Category: Media

It was a slightly sunny Sunday when we captured these glimpses into Ocean Beach.

Editor: David Helvarg, a former OBcean and original OB Rag staffer, now lives in San Francisco and runs the Blue Frontier Campaign to save our seas, which he founded in 2003. David is also the author “Blue Frontier – Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness,” as well as a couple of books. Go check out his site.

by David Helvarg/ Blue Frontier Notes / Originally posted August 11, 2010

They’ve finally cemented up BP’s runaway well (from above with a second relief well plug still to seal it from below). Unfortunately this comes after 220 million gallons of oil slimed the Gulf of Mexico. So what’s the effect of a spill 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez? Apparently not much if you believe the government’s estimates.

Editor: The following is an edited version of the “Report from the Open Forum Regarding Issues of Homelessness in Ocean Beach” just recently released by the Inter-Faith Community of Ocean Beach and the folks who actually ran that first forum on July 6th. We have only included the text of the report, …

By Maria Elena Fernandez / Los Angeles Times / August 3, 2010

Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James like each other so much that they decided to live together in San Diego when they were filming 13 episodes of FX’s new drama, “Terriers.”

The two actors met on NBC’s canceled series, “Life,” and bonded over Jack Kerouac’s “Big Sur.” Later, fate put them in the same room again when FX was casting the pivotal role of Britt Pollack, who is best friend to Logue’s character, Hank Dolworth.

By Gustav Wynn / OpEdNews / July 10, 2010

As was widely predicted, a former employee at the San Diego ACORN office has brought a lawsuit against right-wing activist journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who surreptitiously recorded him while posing as a pimp and a half-naked hooker seeking accomplices in the commission of crimes of prostitution, statutory rape and kidnapping.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired after O’Keefe’s San Diego ACORN exposé was released.

Here’s an update on the whole ‘bum’ sticker controversy.
Wednesday, June 23rd in front of The Black

* I started to write up a summary of what happened the other day in front of The Black but ended up deleting a lot of it. (It had been such a challenging two hours out there in front of a crowd, I almost didn’t want to relive it again by blogging about it. So, here’s an abbreviated version.)

by Mike James

On Saturday, June 26, people of the world will join hands on beaches and in parks, united against the dangers offshore oil drilling.

Ocean Beach will also be one of the 600 locations across the world for the “Hands Across the Sands” solidarity event.

Hands Across The Sand‘s aim is to convince our leaders to abandon expanded offshore oil drilling and adopt policies that encourage clean and renewable energy sources.

Editor: Rocky Neptune accompanied local San Diegans as they caravaned to Phoenix to join thousands in protest of Arizona’s new immigration and ethnic studies laws. Here, he recites his observations of that trip and summarizes local developments, including the death of Anastasio Rojas.

by Rocky Neptune
San Diego Man Brutally Beaten to Death by Border Agents

In front of hundreds of terrified border crossers several U.S. Border Patrol Officers killed Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, 42, a lifetime resident of San Diego, with a wife and five children. Apparently, trying to flee earlier abuse by agents after his arrest some hours earlier Hernandez Rojas, was attempting to run into Mexico, to awaiting Mexican custom officials, when federal agents tasered him and beat him to death Friday evening, May 28.

by Mike James

Poet and actor S.A. Griffin has just journeyed across America in a gas-sucking Ford Econoline van with his sidekick Elsie. At libraries, coffee shops and bookstores from California to North Carolina, S.A. would wheel Elsie out of the van and sit her in a corner. People were immediately drawn to her beauty, yet they probably felt an underlying apprehension knowing her tumultuous past. Within her they knew was where her redeeming soul resides.

She was not human; she was once a dull gray Cold-War Era military practice bomb, lovingly refurbished into shiny brightly colored receptacle of words.

The Union-Tribune has finally discovered that a film crew has been filming in OB for the past umpteen weeks. On today’s (6-15-10) front page is an article entitled, “TV discovers a San Diego star: O.B.”, with some cool observations and comments from the television stars and producers themselves, plus the OB Rag is mentioned along with some of our gnarly commenters.

Here are some great quotes – the first by actor Raymond-James:

“Ocean Beach has become a character in the show that is just as big, if not bigger, than Donal and I. There is a bit of a scruffiness and scrappiness about our characters that fits right into O.B.”

The Black, the iconic head shop that has been a mainstay in Ocean Beach “since 1969” – has entered the Dark Side – get it? The Black on the Dark Side. Their sale of the anti-homeless stickers – is stirring up the community. The Black used to be the only place where you would find items of the counter-culture, smoking instruments, sandals, incense, weird, psychedelic posters, … you name it – if hippies wanted it they could find it there.

By Jeremy W. Peters / The New York Times/ June 10, 2010

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.