James, Frank Gormlie, and others about how this identifying label of ‘OBcean’ inherited it’s meaning over the past 60 years.

Photographer Jim Grant has captured the stark new reality for Ocean Beach.

Not everyone has been a stay-at-home recluse these days. A large Ocean Beach apartment complex has just been sold for $5.4 million.

The complex at 4802 Orchard Avenue has 16 two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments. The rather bland looking building dominates the intersection at Orchard and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. A more recent promo photo, we believe, shows the large palm tree with a serious hair cut.

In an historic first, the Ocean Beach Planning Board will meet this Wednesday via Zoom, which means they’ll have a virtual meeting over the internet. And anyone who wishes can observe and participate – see the information about how to be included either on the official agenda, posted below, or just before the agenda. But this is a first – created by the COVID-19 crisis (and unless the Board has practiced this method, it could be a tad bumpy – but fun! Check it out!)

The meeting will begin at 6 pm Wednesday, April 1 (… and no, this is not an April First joke). Usually the Board meets in the community room at the OB Rec Center.

Most of the agenda has to with the Board’s recent election, appointments to the Board and the election of the new Executive Board.

It’s the very first day of Spring 2020 in Ocean Beach.

One would never know it. Empty streets. Plenty of parking on Newport. Shops closed. No one on the beach under “blue” skies. The Pier Parking lot looking nearly empty.

This is our new reality.

Luckily for us, some OB Ragsters ventured out to record what they saw – and didn’t see.