OB Rag

by Michael Steinberg

Where is San Diego’s ‘Secret Room’? The room, that is, where the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly intercepts all our internet activities and analyzes them in “real time” for purposes the federal government refuses to reveal.

The existence of such a room in a San Diego telecommunications company was revealed years ago …

Here are a number of photos from OB’s past … (okay, I threw one current sunset by Jim Grant in there).

Check out the second one – it shows then Police Chief Ray Hoobler personally accosting young people on Long Branch Avenue in 1968. Check out his uniform. Thank you Steve Rowell.

AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) is having their annual meeting in San Diego this week. Nurses from the California Nurses Association and allies from groups like Physicians for a National Health Program and Progressive Democrats of America will be there to greet them – of course!

Emotions ran high at the monthly meeting of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council last night as dozens of people — a record turnout, regulars said — filled the small meeting room at the Cabrillo Recreation Center, most of them eager to discuss replacing the park’s recently departed benches.

by Craig Gustafson / SignOnSanDiego.com

A federal court has ruled the city of San Diego is prohibited from harassing or dispersing the entrenched seal colony at Children’s Pool beach in La Jolla.

At the northwest end of Ocean Beach sits a sandy respite known as Dog Beach. Nothing more needs to be said. It is a local wonder, an international destination, and a model for all other ‘dog parks’. Everybody who has a dog has been there. In fact, we kind of glorify the place.

San Diego photographer Jen Wilbur agrees.

by Michael Moore

General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled. …

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — has now made itself obsolete.

Our blogger/ photographer Dave Gilbert has amassed quite a collection of shots of graffiti, cliff or sandstone carvings, and other images of OB that we really don’t want to see.

My partner and I were driving down West Pt. Loma around 1:00 today – Saturday, May 30th – heading east. On the corner of Rialto, two boys appeared to be arguing – one looked to be no more than six or seven years old, the other in his mid-teens.

As we passed, the older one threw the younger to the ground and began pummeling him with fists and kicks to the chest, possibly using some sort of blunt instrument ….

by Mary E Mann

Last, it was spinach. A few people across the country got very sick, and a baby died – the only thing they all had in common was the consumption of spinach. Suddenly, grocery stores were bereft of spinach, and newscasters with serious faces warned of a spinach-sickness crisis. A small national panic ensued.

Today, it’s swine.

Not all scenes or photographs of OB are scenic or pretty or even worth viewing. Unfortunately, the artistic talents of graffiti artists and people who carve in the cliffs and the sandstone are not very appreciated by the rest of us.

Here are some not-too-pretty scenes of Ocean Beach by our blogger/ photographer Dave Gilbert.

by Frank Gormlie

UPDATE: Saturday, May 30 – 3:45pm: Our blogger Dave Gilbert has just reported that the graffiti on Abbott and Saratoga has been completely removed. Today, he also spoke to a manager at Nick’s At the Pier who told him he would remove that very visible graffiti at Abbott and Santa Monica today.