OB Rag

OCEAN BEACH, CA. This is the latest OB Community Bulletin Board. If you have any news, commentary, info, or advice you’d like to share, simply post it in the comments section.

In the meantime, we’re start it out with the following newsy bits.

HOOPERS’ TRIAL SET FOR SEPTEMBER …

4th MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY TO OPEN IN OB – …

Thanks to local photographer Jim Grant we can enjoy scenes from Sunset Cliffs hours after the sun has gone down.

Remember, if you have photos of OB or the surrounding environs that you would like us to share with the community, email them to us at obragblog@gmail.com

For a week we ran a poll on how people feel about World Oil’s Sunset Plaza. The results are in, and with 67 respondents (and there’s no way to tell whether a respondent lives in OB) people are split on the two-story medical building planned for the corner of Sunset Cliffs and Voltaire.

The largest bloc of voters, 29 of them for 43% think the building is …

Sunset Plaza, the World Oil project slated for the corner of Voltaire and Sunset Cliffs is coming back before the Ocean Beach Planning Board at its general meeting Wednesday, August 5th. But you wouldn’t know it by checking out the Planning Board’s website.

We have seen the wonderful news about Chris Bowd…

“Chris is breathing on his own and will be released for rehabilitation on monday or tuesday. He is very aware of his surroundings and can move all limbs. He has been nodding and has even smiled. He is not able to speak yet but should be able to very soon once the endotracheal tube is removed.”

Editor: In response to our recent post, “Sunset Cliffs – and surf culture – in danger of erosion” by Mary E Mann on July 20th, we have received the following article by Ann Swanson, current Chair of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council.

by Ann Swanson

The article on Sunset Cliffs is filled with misinformation and distortions. I welcome the opportunity to give the facts …

This is an Ocean Beach Community Bulletin Board. Please post any news or info that you’d like to share in the comments section. We’ll start it off with the following:

* UPDATE: OBMA HELPS CLEAN UP VETS’ MEMORIAL

* New Medicinal Marijuana Dispensary to Open on Newport …

by Frank Gormlie

Since I came of age here in Ocean Beach, I’ve always believed that urban planning should be a process in which the citizens and residents of a community have a significant and substantial role to play.

This concept was shared by an entire generation of grassroots activists here in OB during the first half of the Seventies.

In this continuous series about the history of urban planning in Ocean Beach, I’m attempting to outline the historical record so newer generations of OBceans can appreciate how OB came to be what it is today.

by Lane Tobias

In previous articles about food stamps, I touched upon some of the barriers to food stamps eligibility that inevitably makes San Diego one of the hardest places in the U.S. to receive food stamps – even if you fall within the income and eligibility guidelines.

While most of those barriers continue to present problems to applicants, there are local initiatives that have helped pass important legislation to start eliminating them.

Recently, we have raised the issue of gentrification here in Ocean Beach, the controversial process of urban renewal. Acknowledging that it has been on-going here in OB since at least the early 1970s, it is important to understand it and to appreciate it when it rears its head.

Many neighborhoods in major cities across the country have experienced gentrification, where older housing is torn down to make way for newer, spiffier, and more expensive homes, condos, and apartments. The process often displaces the poorer – and in many cases – ethnic minorities – from neighborhoods that have historically been theirs.

OCEAN BEACH, CA. Two recent polls – one by this blog – and one that is still on-going by the Peninsula Beacon, show that most – or at least the respondents – want to keep the annual July 4th Marshmallow War around. The Ocean Beach public event has been the subject of debate recently after the mess that was left behind.

Our blog ran a poll for a week and received 80 respondents. Clearly most – 56 respondents, 71%, wanted the event to continue, although …

Christopher Bowd, the OBcean knocked unconscious around 11pm on July 4th and who has been unconscious or in an induced coma ever since, has awoken. This is great news!

We received emails from close friends who spent time with him Tuesday. The first email (dated July 22nd, 8:30 am) reported:

Hi, I visited Chris last night at around 8:30 with his mother and he seems to be making progress. …