Category: Culture

A parade featuring more than 100 antique automobiles will take place in Point Loma on Sunday, January 11th, retracing a historic six-mile road race that occurred in 1915. The free event, organized by the Horseless Carriage Club, will begin in Balboa Park and conclude with a car show at Liberty Station.

“We will have over 100 antique cars. I think the oldest signed up right now is 1906,” said Dave Ness, San Diego Excursion organizer.

“In 1915 they used a route that you can drive today. They went down Rosecrans, up Chatsworth, all the way along Catalina, a short jot on Talbot, down Cannon Street back to Rosecrans,” said Hess.

The vintage car collection will include a diverse range of vehicles. “We’re going to have a spread of cars. We’ve got Rolls Royces, Packards, Pierces, a lot of Model T’s and Model A’s,” said Ness.

Organizers plan to drive two laps around the route to give spectators multiple opportunities to view the vehicles. “We’ll drive two laps of the race route, so people can see the cars twice as we go around,” said Hess.

By Gary Wonacott

The time has com for the District 1 office to initiate a formal review by the Planning Department to evaluate the feasibility and benefits of consolidating the Mission Beach and Pacific Beach Community Planning Areas (CPA).

The current boundaries— drawn more than half a century ago— no longer reflect the realities of how our communities function, nor do they support the level of representation and planning capacity required to address today’s coastal challenges. Reunification is not simply an administrative adjustment; it is a necessary modernization that would restore political balance, strengthen resident voices, and finally give Mission Beach a fair opportunity to secure long?overdue infrastructure investment.

Mission Beach was originally part of the Pacific Beach CPA before being separated in the mid?20th century to provide more localized planning control. Yet the Mission Beach Precise Plan, drafted in the 1970s, identified a long list of deficiencies— aging infrastructure, visual blight, inadequate landscaping, and a lack of community amenities— that remain largely unresolved today.

Over the past two decades, the situation has only deteriorated. The seawall continues to crumble along its entire length. Alleys and utilities lag behind modern standards.  In spite of many “Get it Done Requests,” court lamp lights remain burnt out for months at a time.  Vehicles fail to stop at stop signs and speed down Mission Blvd with impunity.

By Donna Frye

As we head into the new year, it’s time once again to let the city council know that we oppose paid parking at our beaches and Mission Bay Park for residents and non-residents alike.

Last year, four councilmembers (LaCava, Foster, Moreno and Elo-Rivera) included paid beach and bay parking in their budget priority memos as a potential revenue source.

Fortunately, on November 18, 2025 the paid parking proposal was not included as part of the council resolution being sent to the mayor’s office for consideration in preparing the FY 2027 budget.

However, as part of the annual budget cycle, the city council is required to update their budget priority memos and provide them to the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) by January 9.

We need to make sure that the next round of budget priority memos do not include proposals for paid parking at our beaches and Mission Bay Park.

There are many reasons why paid parking at our beaches and Mission Bay Park is a bad idea.

By Kate Callen

Just before midnight on December 31, my sister, Brae, and I were toasting the new year with champagne when the house was filled with a flash of blinding white light followed by a window-rattling boom. A minute later, it happened again.

My North Park street has been plagued by fireworks on July Fourth and New Year’s Eve for as long as I’ve lived here. But these weren’t sparklers or ground spinners. These were commercial-grade fireworks that should never be set off in residential neighborhoods.

What the hell is going on? Why does a handful of morons (an estimated 99 percent of whom carry the Y chromosome) need to set off explosives to celebrate holidays? And why do the rest of us tolerate lawless behavior that terrifies small children, scares pets into hiding or running away from home, triggers military veterans with PTSD, and poses a public safety risk?

It’s not hard to find the perpetrators. While I searched for my cats, Brae marched down the street to the place where the sound came from. She confronted three men standing on the sidewalk (we’re from Philadelphia, it’s what we do), and they denied any involvement.

Then the snarky one started arguing. Hey, what’s the harm? People just want to have a little fun. And it’s only one night a year.

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings January 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th and 31st.

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 Otay Mesa Detention Center

January 1st Thursday – January 4th Sunday 10 am – 6 pm San Diego Auto Show

January 3rd Saturday 5 pm doors open “From Ground Zero” film screening fundraiser for a family in Gaza.

January 5th Monday  12 pm – 1 pm Interfaith Vigil For Earth Justice Event by Interfaith Coalition for Earth Justice

By Alex Cheney / CBS8 / December 30, 2025

San Diego’s music scene is grieving the loss of Tim Lowman, who died in a fatal motorcycle crash early Sunday morning near Balboa Park. The versatile musician, known for his performances as both a band member and one-man-band showman, was struck by an SUV on Pershing Drive at approximately 1:40 a.m.

According to the San Diego Police Department, a Harley Davidson motorcycle driven by Lowman was hit by an SUV, whose driver remained at the scene. Police say the SUV driver is not suspected of DUI, and Lowman’s impairment is considered unknown.

