Category: Culture

By Dave Schwab / Peninsula Beacon / March 31, 2026

Named for a family sing-along, Loop-de-Loo’s children’s resale shop off Voltaire Street in Point Loma offers exceptional deals on gently used clothing at affordable prices.

With a healthcare background as a nurse, Lindsay Rutherford, the daughter of one of the principals in HGW Architecture in Ocean Beach on Bacon Street, has embarked on a new career as proprietor of the newly opened children’s resale shop.

Needing resale children’s clothing herself is one reason Rutherford opened Loop-de-Loo’s at 4030 Wabaska Drive in Point Loma Heights, which carries children’s clothing and shoes, sizes newborn to 14, along with toys, books, and some baby gear.

With three children of her own, Rutherford knows just how fast they grow and how keeping them clothed is a constant challenge.

The surreal mural on the east side of the Template in OB has gotten some attention. Richard Schulte runs a photo-dominant blog called cool san diego sights and recently shared a series of pics of the mural.

Signatures by the artists appear to be MURALIS, ART BY SOUP, EATHDUST, HAILYBROUS, JORDINDAVID, and SOURCE!

Here are Shulte’s pics, including details:

Twenty years ago, the San Diego Reader ran a long cover story called “90 Years of Curl,” an in-depth review of surfing history, particularly in San Diego, written by Jeannette DeWyze.

Then this year on March 30, the online version of the Reader republished it as “San Diego surf heroes going back to 1910 — When Duke Kahanamoku tried the OB Pier.”

[What OB Pier would that be? The one that is permanently closed right now was opened in 1966. There was another pier built earlier – south of where the 66 pier is.]

This story first appeared in the Reader on December 14, 2006.

There’s a good chance Ralph Noisat caught the first wave in San Diego. He died in 1980, and as he wasn’t a man to brag, his pioneering role might have been lost were it not for his board. He made it himself when he was a boy, and it was still in the Noisat family home in 1998 when Ralph’s daughter, Margie Chamberlain, was preparing to sell the Mission Hills residence. Chamberlain realized the heavy wooden board might have historic value, so she called the California Surf Museum in Oceanside. No one there knew anything about Noisat, but the museum staff was thrilled to accept the board when they heard what Chamberlain had to say about her father.

The building at 4833 Santa Monica Avenue — known as the OB Post Office — is for sale! LoopNet advertises it. For $4,995.000.

It’s been there for decades — back to the 1950s. Yet now it’s on the chopping block. For nearly $5 million. Prime location. The ad above says “Trophy Coastal … Property.”

Many questions abound.

Are there plans to open another post office in Ocean Beach?

Postal Service Would Mail Ballots Only to Those on Official Voters List

By Jane C. Timm and Ryan J. Reilly / NBC News / March 31, 2026

President Donald Trump is again trying to exert control over American elections, signing an executive order Tuesday that aims to create federal lists of citizens and ask the U.S. Postal Service to transmit mail ballots to only those people.

The executive order, his second related to elections since he retook office last year, is sure to be quickly challenged in court. The U.S. Constitution gives states the power to set voting rules and administer their own elections, though Congress has the ability to set some regulations, too.

“That’s a big deal,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office, adding that he didn’t believe the courts could overturn it. “I think this will help a lot with elections. We’d like to have voter ID. We’d like to have proof of citizenship, and that’ll be another subject for another time. We’re working on that. You would think it’d be easy.”

Tribe Never Consulted During Planning for Hidden Valley Ranch Housing Project

by Katie Futterman / inewsource / March 29, 2026

Tribal leaders have found human remains and evidence of a burial site – first in October and twice this March – at the construction site of a housing development first approved in Poway over 20 years ago.

The San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians is calling on the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop work on a portion of a 420-acre site on the east side of Old Coach Road immediately.

In October, Johnny Bear Contreras, the chair of the cultural committee for the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, got a call from fellow cultural monitors telling him to come take a look at the Hidden Valley Ranch project.

When he arrived at the site of what’s slated to be 41 single-family homes, he found just what the tribe had expected: human remains.

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego / March 31, 2026

The next chapter in San Diego’s pursuit of Midway Rising will play out in Sacramento.

State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson introduced a bill last week to exempt the project from review under the state’s landmark environmental law and make way for the plan to redevelop the roughly 50-acre area around Pechanga Arena into an urban district with 4,000 homes, acres of parks, and a new arena.

[Please see original for any and all links.]

Weber Pierson’s proposal follows a California Supreme Court decision not to review a previous court ruling that threw out a 2022 voter-approved initiative to raise the height limit in the Midway area. The lower court ruled that the city failed to consider the environmental impacts of allowing taller buildings there.

