Category: Environment

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 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.

A body was found in the water off Ocean Beach shortly after midnight on Monday, September 14, authorities said.

San Diego police were called shortly after 12:30 a.m. after someone spotted a body in the water off Brighton Avenue, south of Lifeguard Tower 5.No information about the person found was released.

Authorities have not released the identity of the person found, and the case has been referred to the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, which will determine both the cause of death and the person’s identity.

An Ocean Beach native by the name of Bryson is hospitalized after surviving a 45-foot fall from the top of a palm tree while trimming it at work Tuesday, Sept.8. He suffered more than 25 broken bones, including severe fractures to his femur, elbow, ankle, pelvis, wrist, nose and forehead, all on the right side of his body.

Bryson has already undergone three emergency surgeries, with another scheduled, and faces months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. His family launched a GoFundMe to help cover his medical care, physical therapy and living expenses while he is unable to work. As of this writing, over $15,000 has been raised. As an aside, he should be eligible for Workers Compensation as well.

Here is some of the text from the GoFundMe page:

On Tuesday, our brother Bryson fell roughly 45 feet (around four stories) from the top of a palm tree during work tree trimming.

The fact of him being alive is a miracle.

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.

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / Sept. 10, 2026

The Aug. 26 conclusion of the lawsuit challenging San Diego’s inflated trash fee has prompted the release of new details about the cost to taxpayers of a divisive and unnecessary legal dispute.

The lawsuit was sparked by a City Council vote that approved a “world-class” trash and recycling program with new bins, weekly recycling, bulk-item pick-up, “radio frequency identification” tags and other add-ons.

Those perks — plus salaries for additional city employees to deliver the services — bumped the estimated baseline fee from about $23 a month to more than $40 monthly.

Taxpayers revolted. Facing both a ballot measure and a lawsuit, the City Council in May approved a compromise that significantly reduced both the fee and the scope of service.

The settlement scuttled the proposed ballot measure and resolved the lawsuit. But the dispute was still a drain on city finances.

By Muir Avenue Ale

Amtrak has ruined my vacation, and I’m pissed.

For years, Amtrak has sold the California Rail Pass for $159. For the right kind of traveler and the right trip, it’s almost too good to be true. During a 21-day period, you can use the pass for seven days of nearly unlimited travel (four trips per day).

The pass includes these four train lines:

• Pacific Surfliner: San Diego to San Luis Obispo
• Gold Runner (my favorite): Bakersfield to Bay Area
• Capital Corridor: Bay Area
• Coast Starlight: Los Angeles to Dunsmuir

These trains are connected by a bunch of bus routes, which the pass covers. Two of these buses even take you into Nevada (Reno, Las Vegas) for no extra charge.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1855, a group of San Diegans began prospecting for coal on Point Loma.

The project was an ambitious one. The San Diego Coal Co. hoped to develop the deposit into a local source of fuel and a profitable business for its investors. A local coal supply also could have helped San Diego compete as a coaling station for steamships and potentially benefit from future railroad development.

The men behind the venture were associated with San Diego’s small Mormon community. Among them was Ephraim Green, a former member of the Mormon Battalion who later said he had noticed coal on Point Loma before leaving San Diego in 1847.

The story has acquired a mythology of its own. One version says the Mormon prospectors were acting on a “revelation” that coal could be found there. But the historical record tells a more complicated story.

Reports of possible coal deposits on Point Loma dated to at least 1849. In 1855, Green returned to California and told members of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino about the coal he remembered seeing on Point Loma. He eventually led interested men to the site.

The prospecting soon became a formal business.

The San Diego Coal Co. was formed in November 1855 by Green, H.C. Ladd, George Warren Sirrine and Seth Benjamin Tanner.