Category: Environment

We have just heard from friends in the know that Rock Paper Scissors and its controversial closure is back in the news – sort of. The Reader, San Diego’s predominant weekly, is supposed to be carrying an article on it in its Thursday’s edition. Jeff Fagan, the original owner of the arts and crafts store, reportedly refused to be interviewed. …

by Mike Davis

“Since everyone is dumping on Mexico these days, you might as well help me do the real thing.”

My friend Marcos Ramirez (aka “ERRE”) isn’t kidding. He’s building a new house in Colonia Libertad, Tijuana’s oldest and most surrealistically colorful neighborhood …

By Mary Mann

Walking down the long row of trailers, I wonder how I will recognize the one that belongs to Daniel Wallace and Judith May. They all look the same. As I near it, though, the ownership of the mobile home is made obvious by a preponderance of what their makers refer to as wobblies, wooden creatures, each with a name and a story. I should have known there would be something.

by Steven Heller

Even before Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama “Hope” poster became the focus of legal and ethical scrutiny — for Fairey’s use of Mannie Garcia’s A.P. news photo as the basis of the now ubiquitous image — some design critics and practitioners had already questioned the street artist’s habit of “sampling” existing imagery. A scolding essay by Mark Vallen, entitled “Obey Plagiarist Fairey,” which was published online in 2007, accused Fairey, who created the “OBEY GIANT” project in 1989, of “expropriating and recontextualizing artworks of others.”

Twenty years ago today, Colleen Dietzel and Kip Kruegar and other local environmentalists opened The Green Store on Voltaire Street for the first time. It was Earth Day 1989 – April 22nd.

Ever since, the iconic ecology store has steadfastly held its ground, offering books, magazines, bumper stickers, buttons, posters and other green products and mementos, while also serving as an anti-corporate space, a meeting site for area groups, and the headquarters for any thing green in OB.

The carbon footprint of the average San Diegan — including residential energy use and transportation — is larger than that of the average resident of Los Angeles, a review of available data shows. San Diego lags behind LA in policies and programs to reduce energy use.

Dozens of city and county workers descended on Sacramento’s tent city on Thursday, and within hours cleared the area of all signs of the sprawling homeless encampment.

PLUS

Over the past few months, reporters from around the world have flocked to the now-famous tent city in Sacramento, Calif. When they find out that 55-year-old John Kraintz has been living in a tent for almost seven years, they turn around and walk away.

By Jon Carr

We told you there would more photos to come!

Here are more pictures I took throughout the day, along with some sent to us by our friends Jeff Stone and Pat James. If anyone else would like to add to the mix, please feel free to send in your shots with a brief description.

by Jon Carr

Saturday April 18th, 2009 was the first annual OB Rockfest. A picture perfect day without a cloud in the sky and plenty of locals and visitors getting together for fun, sun, music and a little dose of environmental awareness.

There will be Town Hall Meeting in Ocean Beach tomorrow – April 20th – on the FY10 budget. This is your opportunity to get an overview by the Mayor’s staff on his proposed budget and ask questions!

By Jon Carr

The first annual OB Global Rock Fest is taking place at the pier parking lot on April 18th, 2009.
The event is being promoted as “Carbon Neutral” because the stages will be powered with Solar energy and there will be plenty of environmentally conscious vendors in the grassy area between the wall and Abott street.

By OB Rag Staffer

Can you picture yourself being homeless and living in a tent city? That’s a frightening thought, but it is a looming possibility for more and more San Diegans as the economy gets worse for ordinary people.

Ocean Beach has a large homeless population. We see these people, chat with them and help them out with a buck here and there. But …