Midway Rising’s developers quickly said the court’s ruling would not halt their project, because other state housing laws allowed them to exceed the height limit regardless.

The Home Team Act has been introduced in the U.S. Senate which would if pass keep the Padres in San Diego — at least for another year.

Here’s Phillip Molnar at the San Diego U-T:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is behind a bill that would prevent the Padres from leaving in the future — and would have kept the Chargers in San Diego. Some say the government has no place in dictating where private businesses operate.

Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, recently introduced the Home Team Act, which would require team ownership to provide one year of notice before moving a team to a new location if the team would move across state lines or to a new metropolitan area.

During that year prior to the proposed relocation, the franchise in question would be available for other prospective owners to purchase “at a fair and reasonable price.”

San Diego is especially sensitive about teams leaving after the Chargers went to Los Angeles in 2017. Recently, the Padres have entertained several offers to sell, igniting fears someone may take the baseball club somewhere else.

The City of San Diego has begun the process of replacing the 44-year old Mission Beach lifeguard station. On March 14, the city began fencing off the existing lifeguard tower from the public and started installing a temporary lifeguard tower and trailer just north of the current dilapidated station.

“These temporary facilities will allow lifeguards to operate safely and efficiently while plans are developed to upgrade the existing station,” the city of San Diego said in a released statement at the time work began.

This is all well and good — a lifeguard station that old deserves to be replaced. And the surrounding community deserves it also.

Yet — what about the Ocean Beach lifeguard station? It’s even older than the Mission Beach one. It was built in 1980-1981. (See comments to that post.)

Sure, the city can argue that the Mission Beach station serves a larger community and there’s more beachgoers there than in Ocean Beach. Okay, replace them both.

This also fits a pattern all too familiar with observant OBceans who’ve seen city resources go to other communities over the years — no, over the decades. South Mission Beach got a new lifeguard station; Pacific Beach got a new station; La Jolla got a new one.

But not OB.

Perhaps due to the marginal size of the neighborhood — not that many voters or property owners — Ocean Beach has been repeatedly passed over on infrastructure projects that have been needed.

Editordude: The following was sent to us unsolicited and requested we publish it as an effort to open some dialogue. 

Hello,

I’ve passed your gathering many Saturdays at Sunset Cliffs and West Point Loma. Almost every time, I feel the impulse to pull over and speak with you – but my throat tightens, my stomach knots, and I keep driving. I’m writing instead because I don’t want to keep avoiding it.

When I moved to San Diego from the Bay Area, I knew I was leaving behind a certain kind of political energy that shaped my 20s. I lived a block from the Occupy Oakland encampment and spent time there almost daily. I marched in early Black Lives Matter demonstrations, long before 2020. I was engaged in activism around global issues, including Israel/Palestine, for many years.

So I don’t see you as apathetic. I recognize what it means to care enough to show up.

At the same time, I want to be honest that I experience what you’re doing very differently than you likely do.

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings April 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine:

The San Diego River Park Foundation has volunteer opportunities in Ocean Beach:

Every Sunday 1:30 pm – 4 pm Otay Mesa Vigil

League of Women Voters EMPOWERING VOTERS & DEFENDING DEMOCRACY Information on upcoming forums for City Council Primary Races:

April 1st, 8th and 15th Wednesdays 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Resist Trump Flash Banner Action –

April 2nd Thursday 6 pm – 7:30 pm Surfrider Open House

April 4th Saturday 4pm -7 pm Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego Passover Seder

April 4th Saturday 4 pm – 6 pm Spring GBM with Green New Deal

April 5th Sunday 11 am – 2 pm EASTER SUNDAY OUTREACH — Factory Farms Awareness Action

April 6th Monday 6 pm – 8 pm Friends of Famosa Slough 40th Anniversary

By Bruce D Coons, Barry Hager and Geoffrey Hueter / Op-Ed San Diego U-T / April 1, 2026

San Diegans face housing affordability challenges. But if policy solutions are going to work, they must be based on evidence rather than assumptions.

San Diego’s biggest affordable housing program isn’t on paper — it’s already built. Our older and historic homes are doing more for affordability than any subsidy program in the city.

A new independent analysis released recently by PlaceEconomics, “The Urban Vitality Blueprint: A Data-Driven Analysis of Equity, Affordability, and Vitality in San Diego’s Historic Districts,” examines the role that historic districts and older neighborhoods play in housing, affordability and sustainability across San Diego. The findings challenge several widely repeated claims in the city’s current policy debate.

Historic districts are often portrayed as low-density neighborhoods that limit housing growth. In reality, the opposite is true. Here are a few key facts from the report: