Category: Ocean Beach

Jim Grant is one of the best local photographers in the OB/ Point Loma area. He keeps sending us his shots of sunsets and other wonderful views – and we just have to share. Which one do you prefer?

If you have any beautiful – or not so beautiful photos of OB or Point Loma you’d like us to showcase, send them to us via email : obragblog@gmail.com

OCEAN BEACH, CA. Saturday, June 20th, was the first (for some) Great Graffiti Paint-out for Sunset Cliffs, marred by countless taggings. About twenty people showed up bright and early and proceeded to paint clean the entire stretch from Orchard north to the Pier. Special thanks go out to Ed Baer, Lou, and Jon Carr for making this happen. Cheers to you!

Saturday, June 20th – Time to put up or ….

There has been a lot of chatter on this board lately about the sad state of affairs along the cliffs. This Saturday morning is your chance to do something about it! We will meet at the foot of Orchard Street at 7am for a quick pow-wow and start painting at 7:30am.

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 …

by Frank Gormlie

SUNSET CLIFFS, CA. Ah, the rites of Spring, the rites of passage. Jim Grant, local photographer best known for his amazing sunsets, sent us this pic of local kids doing the jump. Ah, to be young again.

In my youth, just a few moons ago, I did this jump a number of times. I even swam through the yucky seaweed to the cave, walked in a few yards and found the hidden stairs to the old locked door that leads to the secret passageway. It was used during Prohibition for booze runners. They hadn’t heard yet of the ‘no alcohol’ ban in San Diego parks.

Okay, this has been a heckuva interesting ride the last week or so and handful of articles – and very timely too, as I’ve been making similar observations of late. It seems like there’s a lively debate on where political and art-inspired graffiti fits into the general urban landscape.

In the early Seventies, the battle for the future of Ocean Beach grew very intense, as the different warring sides squared off around the original OB Precise Plan – the urban design for the community sponsored by the elite and powerful. The OB Community Planning Group published an 8-page leaflet that was so effective, that it convinced the community to join and support the organization.

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.

More scenes of Ocean Beach than we care to view or think about. But the taggers have found their canvas and its our cliffs. Here is another sampling of what some people think is the worst spate of graffiti on Sunset Cliffs then they can remember. These were taken recently by local photographer Jeff Stone.

by Sebastian Ruiz / SDNews.com / June 10, 2009

City Council voted on June 9 to term out the current Mission Bay Park Committee by July 1 and replace the board with members that have expertise in city finance and management. It is unclear who the new members will be – and if any of the current board members will return to their seats.

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.

by Mary E Mann

For weeks, starting in he beginning of May, I was getting up early and taking walks around Ocean Beach. I was looking for the groups of kids (teens and twenty-something’s mostly), who I have heard described as “Pier Kids”, “Anarchist Kids”, “Street Kids”, “Kids with backpacks”, and “Those kids who wear a lot of brown and have dogs, and sometimes cats on leashes”. I will refer to them here as The Kids. The Kids are, in fact, the young and the homeless.