Category: History

Charles “Chuck” Curtis found paradise at age four when he moved to the Theosophist community at Lomaland in Point Loma. He attended Madame Tingley’s school, later joined the navy and married a woman from a prominent Point Loma family.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents: Charles Curtis’ Adventures in Lomaland
Thursday, July 21st, at 7 PM
P.L. United Methodist Church, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

Okay class, let’s take our seats, get out our pens and notebooks. Hopefully, you didn’t forget too much from Lesson #1.

Today’s lesson about gentrification coming to OB is going to focus on the 5100 block of West Point Loma, for that is the front line in this gentrification crisis. Gentrification is all around us, but one way it has been slowed down over the decades is with the 30 foot height limit.

Every 4^th of July, I make sure to fit in a few minutes to put on one of my favorite Dave Alvin songs, “4^th of July” (which is better known as an X song). It’s a bittersweet tale of two lovers trying to make their way through life. After pulling a holiday shift, a man comes home from work to find his lover crying in the dark and he ponders their fate:

On the lost side of town
In a dark apartment
We gave up trying so long ago.
On the steps I smoke a
Cigarette alone.
The Mexican kids are shooting
Fireworks below.
Hey, baby—it’s the fourth of July.
Whatever happened
I apologize
So dry your tears
And baby—walk outside
It’s the 4^th of July

A decade later, unofficial boycott of Starbucks continues among OBcians

This is the final segment of my four part series on the tenth anniversary of the anti-Starbucks campaign in Ocean Beach.

Plan A – the Formula Ban

The passage of Prop A – the Formula Ban of chain restaurants and other corporate-type businesses in Ocean Beach at the OB Planning Board elections on March 12th, 2002, had been a major boost for activists boycotting Starbucks. It had passed with more than three-quarters of the vote (77%) at the annual election – in a near record turn-out of voters.

As the Union-Tribune noted in its article on San Diego Noir: “When it comes to the literary genre known as noir—that dark terrain of desire and desperation, of passion and paranoia—certain cities come immediately to mind. Los Angeles. San Francisco. New York. Not San Diego.” Well, not exactly.

While San Diego does not have as rich a literary and/or filmic history as Los Angeles, it too has some noir in its past. In the 1890s, Thomas and Anna Fitch saw Coronado as a suitable location for testing a doomsday weapon in Better Days: Or, the Millionaire of To-morrow. Then famously, in 1932, Edmund Wilson labeled San Diego the “The Jumping-Off Place” as a result of its nation-leading suicide rate….

The OB Starbucks Finally Opens … On 9-11

After five and a half months of organizing during the early months of 2001 against the opening of OB’s Starbucks, activists were ready for the day that its door would actually swing open. It was to open at the corner of Newport and Bacon.
There had been at least three major demonstrations against the corporation where hundreds had rallied, two well-attended town hall type meetings, a petition that had garnered nearly 1500 signatures, and the handing out of thousands of fliers proclaiming a boycott of Starbucks.

Part 1

Often, when one walks by the Starbucks in OB at the corner of Newport and Bacon, there doesn’t seem to be that many customers inside. Unless it’s a weekend or a crowded holiday. There’s many more people sipping java and staring at their laptops down around the corner at Newbreak on Abbott.

Homeless people and petition hawkers still congregate in front, though, so the corner itself seems busy.

Part 2 : The Stage Is Set for Revolution

Editor: This is the second part in a series about the history of Mexico written for gringos, and it was written in 1979-80. (Come inside for the link to Part 1.)

The liberal reform movement in Mexico during the middle of the 19th century was lead by Benito Juarez, the first and only Indian to gain the Presidency of Mexico. The reformers wished to dismantle the old semi-feudal economic structure, where the masses of peasants worked on large estates. But the conservative forces of society, the Church, large rancho owners, merchants, militarists, and opportunists who wanted to re-establish the Crown, violently resisted Juarez’s reform efforts.

Editor: This short history of Mexico was written for gringos because gringos are not taught anything about the real history of our close neighbor to the south in our classrooms. And this account stops at the Revoluccion.

Most North Americans don’t know too much of the history of our southern neighbor, even though our nation has been deeply involved in its internal affairs. This involvement over the last 150 years has led to the domination of Mexico’s economy by North American capitalists. To understand this relationship, and to understand why undocumented workers migrate north, we must trace Mexico’s history …

Does the “Green OB” still have meaning in the OB of the 21st century? With only T-shirts bearing the “Green OB” nowadays, the verdant graphic with the letters “O” and “B” with the peace symbol being held up by a fist is more of a concept than a thing in Ocean Beach. But back in the 1970’s it had real meaning, and OBcians placed it in the windows of their homes.

What did it mean? What did it stand for?

The story of the “Green OB” goes back to the inception of the original OB People’s Rag, the hard copy predecessor from the seventies to this website.

(Author’s note – while this is a brief write-up on Ruth Varney Held’s Beach Town: Early Days in Ocean Beach, – originally published in 1975 and updated in 1984 and 1990 – a history that gracefully glosses over any social improprieties, this article’s title has been slightly modified in order to shamelessly trick you into clicking through to the full post…)

Having been itching to read a book recommended to me several weeks ago at a Rag-sponsored picnic commemorating the Collier Park Riots, I finally headed into the library last week to pick up a copy of Beach Town…delayed by at least two weeks’ searching for and fretting over my lost library card that ended up costing me only $2 to replace. The book is out of print and used copies are retailing for as much as $35 at Amazon, but the OB branch library has at least three copies on hand.

By Dave Maass / San Diego CityBeat

Today’s labor unions stand on the shoulders of giants. And those giants stood upon soapboxes at the corner of Fifth Avenue and E Street, Downtown, in 1912, braving arrests and violence in one of the most turbulent clashes over free speech in American history.

Jan. 8, 2012, will mark the 100th anniversary of the San Diego City Council’s passage of an ordinance banning public speeches in a six-block area, including the Downtown area …