OB Rag

by Dorian Hargrove / Times of San Diego / May 6, 2026

The saga over a proposal to build a 136-unit accessory dwelling unit project in Pacific Beach continues.

Pacific Beach residents discovered public notices were placed near the parcels on Pacifica Drive and Chalcedony, indicating the property, referred to as Chalcifica, is in default and heads to auction on May 28 if developer SDRE does not catch up on the amount owed.

Opponents of the project should not get their hopes up.

The president of the development company that now owns the Chalcifica says the notices are part of a dispute with the lender.

“The foreclosure is without merit,” said Brian Doyle, president of Infill Innovation. Doyle says his company acquired ADU-developer SDRE in April 2026.

The City of San Diego is holding an informational meeting on Tuesday, May 12th about a proposed seawall along Sunset Cliffs. It will be held at the Point Loma Library from 5 to 7 p.m.

Please see the following City documents.

By Judge Runston “Tony” Maino

There are 61 people running for Governor. This includes one of the most interesting candidates, one Eric Swalwell,  who has decided to not run due to unfounded allegations made against him, namely his Peter Problem.

The first thing I noticed was the interesting names of some of the candidates: Living for God and Country Demott and Barrack D. Obama Shaw. These are real names and not AKAs.

More interesting than the names are the candidates’ statements as to why they wish to be Governor and what vision they have for California. Clean water, affordable housing, leadership, affordable health care and on and on with the usual buzz words.

I found it interesting that many of the candidates are going to abolish ICE, forgetting, or maybe not knowing, that ICE is a federal function and the California governor, legislature, and judiciary cannot abolish ICE.

But I digress. If you will spare me a few moments I will go over some of the more colorful statements from some of the candidates.

Are you confused as I am about whether we’re still at war with Iran?

For me to even ask the question displays a lot about this particular moment. Are we at war still, after over 2 months of war? Who knows? I wish somebody would please tell us, to get us out of this confusion.

We have good reasons for our confusion. The Trump White House, Trump himself, and his cabinet secretaries all are saying different things. We aren’t at war, we are at war, it’s an “excursion,” a “blip”, it’s an operation, not war.

Yet, for good times, try this.

Supposedly, the White House and Iran are looking at an agreement spelled out in a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations. On this news, the DOW shot up.

Then also Trump put Project Freedom on pause last night,

By Steve Anderson / Beach & Bay Press – Times of San Diego / April 30, 2026

Recently, Mayor Todd Gloria proposed major cuts to San Diego’s arts and culture funding. As the city faces an $118 million deficit, the proposed arts cuts alone would save $11.8 million. Like much of Gloria’s decisions as mayor, this was met with backlash, especially among the local arts community.

On top of that, it seems like the cuts will affect other beloved aspects of our community — street fairs and parades are also under threat of losing major funding. Within Point Loma and OB that would be annual events, like the OB Street Fair and Chili Cook Off.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the OB Street Fair will cease to exist, but it might raise attendance fees and the organizations that support the events may experience layoffs.

by Linda Caballero Sotelo / Voice of San Diego / May 5, 2026

Over a recent phone conversation, a friend conveyed her sense of disillusionment with how cities are being managed. The expression “tone-deaf” came up, and that warnings are all around us. Across the United States, cities are making budget decisions that reveal far more than their fiscal priorities. They reveal their values, their imagination, and their sense of responsibility to future generations.

In San Diego, the mayor’s proposed budget would virtually eliminate nearly the entire $12 million arts and culture budget, effectively dismantling the cultural ecosystem of educational organizations filling the gaps for student art education-based programming, artist support to produce works that attracts visitors and creates a livable and forward city to enjoy, visit and invest in. An ecosystem that extends across borders and has taken decades to build.

This is not simply a budget cut. It is a cultural alarm, a canary in the coal mine warning us about the direction of our civic life.

This Thursday, May 7th, the City Council is holding a “Special Meeting” to vote on an ordinance implementing Senate Bill 79, the new state law that allows 5+ story apartments within one-half mile of trolley stops and certain major bus routes.

And a Call to Action has been announced for residents to help limit the impact of SB 79 by attending or by using the city’s online comment system.
It’s Agenda Item 600.

Here’s more on the situation from Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD):

To use the protections allowed under the law, San Diego must adopt an implementing ordinance before SB 79 takes effect on July 1.

 While Neighbors For A Better San Diego (NFABSD) opposed the bill in Sacramento, the Planning Department’s phased approach is the best available path under a bad law and deserves support. It limits immediate exposure in high-fire-hazard zones, low-resource areas, historic sites, and sea-level-rise areas, and it applies the state’s optional one-mile walking-distance cap to reduce the most unreasonable overreach.

/>bold /italicBased on a polling of our writers, the OB Rag now endorses Mandy Havlik for District 2 of the San Diego City Council.

Mandy has long been active in the communities of Point Loma and Ocean Beach and has ingrained the wishes, dreams and complaints of the residents of this sector of District 2. For instance, she’s been the first vice-chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board for years, has been active in helping maintain Sunset Cliffs as a local treasure, active in the local Rotary and among the leadership of the local Democratic club.

The picture snapped in Hillcrest yesterday

By Kate Callen

Shortly before 12 noon on May 4, I nearly killed a bicyclist.

After I made a full stop at the 30th & Upas four-way stop sign, I stepped on the accelerator to start moving through the intersection. Within seconds, a speeding cyclist ran the stop sign meant for him and flew past the front of my car.

If I hadn’t slammed on the brakes, I would have crashed into him, and it’s doubtful he would have survived. News stories would have accurately reported that I hit him. Biking activists would have vilified me as a murderer.

This awful scenario happens all too frequently in neighborhoods across San Diego because too many cyclists think stop signs and stoplights are a nuisance.

They will literally bet their lives that they can frighten motorists into giving them the right-of-way that the law doesn’t grant them. If they lose the bet, motorists who obeyed the law can still face criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

Bicycling activists often talk about “bike safety.” For them, the term seems to mean that drivers should always be deferential to the needs of cyclists.

by Debbie L. Sklar / Times of San Diego / May 4, 2026

Mission Bay didn’t start as a destination. It started as water that refused to sit still.

Just inland from the oceanfront homes and boardwalk of Mission Beach, the waters of the bay stretch across what was once a wide, shifting tidal wetland. Before it became a center of recreation, the bay was part of a dynamic coastal system of marshes, mudflats and seasonal channels— land that helped shape the surrounding beach communities as they developed.

Early waters and wetlands
For centuries, the San Diego River spread across a wide tidal basin here, carving through a shifting wetland of mudflats, marsh channels, and seasonal flood zones. Long before development, this was part of a larger coastal ecosystem used by the Kumeyaay, whose presence in the region predates Spanish settlement by thousands of years.

By the mid-20th century, that landscape was already being redesigned.