OB Rag

By Kate Callen

Density advocates kicked off the new year by lamenting what a January 10 Union-Tribune editorial headline called “the latest housing initiative to flop.”

The commentary followed a December 29 U-T report that the Trolley’s Blue Line corridor along Linda Vista and Clairemont hasn’t seen a glut of high-rise development.

Editors pouted, “Why doesn’t City Hall … ask builders exactly how the government can best expedite new housing?” and added, “How many more years of housing failure must San Diegans endure?”

Come again? Housing failure? Not enough government incentives for builders?

For four years, City Hall’s “Complete Communities” venture has opened the floodgates to rampant density. Throughout the city, the initiative has spurred construction of mid-rise housing towers with few affordable units and scarce on-site parking.

The owner of a 3-level home designed by renowned San Diego architect, Robert Quigley, has placed the property on the market. It’s called “the OB del House” and the building sits off an alley in the 4600 block of Del Monte Avenue in Ocean Beach.

It has 3-bedrooms, 2 1/4-baths in 2,113 sq. ft. on a 7,000 square foot lot. The seller / realtor offers the building in glowing terms, naturally:

By Alex Henderson / AlterNet / January 13, 2025

After winning the 2024 election, Donald Trump doubled down on his promise to declare a national emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act and use the U.S. military for mass deportations. And the president-elect has also said he would use the military to quell possible protests if they turn violent.

But many of the president-elect’s critics think that using the Insurrection Act in the ways that Trump has proposed is a very bad idea, including some veterans.

Hirsh reports, “One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear ‘rules of engagement’ for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of many in the military community.”

Trump has said he wants to use active duty U.S. troops to quell protests and round up immigrants. Will the military comply?

By Michael Hirsh / POLITICO Reader Supported News / January 13, 2025

The last time an American president deployed the U.S. military domestically under the Insurrection Act — during the deadly Los Angeles riots in 1992 — Douglas Ollivant was there. Ollivant, then a young Army first lieutenant, says things went fairly smoothly because it was somebody else — the cops — doing the head-cracking to restore order, not his 7th Infantry Division. He and his troops didn’t have to detain or shoot at anyone.

“There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines,” said Ollivant, who was ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. “They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police.”

By the end of six days of rioting, 63 people were dead and 2,383 injured — though reportedly none at the hands of the military.

By Jake Howard / Surfer / January 11, 2025

One of the greatest surf lives ever lived, the legendary Mike Hynson has gracefully kicked out at the age of 82. Born in Crecent City, California, on June 28, 1942, Hynson will forever be tied to the breakout success of “The Endless Summer,” but the hit surf film hardly defined the man. A local hero, a hot-dog performer, a shaping genius, a cosmic adventurer, Hynson altered the sport and culture of surfing in an untold number of ways over his colorful time on this spinning blue orb.

The son of a Navy man, Hynson grew up ping-ponging between Hawaii and California before his family finally settled in Pacific Beach in the mid 1950s. And that’s when and where his life as a surfer began. Indoctrinated into the rebellious surf scene of San Diego in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, his early work with Gordon & Smith and the Red Fin design carved out a name for him as a top-flight board builder, while his antics with the Windansea Surf Club became the stuff of legend. Landing back in Hawaii in 1961, he was among the first class of surfers to begin to crack the code at Pipeline.

On Sunday, January 12th, Point Loma was home to a parade of dozens of vintage cars that drove across the Peninsula to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the legendary 1915 Point Loma Road Race. And Rag staff were on hand near Catalina and Hill to observe the event and these are their photos.

The vintage cars drove from the San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park to Point Loma, where they drove two laps of the original race route — which took them on Rosecrans, Lytton, Chatsworth, Catalina, Talbot, and Canon Streets.

Sponsored by the San Diego regions of the Horseless Carriage Club of America, they simply wanted to share their vintage autos with the public.

Designation Reports: Preserving San Diego’s History

SOHO / January-February 2025

Historic designation reports are often seen as technical documents, essential for evaluating a site’s architectural integrity and historical significance. But their value extends far beyond these initial purposes. For anyone with a passion for understanding San Diego’s past, these reports are repositories of social and cultural history, quite often preserving stories and details unavailable anywhere else. Many of these reports are accessible through the California Historical Resources Inventory Database (CHRID), an invaluable tool for exploring and studying the state’s rich heritage.

A well-prepared historic designation report provides a deep dive into a site’s historical context, shedding light on the lives of those who lived or worked there and the broader social forces at play. These documents often include oral histories, photographs, maps, and records that illuminate forgotten narratives—information that might otherwise remain buried in archives or lost altogether.

Editordude: The following post is close to my heart, for I once was an inmate and as one fought fires for San Diego County back in the early Seventies.(Please see the original for any links.)

By Doug Melville / Forbes / January 9, 2025

As the shock of the Los Angeles fires and their effect on so many communities, businesses and families is still being digested, lots of attention is being turned to those who are on the front lines fighting the flames.

Many people might not be aware that one particular group has long been depended on to battle wildfires: inmates.

While the 13th Amendment ended slavery in the United States, a loophole allows people convicted of crimes to be forced to work for public or private enterprises. In this case, those tasked with firefighting volunteer for those positions and must meet certain criteria. They are not assigned without their consent.

Their pay scale was doubled in 2023, and depending on the skill level and the task assigned, they either receive $0.16 to $0.74 an hour or a maximum day rate of $5.80 to $10.24.

Whale Watch and Intertidal Life Festival

On January 11 & 12, 2025, visit Cabrillo National Monument for Whale Watch Weekend!

Celebrate the return of the Pacific gray whales as they pass Point Loma along part of their annual, round-trip migration from Alaska to Baja California. We are also celebrating the 75-year anniversary of the first public whale watching event, held right here at Cabrillo National Monument.

Schedule of Events

Before the community of  Point Loma says adios to that patch of dirt along Famosa and near Nimitz — that’s been called various names over the years, like the “Famosa Pump Track” and more recently “Famosa Canyon” — there has to be some kind of reckoning with its history.

Here is an edited version of  Katie Mae B’s “Some History of the Dirt & Kids at the Famosa Pump Track – With Plenty of Questions Remaining,” posted on the Rag March 19, 2019.

At the Famosa Open Space pump track, what makes it a perfect place is “the dirt,” — The unique mix of dirt, sand and organic materials,” locals say. Two of these locals have been active in Famosa Open Space pump track at different points over a few decades and with the same core group.  Now [in 2019] they are a part of the larger group working together to save the whole space.

From Mexico News Daily / January 8, 2025

A day after Donald Trump announced his intention to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, President Claudia Sheinbaum proposed calling the United States — or at least the country’s southwest — “Mexican America.”

“Why don’t we call [the United States] Mexican America, it sounds nice, right?” Sheinbaum said at her Wednesday morning press conference. “It does, doesn’t it?” the president added with a smile.

She noted that the Constitution of Apatzingán, which was created during the Mexican War of Independence, referred to territory now known as the United States as Mexican America.

At the time of the document’s creation in 1814, large parts of what is now the southwestern United States were still under Spanish control. Mexico, when it became an independent country in 1821, was much larger than it is today, as its territory included all or part of several modern-day U.S. states.