The Battle Over the Ocean Beach Precise Plan- how urban planning became a democratic process and how OB was saved

Frank Gormlie June 17, 2009 8 Comments

by Frank Gormlie

The wonderful and warm community of Ocean Beach thrives on, even while it harbors scars of tagging, and while its business folk plan for the annual festival, the residents go about their days and lives with a harmony uncommon in this day and age of high-tech, high-rise and low markets.

The contentedness – yea, even bliss – of the seaside village’s people, can be traced to …

Flash to the Past: Original OB Rag Covers

Frank Gormlie June 13, 2009 1 Comment

As you probably know, this blog is named after the original OB People’s Rag, an underground or alternative community newspaper that flourished in Ocean Beach during the first half of the Seventies.

See the evolution of the newspaper’s covers, as they reflected what was going on in OB at the time and what was on the minds of its all-volunteer citizen journalist staff.

New scenes from OB’s past

Frank Gormlie June 9, 2009 7 Comments

Here are some real treasures from OB’s past – these are from the original pages of the OB Peoples Rag – most from 1972.

And it was that merged surfer-hippie-politico subculture that was so unique in Ocean Beach that saved the community from over development.

Scenes from OB’s once Voltaire Park

Frank Gormlie June 4, 2009 1 Comment

Once upon a time, a citizen-created park existed at the busy corner of Voltaire Street and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. It had been created and then was maintained by folks from the Ocean Beach Grassroots Organization and supporters.

After the departure of the last business at the location – on property owned by World Oil – the lot had become an eye-sore with weeds and trash strewed about. Without authorization from the City or World Oil, OBGO took it over, uprooting the weeds, dealing with the junk, picking up the old asphalt, and planting flowers, trees and bushes. And watering it.

Scenes from OB’s past

Frank Gormlie June 3, 2009 7 Comments

Here are a number of photos from OB’s past … (okay, I threw one current sunset by Jim Grant in there).

Check out the second one – it shows then Police Chief Ray Hoobler personally accosting young people on Long Branch Avenue in 1968. Check out his uniform. Thank you Steve Rowell.

Remember the Collier Park Riot! March 28, 1971

Staff March 28, 2009 16 Comments

38 years ago – check out our account of the riot – reposted here, what led up to it, the causes, the reporting, and the aftermath.

the Battle for Collier Park

Spring 1971. One of the first major issues the OB Rag jumped into wholeheartedly was to join up with a new OB environmental group, OB Ecology Action, and lead a fight to save Collier Park, an urban patch of land in northeastern OB.

OB vs. Police in the 1970s

Frank Gormlie March 25, 2009 15 Comments

by Frank Gormlie

It was a nice spring day in the month of May. The 21st to be exact. It was in the year 1974. A generation ago. It was show-time for us as we were going up against the Chief of Police.

Four of us had traveled to City Hall to have a “get-down” meeting with Chief Ray Hoobler and our Councilman. The situation in OB had become intolerable. We had come to talk because police – community relations there had broken down.

Ocean Beach and the Police in the mid-1970s: demand grows for that strange and foreign concept of civilian review

Frank Gormlie March 10, 2009 13 Comments

It may be true, as someone has suggested, that young people of Ocean Beach today have no idea of the on-going, daily tension between the police and the youth of OB a generation ago. Things are taken for granted.

Take the concept of police review, of the idea that civilians with some authority review the activities of police officers through an independent process. Heh? What’s the big deal? you ask. Of course, there should be some sort of civilian monitoring of and control on how police act and behave toward citizens.

Ocean Beach in the 1970s – How an armed police camp led to reforms in police practices

Frank Gormlie February 27, 2009 17 Comments

In my earlier post, I described how all hell broke loose 35 years ago on February 22, 1974. It was the day that Pete Mahone tried to commit suicide by cop – a guy many of us active in OB’s progressive community knew. The subsequent armed take-over of Ocean Beach by the San Diego Police in response to the shooting led to an outrage among residents, an outrage that manifested itself into a campaign for human rights and reforms in police practices – a campaign that eventually did win some changes.