Category: Ocean Beach

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

The Fleetridge section of Point Loma doesn’t look like most postwar neighborhoods.

Its streets curve with the hills instead of following a straight grid. Homes sit on generous lots, tucked among mature trees and landscaping. And the neighborhood’s midcentury character feels remarkably intact.

That was no accident.

When Fleetridge was developed in the 1950s, its planners deliberately worked with the natural contours of Point Loma rather than flattening the hills and laying out a conventional subdivision.

The story begins in December 1949, when the Point Loma Holding Corp. purchased 175 acres. The corporation was headed by aviation pioneer Reuben H. Fleet, with attorney Ruel H. Liggett as secretary and paving contractor Roscoe E. Hazard. In November 1950, the corporation recorded the first Fleetridge subdivision map, containing 72 lots. Unit 2, with another 108 lots, followed in 1953.

The man whose name became part of the neighborhood was David Girton Fleet, Reuben Fleet’s son.

The Jetty
4934 Voltaire St.
Ocean Beach 92107
Open from noon – 9pm
www.thejettyob.com
 
By LKBruce

The Jetty Bodes Well

Some might question the wisdom of reviewing a restaurant before it’s officially open but Yelpers and Googlers are already out there so why not.

Having opened on June 12 for the first American soccer match in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, The Jetty has been testing and refining its menu ever since.

by Raul Campillo / Times of San Diego / Aug. 15, 2026

From the moment Mayor Todd Gloria proposed closing public restrooms at Mission Bay Park as part of this year’s budget cuts, I opposed the idea. San Diego faced a difficult budget year. I ultimately voted for the city’s balanced budget, but I made clear during the budget process, twice, that I did not support closing Mission Bay restrooms.

Cities have to get the basics right: clean streets, safe neighborhoods, smooth roads and parks people can actually use — which means open public restrooms. A restroom is not a luxury in a public park. For families with young children, seniors, people with disabilities, pregnant women, workers and tourists, access to a restroom can determine whether they comfortably and safely use that park at all.

Mission Bay receives an estimated 15 million visitors each year. Closing 13 out of its 28 public restrooms was a dramatic service reduction at a beloved public space and one of our economy’s most important tourist attractions.

That is why, on July 15, I sent Gloria a memorandum identifying $1.8 million that had been recently freed up. I proposed using less than a third to reopen and maintain the Mission Bay restrooms.

On July 24, the mayor rejected my proposal. He emphasized that the $1.8 million consisted of one-time resources and argued that the city lacked sufficient ongoing funding to sustain existing service levels.

By JW August / Special to the OB Rag

Billy Hunyady, a popular girls softball coach for nine years at Point Loma High School, has been fired by the school’s Associate Principal. Not only was Hunyady fired, but the entire girls’ softball coaching staff of nine individuals were abruptly fired on July 29.

A veteran coach with 28 years experience, Hunyady calls it an unjustified termination.  More concerning to him, though, he says, is the potential for gossip and speculation in the community and among his players and their families wondering about why he was fired on at the end of July. He worries that some may believe he was fired for “horrible actions, such as a secret relationship with a player or stealing money or abusing any of the athletes in any kind of way,” Hunyady told the OB Rag.

Unfortunately those kinds of actions are not entirely uncommon, but that isn’t why Associate Principal Monika Montiel Turner fired him and the others, says Hunyady.

Hunyady said Turner told him he was let go because there was “too much chaos going on” surrounding the girls softball program, involving players and fans.

Although there were some warning signs, the firing still came as a devastating surprise to the Hunyady. Recognized as the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) coach of the year in 2025, Hunyady is a graduate of Point Loma High, class of 1981, having played on the same baseball team as the school’s famous sports alumnus, pitcher David Wells, of New York Yankees fame.  “I was excited to be coaching  teams from my school, ” Hunyady said.

Junior varsity head coach Chris Ghio, who was a longtime friend of Hunyady, having graduated the same year from Point Loma High as Hunyady, said that when his friend told him the entire coaching staff of nine individuals was fired, “I thought he was joking. They had seen many administrations come and go, and “we have always been treated with respect and appreciation.”

Ghio said he thinks the entire community should be put on notice that they were “disrespected and discarded” by the current administration.

Neither the high school principal, Michael Santos, nor Turner have responded to numerous requests to tell us their side of the story.

A third rescue has occurred off Sunset Cliffs, the third within the last three weeks.

On Sunday, August 9, San Diego Fire-Rescue lifeguards rescued a person apparently injured while jumping into the ocean from the Arch, a popular jumping spot near Osprey Street. The incident was reported around 7:30 p.m.

Firefighters, medics and lifeguards responded to the area after lifeguards were told a man who had jumped into the water below had injured himself and needed to be pulled from the water. They used a low-angle rope rescue system to move the injured man to flat ground. He was then carried out to the top of the cliff and taken to a hospital with injuries believed not to be life-threatening.

Mayor Todd Gloria and other city leaders Wednesday announced the bathrooms at Mission Bay Park that were closed in early July due to budget constraints will reopen at the end of this week.

Gloria said 13 restrooms at one of the city’s most popular destinations will be back open starting Friday. He told the media that money from a state grant award and allocations from council office budgets is helping reopen the bathrooms.

The bathrooms will stay open until the end of the year, according to the mayor.

Feds Want to Begin ‘Review’ of How California Manages Our Coast

By Tammy Murga / KPBS / August 11, 2026

Public hearings this week could influence the future of oil production, rocket launches and other federal industrial projects off California’s coast.

