OB Rag

Ocean Beach Street Fair & Chili Cook-Off, presented by Buzz Cannabis, offers attendees eclectic fun in the sun for all ages.

Tens of thousands of visitors will attend the event from 10 am to 8 pm on Saturday, June 28, 2025, for a tasty festival nosh, art, beachfront entertainment, shopping, and more.

Entry to the Street Fair is always free!

The Chili Competition features tastings from amateurs and restaurants competing for various awards, including Judges’ Award, and Grand Prize: People’s Choice Award.

Come inside for the link to everything you need to know.

The following link is a critical incident video regarding an officer-involved shooting that took place on May 31, 2025, in OB at Bermuda Avenue and Ebers Street, offered to the public by the SDPD.

By Geoff Page / June 25, 2025

When I read about the coming trash fee issue back in February, I decided to do the simple math to see how much trash collection actually costs per household. I needed two crucial pieces of information. How many households received city trash pick-up in 2023? And what did that pick-up cost?

To get the information, I submitted a Public Records Request (PRR) on February 26. The California Public Records Act (PRA) created a process for citizens to access public information. An OB Rag article I wrote that ran on October 6, 2023 explained what the PRA is and how to make a PRR in San Diego.
https://obrag.org/2023/10/how-to-make-a-public-records-request/

I sent a request for budget documents that showed two things: the number of households that were serviced by the city trash pick-up program in 2023 and the total budget for city trash pick-up in 2023.

The PRA allows an agency 10 days to provide a response to a PRR. Under certain conditions, the law allows the responding agency to take an additional 14 days. That is 24 days total. As of June 23, the city has taken 117 days and counting. That is nearly 5 times the number of days allowable by law.

The City of San Diego is clearly in gross violation of the state PRA. This is not news to local professional journalists and news organizations. Many have had to actually sue the city to make it comply.

By Madeline Nguyen / Times of San Diego / June 23, 2025

San Diego City councilmembers slammed Mayor Todd Gloria Monday afternoon for improperly spending millions in city dollars, even as he vetoed funding for homeless services and other aid organizations to tighten the city’s budget.

Councilmembers Kent Lee, Sean Elo-Rivera, Henry Foster III and Joe LaCava unloaded on Gloria for cutting funding to key community services and urged the council to overturn all of his vetoes during that afternoon’s vote.

It’s the latest development in the city council and the mayor’s tug of war over San Diego’s budget for the upcoming year as the city works to solve a $258 million deficit.

“(Gloria) labeled community investment, like cultural events and nonprofit support as a ‘discretionary slush fund‘ for the council,” Councilmember Foster said. “The council has not paid for employees that were not identified in the budget.”

“That has been the practice of this administration, the practice of this mayor and it’s time for that to end.”

By David Garrick / SD Union-Tribune / June 23, 2025

Cash-strapped San Diego’s aggressive search for more revenue includes a new plan to generate $3 million a year by allowing controversial digital billboards for the first time.

In addition to generating revenue, the plan would allow the replacement of dozens of static, old-fashioned billboards with a much smaller number of digital billboards in more strategic locations, city officials say.

Critics say digital billboards — which have been rejected by La Mesa and several North County cities in recent years — could make parts of San Diego look like an amusement park or a miniature Times Square.

Digital billboards, which are typically two-sided, feature bright electronic images that change as often as every four seconds as they cycle through various ads or public service messages.

Members of the public — who helped defeat similar proposals in other cities by packing public hearings and leading petition drives — will get a chance to weigh in, because city regulations now prohibit digital billboards.

But city officials are proposing to have the necessary rule changes approved in a way that has been criticized for reducing public scrutiny.

With approval ratings underwater, why not follow Bush’s advice and launch a “little war”? What could possibly go wrong?

By Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams / Jun 23, 2025

In the modern era, it was probably George W. Bush who first said it out loud and then acted on it: When you’re unpopular and losing politically, just start a little war that’s easily winnable and you’ll be back on top.

As he told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, in 1999 about his plans for an Iraq war as a strategy to get himself reelected in 2004:

One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait), and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed, and I’m going to have a successful presidency.

It worked for Bush, although history hasn’t been kind to him as a result. Donald Trump’s second presidency, meanwhile, has been an unmitigated disaster, both in real terms and politically as his approval ratings have slipped so far underwater they’re in late-years Richard Nixon territory:

• Inflation is up, and the tariffs aren’t bringing jobs home.
• Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires bill is in trouble.
• The GOP war on our schools and libraries is creating a huge backlash.

The back-and-forth legal battle over yoga classes at San Diego beaches continues. The City of San Diego has filed an appeal to a recent court decision that temporarily lifted a ban that some viewed as controversial.

Earlier in June, an appeals court issued a preliminary injunction against San Diego’s prohibition on yoga classes with four or more people at public parks and beaches.

That judgement, which reversed a lower court ruling that yoga instruction is not protected by the First Amendment, clears the way for plaintiffs Steven Hubbard (aka “NamaSteve”) and Amy Baack to resume their fee-optional oceanfront yoga instruction.

For their 19-page opinion, Steve Hubbard, Amy Baack v. City of San Diego, No. 24-4613, the three-judge appellate panel reached back into the annals of yoga case law. They cited a 2015 9th Circuit ruling, Bikram’s Yoga College v. Evolation Yoga, No. 13-55763, which held that “a sequence of yoga poses and breathing exercises was not entitled to copyright protection.”

By Kate Callen / June 23, 2025

If you are furious because City Hall intends to get out of the fiscal mess it created by charging you unlawful trash fees, Mike Aguirre wants your help.

Aguirre is the lead attorney on a lawsuit seeking to block the trash fees on state constitutional grounds. He and co-counsel Maria Severson outlined the key legal issues to a packed forum on June 21 at the Mission Hills Library.

The 70 people who attended expected to be asked for donations. But Aguirre and Severson weren’t there for money. They wanted volunteers.

“To the extent you want to help us,” Aguirre said, “I want to use the Public Records Act to dig into the public records that are available to build a mountain of evidence to present to the judge. … We can’t take [the city] at their word. We need to find out all the particulars.”

By Jeff McDonald / SD Union-Tribune / June 21, 2025

Earlier this year, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria fired Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan and personally assumed those day-to-day city responsibilities.

At the time, Gloria was confronting a $258 million budget deficit and said the restructuring would slash the bureaucracy and better position San Diego going forward. He also promised more changes to come.

Dargan did not see his firing that way. The next month, he filed a lawsuit accusing Gloria and the city of racial discrimination and of targeting him because he is Black.

In his lawsuit, Dargan said the mayor and the city had failed to provide three months’ notice of its plans to part ways and — perhaps most important — the three months’ severance called for in his contract.

City officials rejected the allegations, saying he had been fired for cause, and pledged to fight.

But on Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider a $146,000 settlement with Dargan — more than it would have cost to honor the severance agreement.

By The Prebys Foundation / June 22, 2025

What happens in Washington doesn’t stay there.  It reaches all the way into San Diego’s labs, hospitals, and classrooms.

Proposed federal cuts to medical research threaten the life-changing work happening right here at home. From childhood cancer breakthroughs to ensuring diverse voices shape the future of medicine, local researchers are at risk of losing the support they need to keep pushing science forward.

To explore these impacts, the Prebys Foundation and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network are hosting a public forum on “This Affects All of Us: The Real Impact of Cutting Medical Research Dollars” on Thursday, June 26, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Neil Morgan Auditorium, San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Boulevard.