Category: Culture

OB Community Development Corporation Launches “Better OB Contest,” Calling on Residents to Share Vision for the Neighborhood

Winner to be announced October 23 at the “Get to Know the OBCDC Event” – Idea submissions due by September 30, 2026

The Ocean Beach Community Development Corporation (OBCDC) has launched their Better OB Contest, a new community ideas competition inviting residents, business owners, and neighborhood groups to submit proposals for projects that would make Ocean Beach an even better place to live, work, and visit.

The contest was introduced by Scott Therkalsen, a long-time OB resident who joined the OBCDC Board of Directors in 2024.

As he explained:

“The OBCDC has been making Ocean Beach better for more than 30 years, we’ve done everything from planting the palms lining Sunset Cliffs and funding the entryway plaza, to helping fund the expansion of softball fields at Robb Field. We recently launched a grant program that has helped fund improvements at OBE and along Newport avenue and more but we really wanted to find a way to get individual community members from OB involved.

Rag’s Editordude One of Several Chosen by Save Our Heritage Organization

From SOHO / Sept. 16, 2026

SOME PEOPLE PRESERVE HISTORIC PLACES by restoring buildings. Others preserve communities by ensuring their stories are never forgotten, their spirit never compromised.

For more than five decades, Frank Gormlie has served as Ocean Beach’s chronicler, advocate, organizer, and conscience, documenting its history, defending its character, and giving voice to the people who have shaped one of San Diego’s most distinctive neighborhoods.

Frank’s commitment to community preservation began during the social upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970, he founded the OB People’s Rag, which became one of Southern California’s most influential underground newspapers, providing a platform for a community determined to shape its own future. More than simply reporting events, the paper became a catalyst for civic engagement, neighborhood organizing, environmental activism, and grassroots preservation.

As large-scale redevelopment threatened to erase much of Ocean Beach’s historic fabric, the OB Rag consistently helped inform, organize, and unite residents in defense of their community. It also chronicled the movement that led to the creation of the Ocean Beach Planning Board—the first democratically elected community planning group in San Diego and among the first in California. This model continues to influence neighborhood planning today.

From SOHO

We have some very good news to share: Monday, September 14, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2576 into law!

This is an important victory for historic preservation, and you helped make it happen.

Thank you to everyone who contacted the Governor, sent emails, shared our action alert, and spoke up in support of this important legislation. Your voices mattered.

AB 2576 closes an important gap in California’s new transit-oriented housing law, SB 79. It provides protections for qualifying contributing properties within historic districts listed in the California Historical Resources Inventory Database, as well as individually listed historic resources in the inventory, when designated before January 1, 2025.

Reader Rant

This was written in response to the headlines and text below at Axios San Diego, Sept. 13.\

Hi Claire Trageser, Axios San Diego

This headline link is totally misleading, irresponsible, and infuriating:

“ Meanwhile, a 14-year-old e-bike rider was hit by a Tesla in Pacific Beach Saturday night and died. (FOX 5 San Diego)”

Here’s the pertinent info from the Fox 5 story:

“According to the San Diego Police Department, the teenager was riding a Zooz e-bike northbound on Olney Street around 9:20 p.m. when he entered the intersection with Balboa Avenue against a red traffic signal.

In Response to Claims Against the San Diego Housing Commission of Illegal Rent Hikes, Misused Funds and Lack of Transparency

To: The San Diego Housing Commission
From: The San Diego City Council

This is exactly why we advocated for giving Lisa Jones, the CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission a pay raise by the San Diego City Council pushing her salary + benefits to around $372,500 annually plus an additional $5,000 to “right size” her compensation.

We just love this quote: “We are the eighth largest city in this country, and the things we are asking [Jones] to do come with increasing complexity,”

By Claire Trageser / Axios San Diego / September 11, 2026

[Slightly edited for clarification]

AJ Miller has transformed his Ocean Beach apartment into a birthplace for what his legions of online followers are calling life-changing pizza. The pizza is crispy and extremely exclusive. He makes just 15 a week and sells out in under 30 seconds.

His pies have also become catnip for Gen Z and millennials. They’re rare, you have to be in the know to get one and he shares his pizza-making story on Instagram, where he has 114K followers.

“I think people do like what they can’t get, so the exclusivity does play into it a bit,” Miller said of his popularity.

It’s close to New York style, Miller told Axios, but his favorite is New Haven style “apizza,”

By Nicholas Riccardi and Matt Brown / AP / September 14, 2026

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.

Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.

The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Donald Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot.

The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once stood as an example to the world.

“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.

by Ernie McCray

I’m shaking my head,

wishing I could go upside the heads

of a handful of

self-righteous wealthy Silicon Valley tech moguls

I just finished reading about

in a most revealing book, The Nerd Reich,

devious fascist narcissistic eggheads

who, in spite of

their enormous wealth

44th ANNUAL ADAMS AVENUE STREET FAIR
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 – 20, 2026

The 44th Annual Adams Avenue Street Fair features 75 musical acts on six stages and is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. Southern California’s largest free two-day music festival is held on 10 city-blocks in the community of Normal Heights.

By Michael A. Hernandez

“Open Clairemont Pool Now!” That’s the message Clairemont residents had for the City of San Diego at a recent demonstration almost 2 years after the closure of the public swimming facility.

Frustrated community members gathered Saturday, September 12 in front of the pool by the South Clairemont Recreation Center with signs in hand demanding immediate action from the city, as the Clairemont Family Day event  took place behind them at the South Clairemont Park.

The annual event featured a car show, pony rides, civic groups and much more. Among the many booths were representatives of the San Diego Parks and Recreation Department who were there to answer questions about the city’s progress on the major renovations being made to the pool.

The protest group made up of local residents, students, and athletes was spearheaded by Clairemont resident Gina Spears, who once told ABC News 10 the pool’s closure directly affected her son and his water polo team.

By Alexandra Hutzler / Democracy Docket / September 14, 2026

In a major win for voters, the Supreme Court Monday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to reinstate its mail voting restrictions ahead of November’s pivotal midterm elections.

The justices declined to lift a block on the measure that a lower court judge has said is likely unconstitutional.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the court said in a brief, unsigned order. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.”

The ruling* was 6-1-2, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing a concurring opinion and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

by Debbie L. Sklar / Times of San Diego / Sept. 10, 2026

Kate Sessions was already a nationally recognized horticulturist by the time she established the Pacific Beach nursery that became closely associated with her later years.[ Ed: She later became known as the Mother of Balboa Park.]

Sessions came to San Diego to teach at the Russ School. In 1885, she joined Solon and Clara Blaisdell in purchasing the San Diego Nursery. The partnership dissolved in 1887, and Sessions took over its operation. She later operated nurseries in Coronado, City Park, Mission Hills, and Pacific Beach, as well as a flower shop downtown.

Sessions’ downtown flower shop added another part to her horticultural business. She eventually sold the shop to Alice Rainford in 1909 so she could concentrate on her nursery work. Rainford had begun working for Sessions in 1898 and continued operating the shop after taking it over.