Author: Staff

Surfrider San Diego has come up with their report on the amount of trash collected on July 5th — making it “America’s dirtiest beach day of the year” as after the fireworks and celebrations fade and the crowds go home, our beaches are left covered in trash.

They reported:

On Saturday morning, 866 volunteers gathered along the coast on Saturday morning to assist with the Surfrider Foundation San Diego’s 19th Annual “Morning After Mess” beach cleanup series — a post-Fourth of July effort to tackle the trash left behind after the holiday. In three hours, volunteers removed more than 2,617 pounds of trash, preventing it from ending up in our ocean and contributing to the growing pollution crisis impacting marine ecosystems.

By OB Rag Staff / July 7, 2025

A City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department manager is facing federal charges of attempting to smuggle fentanyl and cocaine across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Juan Nazario Lizarraga Peralta was arrested May 13 and charged with importation of a controlled substance. According to a May 16 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office, Lizarraga, a U.S. citizen, “was attempting to cross the San Ysidro Port of Entry after Customs and Border Patrol agents found seven pounds of fentanyl and 11 pounds of cocaine strapped to his body.”

By Joni Halpern

We must have been only five and six years old, my sister Rosie and I, when we were enlisted into providing care for our mom, who was only 35 years old and suffering from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

That was back in 1954, when there was no such thing as Medicaid, In-Home Supportive Services, or affordable health care. There were no food stamps, no child care, nothing to help a father working six days a week to make a living that would give his kids a chance and pay for the care his wife needed.

We were a family of six siblings ranging in age from babyhood to 10 years old.  Our baby sister had already been sent to live with relatives, because my mom could not hold her after she was born.

My dad was a carpenter who worked at the California School for the Deaf, just across the street from where we rented a small house.  He had a group health insurance plan, but it required co-payments; some treatments and medications were not covered at all.  He took us to the doctor as little as possible, relying on old Italian home remedies my immigrant grandmother had taught him.  If we got well, the remedies were said to have worked.  If not, things got worse, and finally, Dad would be forced to take us to the doctor.  But most of the time, we waited it out, missing school, with no one to watch over us except the lady next door, who would peek in the living room window and ask my older sister (who missed school to care for us) if we were okay.

By Joni Halpern

First of 4 Parts 

PART 1: IF PIGS COULD FLY

The sales pitch for H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and now under consideration by
the Senate, promises, among other things, that health care will be strengthened across the nation if the bill becomes law. That would be true, if pigs could fly.

What is true is that all of us will feel OBBBA’s pain, either directly or indirectly.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-4 th Dist., Louisiana) want to pass the bill and have it on President Trump’s desk by July 4, 2025. Even if OBBBA does not pass by then, the reconciliation process will end Sept. 30. That’s why it is important for Americans to understand what will happen to our health care under the bill.

OBBBA is expected to kill health insurance coverage for 16 million low-income people, including older adults, caregivers, people with disabilities, children and lawfully present immigrants and families. Of those 16 million, over 90% are U.S. citizens and lawfully present immigrants. 1

OBBBA accomplishes this massive reduction in various ways, but some of the biggest cuts come from restricting Medicare eligibility, rescinding premium assistance
under the Affordable Care Act, and rolling back provisions that make Medicare affordable to low-income enrollees. It makes many other changes designed to reduce
access to these programs, but OBBBA eats away at so many aspects of health care coverage that it is impossible to explain them all in this article.

By Geoff Page / June 25, 2025

When I read about the coming trash fee issue back in February, I decided to do the simple math to see how much trash collection actually costs per household. I needed two crucial pieces of information. How many households received city trash pick-up in 2023? And what did that pick-up cost?

To get the information, I submitted a Public Records Request (PRR) on February 26. The California Public Records Act (PRA) created a process for citizens to access public information. An OB Rag article I wrote that ran on October 6, 2023 explained what the PRA is and how to make a PRR in San Diego.
https://obrag.org/2023/10/how-to-make-a-public-records-request/

I sent a request for budget documents that showed two things: the number of households that were serviced by the city trash pick-up program in 2023 and the total budget for city trash pick-up in 2023.

The PRA allows an agency 10 days to provide a response to a PRR. Under certain conditions, the law allows the responding agency to take an additional 14 days. That is 24 days total. As of June 23, the city has taken 117 days and counting. That is nearly 5 times the number of days allowable by law.

The City of San Diego is clearly in gross violation of the state PRA. This is not news to local professional journalists and news organizations. Many have had to actually sue the city to make it comply.