Lowman was a member of the band Blackout Party and performed as a one-man band called Low Volts, where he played all the instruments himself. Timothy Joseph, a producer and co-host of the Loudspeaker Show on radio station 91X and a close friend of Lowman’s, recalls the musician’s distinctive performance style and the impression he made.

By Paul Krueger / Special to the OB Rag 

The California Supreme Court on Tuesday, December 30, placed another hurdle in the City of San Diego’s effort to allow high-rise development throughout the Midway/ Pacific Highway area.

The state’s highest court affirmed a lower court ruling that the city must fully analyze the negative environmental impacts of high-density, multi-story projects and give voters that information before they agree to override the existing 30-foot height limit in the Midway/ PacHwy district.

Voters twice — but narrowly — approved the height limit waiver. But state courts said the environmental impact studies failed to study possible negative and unavoidable impacts of high-rise development on traffic, noise, pollution, and other issues.

The most recent ruling against the city was a strongly worded and unanimous October 17 decision by the state Appellate Court.

FROM COASTAL CARETAKERS

Ring out the old year, ring in the new!  Coastal Caretakers appreciate what all of you have done in the past to keep major developers out of Ocean Beach.

However, the City of San Diego has a new attack underway: to remove the protection we now have by declaring that the Ocean Beach Historic District is not a District.  One response is to cave in, give up.  They, the powers at the State and City, have all the balls in their court, and they can bounce them around any way they want.  They can rewrite the law, law they wrote in the first place and got it wrong.

The one or two minutes per person we get during public comment is for a decision that our elected officials have already made.  But we are OB!  Ocean Beach IS a Complete Community!  We will be there once again to let the city and developers know one thing: We will not go away.  No to 23-story buildings on Point Loma Ave without adequate parking spaces!  No to Lower Voltaire Skyscrapers!  And NO to an all-new Newport Avenue.  OBceans will be there to protect our Historic District.
We want to take this time to remind you where we have been and where it is going, and  WHY we need to get the attention of City Hall. Here is a summary:

August 29, 2024, Coastal Caretakers and friends won our appeal to the Planning Commission, and the 20-unit building designed by Galba Architects never happened. Bad press tried to imply we were NIMBYs and wanted that corner to remain in its current state of disrepair, earning us the title bestowed on all objectors.

By South OB Girl

It will be a challenge to come up with something more poignant than Ernie’s poem, with his great knack for words and rhyme.

I’ve lived in a few places in the world, but San Diego will always be home. It has sadly become a little harder to say “home sweet home.”  It is not so sweet here anymore.  Being ranked #1 in the United States for inflation is nothing to be proud of.

San Diego has the potential to be a really great city. For many years it has been great.

Here in OB, we have enjoyed over a hundred years of greatness! Why are so many people doing such a great job trying to wreck it? Along with many other San Diegans, I have lost positivity about many aspects of local politics.

By Angelo Haynes

Charles Beard, a local man with deep ancestral roots to San Diego, has begun construction of a residential micro farm in southeast San Diego.

Totaling under half an acre, the farm area is nestled in the Jamacha foothills near Encanto, Skyline Hills and Lemon Grove contributing to the steep incline on the property. The farm currently has a variety of fruit trees including a pomegranate, apricot, mulberry, guava and loquat. Future plans include dividing the hill into unique terraces, each containing unique groups of crops. Construction on an irrigation system is already underway, with future plans of integrating a grey water filtration system.

Charles, or “Sibee” as his friends call him, had the idea for creating the micro farm after having a vision while standing on the top of the hill behind his childhood home.

Note: Author’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of the OB Rag.

By Lisa Mortensen

Our city and county governments are looking for any avenue available to obtain revenue to feed their over-sized staffing.  Rather than pop the staffing balloon, our elected officials would like to tap into our property taxes by placing initiatives on the ballot that would require only a 51% threshold to approve these measures into law that would threaten to uncontrollably increase our property taxes and jeopardize our Prop 13 protections.

Currently the county of San Diego wants to place a measure on the ballot that would increase the real estate sales transfer tax from 55 cents for every $500 in assessed property value to $30.55 for every $500.  This would basically burden both buyers and sellers to have to come up with this excessive additional transfer tax during a for-purchase transaction.

Let’s not forget the trash tax assessment that was placed on our property tax bill ($539 and rising in 2026-2027 tax bill) by just a 51% threshold.

By Kate Callen

The year 2025 hit San Diego with a double dose of political wreckage.

Along with the rest of the country, we watched a president take a sledgehammer to democracy. Here at home, we saw a mayor extort taxpayers to replenish a treasury he looted.

Donald Trump and Todd Gloria began their second terms with the same playbook: They would use their executive powers to do whatever they damn well pleased.

This is called “tyranny,” and it’s the subject of a book that a wise friend gave me in 2025 to raise my hopes for 2026.

Tyrants have been with us since cave people learned to conquer one another. Sooner or later, they all topple. But the wait can be agonizing. Are there steps we can take to speed things up?