OB Rag

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.

Originally posted August 6, 2010
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ALLEY CLEAN-UP ORGANIZED – August 21

The folks that organized the first Community Forum on homelessness in Ocean Beach have come out with their report on that open forum which was held on July 6th, and have called for a second forum for August 24th. It will be held at the First Baptist Church of Ocean Beach, located at 4790 Santa Monica Avenue at 7pm

by Michael Steinberg / IndyBay.org / Aug 21st, 2010

SUMMARY: Five people were arrested Friday for locking down in an entrance and exit to an Arco/BP gas station at the corner of Fell and Divisadero in San Francisco. The protesters called their action a “bike spill.” They chained themselves to bicycles and laid in the car entrance and exit ways, effectively shutting down the gas station.

Our local Repubnick, Darrel Issa – of North County – is in the news again, and he’s in the news again because he continues to play the role of the GOP’s attack dog on the Obama administration. Of all the problems facing this country, what do you think Issa is now charging the White House with?

Issa, the ranking Republican on the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, is charging Obama with being guilty of using propaganda with White House claims of saving jobs and creating new ones with stimulus monies. That’s it. Obama is therefore guilty because the claims cannot be proven, says Issa, and such propaganda is prohibited if taxpayer money is used.

by Ariana Huffington / Huffington Post / August 21, 2010

As we head into the stretch run of the 2010 midterms, and get closer to the halfway point of President Obama’s first term, we’re hearing a lot of media chatter about the “enthusiasm gap” plaguing Democrats. There is also a lot of talk about whether progressives — aka “the professional left” — should or shouldn’t be disappointed in Obama. In a post about last month’s Netroots Nation gathering in Las Vegas, Matt Yglesias wrote that at this year’s event, “the dominant mood” was “depressed” and that he could feel a “considerable degree of ill will toward Barack Obama and his administration.”

Terriers is a show about two private investigators who are tenacious, just like the terrier dogs.

In the series Terriers, Michael Raymond-James plays Britt Pollack and Donal Logue plays Hank Dolworth, two men with questionable pasts who join together to form their own private investigation team. On August 3, 2010 the two gentlemen along with the producers discussed their new series with members of the Television Critics Association.

Originally posted on Aug. 20, 2010.

by Annie Lane / August 20, 2010

Meet Jacob Magness, a native San Diegan who’s spent the last 13 years saving lives in Ocean Beach.
As one of OB’s permanent lifeguards, Magness, 32, is no stranger to the ocean or making rescues. In fact, he’s been in or near the water for the last 24 years.

Editor: There’s a new ‘bad boy’ in town, and he’s not a bum or a homeless person. He … or she … is the person who grabs free electricity from the Newport Avenue light poles. The “new” U-T (Union-Tribune) felt this story still had legs and quotes our own Denny Knox, CEO of the OB Mainstreet Assoc., and Jim Musgrove, head of the OB Town Council. Go to it.
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City street crews are looking to curb the number of people in Ocean Beach who siphon electricity from outlets on street lamps to power everything from cell phones to recreational vehicles.

The San Diego Streets Division is awaiting another shipment of tamper-proof utility covers that restrict access to electrical sockets on a three-block stretch of Newport Avenue ….

By Rocky Neptun

“Mommie, I’m hungry,” the little girl cried as she stood shivering in the cold wind, waiting for food. The image has never left me…and now that I am semi-retired I want to be part of an effort making sure no more children starve on San Diego city streets.

I want to help buy a catering truck. A fellow member of the San Diego Renters Union, who was once homeless, has gotten a modest settlement and has agreed to match whatever the Renters Union can raise toward buying a food truck to feed the homeless. As someone who spent their teen years on the streets of New York City, I learned very early, as I camped under a hedge at New York University, that whatever didn’t fit in a back-pack was useless. I had no possessions, so possessions did not possess me. But I did know hunger and, often, what crimes against society – and oneself – it took to obtain money for food.