OB Rag

Here is the agenda for the Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting to be held on Wednesday, July 18th. The Board meets at the OB Recreation Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue, at 6:30 pm sharp. This is actually a meeting of the full Board’s sub-committee, the Project Review Committee – which hears projects and then makes recommendations to the entire Board when it meets the first Wednesday of the month – August 1, 2012.

The meeting has two itemized agenda issues. The first is a permit for the Giddings residence at 4662 Pescadero Avenue in southern OB. The Giddings want a permit to build walls in the public right of way for their existing single family residence.

Here’s a Youtube video about Ocean Beach in the surfin mid-Sixties to the rowdy late Sixties. The artist is Trouble 6.

Come on inside to let us know your fave scene or other minutia of our OB history.

Originally posted September 29, 2009

Editor: This is part of a irregular continuing series about Ocean Beach since the late Sixties and the early history of the first OB Rag.

1968: The Rowdy College-Surf Town Morphs Into Hippie Haven

OB was already well-known for its rowdy and irreverent culture of beach, surf & beer; but by 1968, it began its transformation into something more. Bleach blond long-haired surfers lived next door to long-haired hippies, and soon you couldn’t tell them apart. It became official: Ocean Beach had become the hippie mecca. Since the late sixties, Ocean Beach had morphed into the hippie hangout for the entire city. OB had become the Haight-Ashbury of San Diego, shadowing the more famous early birthplace of hippie-ism. But if you were young and a hippie in San Diego, you ended up in OB.

by Mel Freilicher / San Diego Free Press

In the furor of attempting to clean out my disastrously cluttered home office before school starts again, I came across a recent issue of the National Education Association’s magazine dedicated entirely to teaching Darwin. Before tossing it, I read some astonishing and depressing statistics about the high percentage of Americans who disbelieve in evolution (including, if I recall correctly, about 25% of those with a college education, and more than 50% of those without one). Mostly that issue detailed how teachers might use the mass of scientific evidence from a wide array of disciplines to make the case for Darwin.

That this case still needs to be made is in itself bizarre, of course, since “The Origin of the Species” was published in 1859. It can’t be accounted for simply by the many home-schooled children of fundamentalists, or by graduates of Christian academies such as the chain that unsuccessfully brought litigation against the UC system a few years back for not accepting their creationism course as a legitimate science entry requirement.

By Jim Hightower / NationofChange/ July 16, 2012

Some people are too smart for your own good.

Food geneticists, for example. These technicians have the smarts to tinker with the inner workings of Momma Nature’s own good foods — but not the smarts to leave well enough alone.

In fairness, much of their scientific tinkering has been beneficial. But during the past half-century, too much of their work devolved from tinkering into outright tampering with our food. This is mostly the result of money flowing to both private and public research centers from big agribusiness corporations that want nature’s design altered in ways that fatten their bottom lines. Never mind that the alterations created by these smart people are frequently not good for you and me.

Raglan Public House
1851 Bacon Street
Ocean Beach, CA 92107

Who could have imagined that my review of “Chili’s” would cause indigestion from some of our readers. My, my! So I decided to take myself and a female friend back out into the streets of Ocean Beach for redemption. My friend, a visitor from Ohio, had read my earlier review of “Raglan” and wanted to try it. I had been back three times since my review of Raglan, so decided a “rereview” was necessary to calm people’s gerd and anxieties.

It must be pointed out that each time I have returned to “Raglan” I was pleased with the service; pleased with the quality of food, and pleased by the friendliness of the wait staff. But today I approached my dining experience a little differently.

Recently, I had the great pleasure of visiting a Buddhist monastery to do a walking meditation on a luminous summer morning. It was a beautiful experience but what struck me afterward was how quickly even many of those bent on being here now reached for their cell phones to check their text messages or play Angry Birds. As charmingly ironic as this is, it is also a perfect manifestation of what most ails us. We just can’t stop working/amusing ourselves to death.

Not too long after my encounter with the texting Buddhists, I came upon an illustrative article in the Travel section of the New York Times entitled “Call Waiting: ‘It’s Me, Vacation’: Can’t Let Go? Eight Rules for Getting the Most Out of Your Time Off” by Matt Richtel. Richtel’s article starts with the story of a failed vacation that left him “exhausted, defeated, and irritable” rather than refreshed and at peace. He then turns to the wisdom of neuroscientists, behavior experts, and business executives to learn that “letting go” is something you have to “practice on a daily basis.”

From San Diego Free Press

For those of an apocalyptic bent, the beginning of the final half of 2012 was near perfect.

True, the walls didn’t all come tumbling down, though those retaining the spent nuclear fuel pool atop Fukushima Unit 4 were bulging. But the signs seemed to be everywhere, from the eastern shores of Japan to the west coast of California.

The most widely reported such event was the July 1 restart of a Japanese commercial nuclear power reactor at the Ohi nuclear plant. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda pushed for this restart, despite a massive protest in front of his office in Tokyo only days before. Digital Journal reported that 200,000 protested there on June 29

Please Join the Celebration
For the new location of

The Green Store

Open House on Saturday July 14th
from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
4843B Voltaire St, Ocean Beach

The Green Store on Voltaire Street has been OB’s quintessential center of green, ecology and environmental awareness for decades now. Operated by Colleen Dietzel – she and Kip Krueger originally opened it – and several energetic volunteers, the Green Store has for 23 years been providing peace, social justice and environmental information to the community of Ocean Beach and San Diego in general.

Come inside for the Celebration Schedule of music and speakers …

After going to the beach during the summer in OB for fifty years, I have never seen such a dramatic display of dolphin drama as a pod demonstrated yesterday – July 10th – just beyond the breaker line in South OB.

I was sitting with two friends waiting for the wind to die down, for the waves to get less choppy, and for the conditions in general to get better. We were sitting next to a firepit just north of Tower Two when all of a sudden my friends yelled out. What?

Dolphins jumping! Right there – right beyond the breakers!

Well, kiddies, looks like the Starbucks in OB has closed and moved on. There’s a sign in one of the windows that announces that OB Kabob will be moving into the storefront at the corner of Newport Avenue and Bacon Street.

Nope. Not yet. Sorry. It’s Seth’s Chop Shop that is being remodeled and will be the site of the new OB Kabob.

Assembly District 76 Small Business of the Year: OB PEOPLE’S ORGANIC FOOD MARKET

Each year the California Small Business Association partners with the California State Assembly to host California Small Business Day. An annual tradition since 2000, each Assemblymember chooses a small business in their district to honor the contributions that small business makes to California.

This year Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market was chosen as the 76th Assembly District’s Small Business of the Year. Serving the community since 1972, People’s is unique in that they are San Diego’s only customer-owned grocery store. People’s members manage their co-op through a democratic process, holding quarterly meetings to make the major decisions.