OB Rag

April 2014 – Editor’s Note: In light of the recent OB Town Council meeting that ended up focusing on the homeless, we wanted to repost a report of a Town Meeting on Homelessness – on August 24, 2010!

The second in a series of Community Forums on the homeless and homelessness in Ocean Beach was held last night, Tuesday, August 24th. The First Baptist Church on the corner of Sunset Cliffs Blvd and Santa Monica had opened their doors to the neighborhood, offering pastries, juices, coffee, etc. The event was organized by the OB Inter-Faith Community – a grouping of about a half dozen local churches.

About sixty people crowded into the assembly hall. After some brief intros by Jack Hamlin, we were directed to choose one of four areas to meet over – public facilities, community, government, and activities.

Ahhh, what a time we had, my childhood friend from Tucson and I. Jim Hopkin.

Our visit was like a fantasy, as there was a time in our lives when neither he or I could have imagined a scenario wherein someday I would cruise up to a sidewalk in a nice “chine,” as we used to say, in front of Southwest Airlines and he jumps in and I whisk him to a Comfort Inn and we end the day in one of the hippest Mexican Cafe’s in town – with nary a soul in any of these places wearing a “P.U.” frown.

Back then we knew no one who had flown any where – the concept of a “colored” person staying in a hotel had not yet been implanted in our young minds – and we couldn’t eat in a cafe unless the sign above it read Jack’s Barbeque or Duke’s Drive-In.

by Jill Richardson / AlterNet / August 25, 2010 |

The recent recall of 500 million eggs due to salmonella should surprise no one.

The official term agribusiness will use to refer to Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the owner of the farm that produced the tainted eggs, is “bad apple.” That’s what they call anyone who gets caught for outrageous ethical breaches in agriculture. Farmers who are caught abusing their animals and workers, committing flagrant environmental crimes, and selling record amounts of tainted food are all “bad apples.” The implication is that everyone else, those who haven’t made front-page headlines for their bad behavior, would never dream of doing such a thing on their farms.

By Christopher Cadelago / UNION-TRIBUNE / August 24, 2010 at 2:43 p.m.

OCEAN BEACH — Frank Gormlie, a lawyer, activist and co-founder of the OB Rag, is calling on OBceans to join him at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Masonic Center to demand he be allowed to run as a candidate for the Ocean Beach Town Council’s board of directors.

Today, around mid-morning, I received a phone call from Nancy Vaughn, the elections coordinator for the Ocean Beach Town Council. As you may know, the OBTC is having their annual elections beginning tomorrow (Wednesday Aug 25th) with their Candidates Forum – and up to now, I have been an official candidate.

On the phone Nancy Vaughn told me that I am in fact ineligible to be a candidate for the Board. She even told me that the OB Rag is ineligible to be a member. The Rag had joined the OBTC over three months ago and our dues fees were accepted. My name was on the official list of candidates sent out by the Council two days ago. My Letter of Intent declaring my candidacy had been accepted over a week ago. Yet on the eve of the balloting, I’m told I can’t run for one of the 7 seats that are open.

Here is the reason that Vaughn cited ….

On 26 July, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. Wikileaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.

A confluence of events is merging here in Ocean Beach this week that in themselves display a healthy village, a social stage active with its many players: on Tuesday night – August 24th – there is the second in a series of community forums on OB homelessness at the local Baptist Church.

And then on Wednesday night -the 25th – there is the OB Town Council meeting and its annual Candidates Forum up at the Masonic Center.

With these two important neighborhood meetings conjoined closely in time, we have a strong indication here of a an active – hence healthy – social and political life underwriting this coastal village.

by Pat Flannery / Blog of San Diego

This is the dirty Agreement that is spawning multiple lies about the Embarcadero Oval Park. The fact is that a Panamanian company, the Carnival Corporation, advanced the Port District $12 million at 4.5% interest to construct two home ports, one on B. Street Pier and one on Broadway Pier. The sole source of funds for repayment of this loan, which must be repaid in full by April 30, 2015, shall be a Special Facility Fee charged to each passenger while Carnival branded vessels will receive preferential berthing rights.

by Judi Curry

Did any of you drive down Sunset Cliffs this weekend and get a whiff of the aroma of our neighborhood denizens?

I would have loved to have seen how the person driving the car that was right next to the skunk got into the driver’s seat. Did he step over the skunk? Get in from the passenger seat? Did the car reek? I didn’t envy that person.

When I moved into the Ocean Beach/Pt. Loma area the only skunks I saw were dead ones, usually on Canon near the trails. When they began showing their tails in my area I was surprised. There was a lot building going on, and I imagine that their “homes” were being destroyed.

The Ocean Beach Town Council is having an election starting this week to fill 7 seats that are being opened. And there are eight candidates running for those seats, six of them incumbents.

The Council is sponsoring a Candidates’ Forum during their regular public meeting, this Wednesday, August 24th, at the Masonic Center located at 1711 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

Here are the names and statements of the candidates, provided to us by the OBTC …..

By Rocky Neptun

“Do not forsake me, ohhhh..my darling,” the deep raspy voice of Gary Cooper intoned as Hadleyville Marshal Will Kane walked out into the middle of town to meet the evil that was arriving on the noon train. Having just gotten married to a pacifist Quaker that day, hanging up his guns and badge; he would have to make a choice between the effortless escapism in the waiting buggy, horses harnessed and ready, and facing down the malicious criminal who was approaching – even though everyone in town was frightened and hid.

Gary Cooper won a Best Acting Oscar for that performance, while Tex Ritter’s theme High Noon won Best Song.

It was the busiest lot in all Ocean Beach this morning – August 21st – at 7:30 on the 4700 block of Santa Monica Avenue – across from OB Elementary. Church volunteers, homeless people, and community activists were gathering for an early morning breakfast and scheduled alley clean-up. Patty and I arrived at that moment, half asleep but ready with our work clothes.

A while later and by time breakfast was served – a regular thing every Saturday morning at this site – a hundred people had gathered. Some guys were singing and playing a guitar, med students from UCSD were taking blood pressures, and houseless people were collecting food, soaps, and other personal hygiene items handed to them by a half dozen good-natured souls who had arrived early and stood behind tables.