Finally, after months and even years of construction and delays, Spill the Beans has opened its newly fashioned cannabis-lovers drive-thru location at the busy corner of Newport Avenue and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard in Ocean Beach.

The OB store is the fifth location for the café and the first to offer drive-thru service — and has been anticipating fans known as “Pot Heads.” Spill the Beans’ new location is at 4805 Newport Ave. Starting July 1, hours will expand from the current 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. to a full 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

By OB Rag Staff / June 15, 2025

The long-awaited San Diego City Council showdown over the catastrophic Bonus ADU program is in 24 hours. But you can (and should) send in a comment electronically to start the opposition drumbeat.

We know Todd Gloria still wants to cram as many as 10 units on single-family lots. That is unacceptable. Let’s unleash a tsunami of opposition messages on the Council.

Submit a comment on the City Council’s Agenda Comment Form.  After you fill in your personal information, the comment type is “City Council Comment,” the agenda item is “202,” and we “Oppose” the item. Here is a message you can copy and paste into the “Comments” box:

By Paul Krueger / June 13, 2025

Laura Castañeda, a long-time journalist with a distinguished career in print and broadcast reporting, has been terminated from the Union-Tribune Editorial Board after five years as Deputy Editor/Editorial & Opinion.

Castañeda announced her departure on her Facebook page:

“On the same day a team editorial at @sdutOpinion on the ICE protests was pulled, my position as deputy editor was suddenly eliminated. Thanks to the SD community for allowing me to lift your voices. My next chapter TBA. I won’t be silenced and neither should you.”

The U-T’s staff bio of Castañeda, which was still posted this morning, says this:

By Paul Krueger / June 8, 2025

A Hells Angel convicted of brutally stabbing a black man two years ago on Newport Avenue will serve 14 years-to-life in state prison for that crime, plus seven more years for related felonies.

Prosecutors said Troy Scholder has a history of violence marked by racial hatred, and was an “proud, continuous and unrepentant” member of the violent motorcycle gang.

A jury convicted Scholder of multiple felonies for his role in the June 6, 2023 attack on three black men. Prosecutor Miriam Hemming said the attack was prompted by a complaint by one of the gang member’s girlfriends that one of the victims made inappropriate comments to her outside a Newport Avenue bar.

By OB Rag Staff / June 6, 2025

In a decision that has received international “only in California” news coverage, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that San Diego’s 2024 ban on teaching yoga at shoreline parks and beaches is unconstitutional.

The judgement, which reversed a lower court ruling that yoga instruction is not protected by the First Amendment, clears the way for plaintiffs Steven Hubbard (aka “NamaSteve”) and Amy Baack to resume their free oceanfront yoga instruction.

By Kate Callen

Golden Hill has long been a community with abundant charm – Wikipedia describes it as “one of San Diego’s most historic and architecturally eclectic zones” – where peaceful people live on quiet streets.

Not anymore.

The saturation density that has engulfed San Diego is hitting Golden Hill especially hard. It’s bad enough that massive ugly projects are disfiguring its picturesque neighborhoods. But developers are deliberately building eyesores at sites most beloved by the community.

That has made the normally peaceful community deeply angry.

Turnout at the May 20 Greater Golden Hill Planning Committee meeting was so large that it had to be moved to a bigger room at the Golden Hill Rec Center. Even then, the crowd filled every seat and spilled out into the hallway.

They came to protest two informational agenda items. The first project will put five homes on canyonland near the popular Grape Street Dog Park. The second will build an 8-story,180-unit tower near Albert Einstein Academy Charter Elementary School.

By Geoff Page

The only way to access the site of the “cottages” is by turning west off Catalina Blvd. onto Lomaland Drive and driving onto the Nazarene University campus. Just past the intersection of Lomaland Drive and Lomaland Drive – yes there is such an intersection – is a dirt road to the west that is easy to miss.

The four units are on the west side of the dirt road, facing Sunset Cliffs Park below. At the end of the short road are Units #4 and #3.

Unit #4 is a very small building, only 400 square feet according the to the tenants in Unit #3. Unit #3 is a small one-bedroom place next to it. Unit #2 has been empty for 18 years and it looks like it. Unit #1 is referred to as the Corbin House. Unlike the other three, Unit #1 is a substantial house, inhabited, but also in a state of disrepair. This is the house proponents are pushing for historical designation.

The retired couple renting Unit #3 were home and happy to talk about what was happening. Joe and Debbie Corr’s house is small, a one-bedroom. The living room has a spectacular wide view – what some might call a million-dollar view – of the Pacific Ocean below. There is a small deck outside the living room window. The house is mostly wood and concrete block, clearly old.