OB Rag

By Jackie Bryant / San Diego Magazine / January 13, 2025

Cannabis culture in San Diego is finally getting its Amsterdam moment. Sessions by the Bay, opening next month in National City, is making history as San Diego County’s first legal cannabis lounge. Yes, you can smoke there, and yes, it’s highly encouraged—but don’t mistake this for a smoke-filled dive. This is a lush, high-concept escape where cannabis meets cocktails (sans alcohol), all-day brunch, and immersive art installations that make you wonder why you ever settled for Netflix.

The brainchild of San Diego natives and married couple Alex and Pearl Ayon and co-owned by the Sycuan tribe, Sessions took nearly four years to bring to life. The 16,000-square-foot venue is spread across three stories, starting with an Apple Store-esque dispensary on the ground floor, a sprawling 5,000-square-foot lounge on the second floor, and—eventually—a rooftop bar with sweeping bay views.

While Sessions hopes to host guests someday and serve alcohol on the rooftop, cannabis consumption will remain a second-floor privilege, and the rooftop plans are, at present, just a heady dream until the lounge is up, running, and smoothly sailing.

Who Will Labor and Business Choose? Candidates Include IB Mayor Paloma Aguirre, CV City Councilmember Carolina Chavez, CV Mayor John McCann and S D City Councilmember Vivian Moreno

By Michael Smolens / San Diego U-T / January 12, 2025

The race to replace Nora Vargas on the county Board of Supervisors is shaping up at warp speed.

But while some familiar dynamics are emerging, much remains unsettled.

For one thing, the remaining four supervisors have not yet called a special election to fill the vacancy in South Bay’s District 1, though that is expected soon. The board has the option to appoint a replacement but virtually no one thinks that will happen, given the even partisan split on the board.

Once again, the county faces an election where the partisan control of the board is at stake.

by Ernie McCray

The raging fire
in Pacific Palisades
darkens my soul
as it’s part of me,
the home of Nancy
my very dearly departed soulmate,
the mother of three of my six children.

I know that she,
if alive,
would be destroyed inside,
viewing an inferno, miles wide,
leaving her old neighborhood
burning away
in its wake.

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.