The Trump administration is evaluating the state’s Coastal Commission and other coastal agencies. Depending on the outcome, the state could lose its authority to review and regulate projects that involve the coastline.

Coastal leaders and environmentalists across California, including San Diego County, said the results of the federal government’s new review are already predetermined.

“The current federal administration is behaving in an unprecedented way, and they are very excited to advance offshore oil drilling and other types of projects off the California coast,” said Jennifer Savage, the Surfrider Foundation’s California policy manager.

A routine review that the Biden administration largely completed last year showed favorability with the agencies managing the coast, she said.

In May, however, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said California “has repeatedly and unfoundedly obstructed spaceport development in bad faith.”

Spaceport development could include construction of infrastructure for spacecraft to launch and land. The Coastal Commission had rejected a request last year from the U.S. Space Force to increase SpaceX rocket launches off California’s coast due to concerns over beach closures and environmental and noise impacts.

Editordude: Before the stairs at Ladera Street at the cliffs, there was nothing except slippery toe holes, a small stretch of rope and the cliffs themselves. Making your way down holding onto a 9′ 6″ log was taking your life in your hands — which I did countless times back in the mid-60s. This was the reality of getting to Garbage Beach below until the 1980s. Thanks to Doug Smith, it all changed.

By Shona Neufeld / San Diego Reader / Aug. 5, 2026

“San Diego City built a staircase at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Ladera Street.”

— from Kathy Blavatt’s San Diego’s Sunset Cliffs Park: A History, written for the Ocean Beach Historical Society

There are other entry points to the beach below Sunset Cliffs; but none of them are as easy to navigate as the Ladera Street stairs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people use them every week. Families come to check out the tidepools, bringing young kids and old folks who otherwise might have trouble making it down there. And of course, there are the surfers, who use them to reach the break at Garbage Beach.

There is no mention of Doug Smith in Blavatt’s account of those stairs. And even after Adam Bloomberg and the Garbage Beach Surf Club held an event on March 29th of this year to honor Smith’s contribution to the stairs’ creation, you could be forgiven for never having heard of him. They intentionally kept publicity to a minimum, handing out only a few fliers to the regular Cliffs crew in order to reduce crowds and allow easy access for the 91-year-old Smith and his friends. “If we had advertised, it really would have been out of control,” said Adam. (I learned about it from local surfer Richard Aguirre while I was out riding my bike.)

The OB Rag holds one fundraiser every year and it’s that time again. It’s the second week of August and here we go!!

Please help us reach our goal of $3,500 over the next two weeks. We do have bills — just our annual server bill alone is $900, plus hopefully you’ve noticed, but we have added new writers. And miracle upon miracle, we do pay them a small amount, usually $50 an article, plus we have subscription bills and utilities to pay. It costs us more than $3,500 to run the Rag for a year, but that’s what we’re asking.

Over these last three years, the Rag has become the online platform for whole groups of dissatisfied residents besides Ocean Beach and Point Loma – fellow citizens who are upset with the leadership of the city, the mayor’s Bonus ADU program, the so-called Complete Communities plan  – not to mention the Midway Rising and NAVWAR massive redevelopment projects.

Residents across the city are having trouble gaining traction about their travails from the mainstream or other online media and press. So, increasingly, they look to the Rag for support.

As the Rag is a platform of and for citizen journalists, we are often there for them.

So, help us keep it going.

How to Support Us

Send us a one-time donation via our PayPal button on the homepage; or

Become a regular monthly contributor; via PayPal on the homepage; or

Send us a check made out to “OB Rag” to:

OB Rag
PO Box 7012
Ocean Beach, CA 92167

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By Lynne Miller

PREFACE: In 2023/24 a small article was posted in the OB Rag by the editordude, Frank.  It alerted my neighbors that 4705 Pt.Loma Ave was moving forward with building plans.  Without the OB RAG, the city would have built the project, unchallenged.  The City was using the ministerial law embedded in Complete Communities, that does NOT require public notification.

Thanks to the Rag and its years of sleuthing, neighbors found out, fought the project and won. The only way to beat the City corruption which smells like the wetlands in Imperial Beach, is to unite, and take action. Since 2023 many organizations have started individual battles against the unhinged power of the City and State. In order to defeat the billionaire driven machine of builders and government collusion we must unite!

The title of this article is not intended to be just cute, it is based on a scientific reality about the Midway land.

Saturday, I attended a meeting held by SDUC (San Diego United Communities.  Their website is sandiegounitiedcommunities.com.

This is one of several groups who are fighting for the Finest City.  It is worth the fight, and it will take you, your friends, and their friends to unite in the common and urgent cause, Save San Diego.

By Debbie Sklar / Peninsula Beacon / August 6, 2026

High atop Point Loma, overlooking the entrance to San Diego Bay, families once lived in one of the most isolated homes in Southern California. Their job was simple in theory but demanding in practice: keep the lighthouse burning every night so ships could safely find their way into the harbor.

Completed in 1855, the Old Point Loma Lighthouse was one of the first lighthouses built on the California coast after California became a state. Standing 422 feet above sea level inside what is now Cabrillo National Monument, it was built at what was then considered the highest lighthouse location in the United States.

The lofty location offered spectacular views, but it eventually created an unexpected problem.

Life at the lighthouse was far from easy.

The station was an isolated outpost where keepers and their families contended with strong winds, scarce supplies and the constant responsibility of maintaining the beacon. The grounds included living quarters, a barn, storage buildings, a chicken coop and water cisterns. Without running water, every drop had to be collected and carefully conserved.