Author: Staff

UPDATE: As of 5 p.m., the Otay fire called “Border 2” is over 200 acres and 0% contained, with a dangerous rate of spread and the potential to burn through 500 acres, according to Cal Fire San Diego.A pair of fires began burning Thursday afternoon around San Diego County.

One of the fires, which began just after 2 p.m., is burning near Gilman Drive and Via Alicante in La Jolla, not far from where it intersects with Interstate 5, which is also close to UC San Diego and the Torrey Pines golf course, where the PGA is hosting the Farmers Insurance Open this week.

Evacuations have been ordered for immediate area.

Otay Mountain Fire

A second vegetation fire also began burning Thursday afternoon on Otay Mountain near the U.S.-Mexico border. At a little before 2:30 p.m., Cal Fire San Diego tweeted out that the border fire had already burned 20 acres and had a “dangerous rate of spread.” An hour later, it was reported to have spread to 60 acres.

By Kate Callen

Density advocates kicked off the new year by lamenting what a January 10 Union-Tribune editorial headline called “the latest housing initiative to flop.”

The commentary followed a December 29 U-T report that the Trolley’s Blue Line corridor along Linda Vista and Clairemont hasn’t seen a glut of high-rise development.

Editors pouted, “Why doesn’t City Hall … ask builders exactly how the government can best expedite new housing?” and added, “How many more years of housing failure must San Diegans endure?”

Come again? Housing failure? Not enough government incentives for builders?

For four years, City Hall’s “Complete Communities” venture has opened the floodgates to rampant density. Throughout the city, the initiative has spurred construction of mid-rise housing towers with few affordable units and scarce on-site parking.

On Sunday, January 12th, Point Loma was home to a parade of dozens of vintage cars that drove across the Peninsula to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the legendary 1915 Point Loma Road Race. And Rag staff were on hand near Catalina and Hill to observe the event and these are their photos.

The vintage cars drove from the San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park to Point Loma, where they drove two laps of the original race route — which took them on Rosecrans, Lytton, Chatsworth, Catalina, Talbot, and Canon Streets.

Sponsored by the San Diego regions of the Horseless Carriage Club of America, they simply wanted to share their vintage autos with the public.

By Kate Callen

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but some of the most tantalizing OB Rag entries are comments posted in response to our news articles.

Some commenters share trenchant insights that bring us joy. Others entertain us by huffing and puffing (shout out to Paul J!).

And a very few, like Scott Lewis, editor-in-chief of Voice of San Diego (VOSD), post comments that leave us gasping: Did he really say that?

Just the other day, on January 7, Lewis commented on a Rag story about Colin Parent’s 79th Assembly District election loss. He challenged an opinion by Mat Wahlstrom that VOSD and Circulate San Diego, Parent’s money-minting nonprofit, have formed a mésalliance. (Mésalliance is French meaning a marriage with a person of lower social status.)

San Diego County’s population has stayed flat over the last decade, Axios San Diego reports.

For a full analysis, one must take into account the actual population changes and the natural population change — the difference between births and deaths.

San Diego County’s population shrunk by 20,051 people from 2014-2018 to 2019-2023, or a change of 0.6%.

Yet, San Diego’s natural population change — the difference between births and deaths — was positive in 2023, with births outpacing deaths by 12,882.

But more people moved away than moved here during that time, so the region’s overall population shrunk, therefore, the population overall took a hit, because 30,745 more people left the county than moved here.

On this past Saturday, Frank Gormlie, editor of the OB Rag, gave a talk about his recently published book, The May 1970 Rebellion, before a small crowd in the backyard of good friends in a home in northeast Ocean Beach.

Videographer Charlie Landon took a video of the talk and edited it some what — there were many “OB Pauses” — when the airliners passed overhead — and it’s presented here.

There’s limited seating at the upcoming talk and book-signing by Frank Gormlie on his new history, The May 1970 Rebellion.

It’s at 1 pm on Saturday, December 14, and the casual event will be in a back yard in northeast Ocean Beach. Wine and chips will be on hand.

People planning on attending are asked to RSVP to the Rag – obragblog@gmail.com and the address will be sent via email.

Also, Gormlie is putting this on himself and will not be able to handle credit or debit cards, but will be accepting checks and cash.

Here’s the formal announcement:

The body of an unidentified man was recovered from the ocean early Monday morning, December 9, by first responders.

They had responded to a 911 call at 5:00 a.m. Monday reporting a body face-down on the beach near the end of Bermuda Ave. getting carried out to sea by waves.

Early Thursday morning, December 5, a fire broke out in a two-story apartment on the 5000 block of Narragansett in OB and 2 people had to be hospitalized with at least one of them suffering burn-related injuries.

Responding firefighters helped numerous residents evacuate the fire that erupted just before 12:30 a.m, 10News reported, but two people were reportedly trapped inside and had to be rescued and rushed to the hospital.

By Geoff Page

The City of San Diego held its ribbon cutting ceremony for the Cañon Street Pocket Park Wednesday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m. The event was originally to take place 11:00 a.m. the previous Wednesday, November 20, but the city cancelled it at the last moment with little explanation.

Without a doubt, all the stories that have appeared, or will appear, about this park opening will be positive to a fault and will probably consist of the city’s announcement word for word. This account will not be one of those.

For starters, the time for this ceremony was a head scratcher. Most of the public would ordinarily be working at ten or eleven on a Wednesday morning. The re-scheduling was equally puzzling, holding the ceremony on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when most of the public was busy with the holiday.

But, after much experience with the City of San Diego, looking for common sense is a fool’s pursuit.

There was a small crowd of people at the opening. A good number of those people, however, were either city people, news media, Peninsula Community Planning Board members, and others not necessarily the “public.”