OB Rag

Editor: As you read this, remember that your community’s underground newspaper, the original OB Rag, was part of this era. Art Kunkin, mentioned below – he was the editor of one of the West Coast’s grandparent alternatives, the LA Free Press – once called the OB Rag one of the best, community-based underground newspapers in the country.
The Sixties’ scrappy alternative newspapers were the oxygen that kept the era’s movements going.
By Richard Greenwald / In These Times

History books rarely speak as trenchantly to contemporary issues as John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University, February). As the cascading revolts in the Muslim world demonstrate, communication systems matter.

by Jim Miller

These are grim times. The worst are full of passionate intensity and the best lack all conviction. The Democrats at the state and national levels seem ready to embrace economic scarcity and budget cutting as the “new normal” while the right smells blood in the water and is going in for the kill on collective bargaining rights, women’s rights, environmental regulations, funding for education, and long untouchable social programs. While the Democrats play prevent defense, the corporate-funded right is going for it all, working to change the rules of the game permanently, short-term costs be damned.

By Anon OB Observer

Comments here represent my personal political analysis (not those of the OB Rag) and are certainly not meant to offend….only to instigate some discussion and hopefully improve the political process and representation in our little hamlet. As always…. I welcome any of the Board to comment or offer a counter if they disagree.

There were 5 representatives from Districts 1,2,4,5,6 elected in the general election. There were no candidates in Districts 3 or 7. District 1 was the only contested election and the incumbent lost in a very low turnout affair. Overall it was a dismally low turnout for voting.

At their regular monthly meeting last April 6th, the OB Planning Board selected their officers for this next year.

By direct votes, Giovanni Ingolia was re-elected Chair. He received 8 votes versus 3 votes for Landry Watson and 2 votes for Seth Seth Connelly. Vice Chair Landry Watson was returned to his position, …

My family and I moved to Ocean Beach in 1966. What a wonderful place it was then.

There was always a lot of activity on Newport, and there were so many stores that the locals could shop at and find almost everything they needed: Lownes Department Store; Elms Men Clothing; Para’s Book and Magazine shop; Denny’s Restaurant and later Mayfair Market.

As I write this, the US Congress has still not agreed on a budget to keep our government from shutting down. The sticking point between paying our soldiers and keeping federal offices functioning is a rider which the Republicans introduced to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood—or as they pitch it, to eliminate funding for abortions.

Koch spends tens of millions trying to shape federal policies that affect their global business empire By John Aloysius Farrell…

I ain’t gonna piss in no jar
You know Foghorn Leghorn wouldn’t pee in no jar. You
know Patrick Henry didn’t “Give
me liberty or give me a urine sample.”
~Mojo Nixon, I Ain’t Gonna Piss in No Jar

Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott has decreed through executive order that drug tests will be mandatory for all state workers.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta, gotta, gotta to get away…

We’d been meaning to get to the desert to see the flowers and both our schedules and the weather cooperated nicely today. After a light breakfast and our morning work on the Rag, we piled our provisions in the car and headed east. We took I-8 through the mountains and into the desert and under a sky peppered with high clouds we headed north on S-2.

Potential effects of shutdown

National Parks —- Likely to be closed.
Social Security —- Checks will be mailed out, although new claims may not be processed.
Border Patrol —- Deemed an essential service and will continue.
Air travel —- Air traffic control is essential; flights should not be affected.
IRS —- This agency will shut down in the middle of tax season. Tax refund checks won’t be issued.
Military —- Thousands of military members based in San Diego could go without pay temporarily federal officials said Wednesday.

Editor: Here is a rather fluff piece on Bo-Beau – the former Thee Bungalow – the Cohn family restaurant on…

Two of the three young men who were videotaped in the process of vandalizing Newport Avenue business storefront windows last January 25th have pleaded “guilty” to felony vandalism. (Come inside to one of our initial reports on the vandalism along Newport.)

Jonathan Ford Gurr – a Pacific Beach resident – and James Alfred Dorman IV, arrested in early March, each pleaded “guilty” to one count of felony vandalism, so reports writer Neal Putnam of San Diego Community News Group.