OB Rag

Patrick Stewart, the head of the San Diego Library Foundation, a non-profit advocate for the City’s libraries, is calling upon residents to attend tonight’s City Council meeting to show elected officials that libraries are essential to our communities. They deserve to be funded in our City budget, not neglected.

Directions for Wednesday, May 8 Budget Review Committee meeting at the City Administration Building, 202 “C” Street, 12th floor Council Chambers

The City Administration Building is a one block walk from the Civic Center trolley stop off the Orange or Blue lines and is served by several MTS bus lines.

By Joey Safchik /7SanDiego /April 29, 2024

A city of San Diego cannabis social equity program has been in the works for years.

The program’s goal is to open doors for people and family members impacted by the criminalization of cannabis so that they can enter the now-legal industry. The city’s own study found people of color were disproportionately affected.

Megain McCall has a felony cannabis conviction for possession of a bag of cannabis-infused candy. McCall has spent half a decade advocating for the social equity program.

By Colleen O’Connor

Last night’s overflow crowd of concerned OB and Point Loma residents at the monthly meeting of the OB Planning Board demonstrates once again, the deafness of the Mayor, most of the Council and a slew of bureaucrats.

It was yet another serious event to stop the overdevelopment, the neighborhood destruction, the arrogance of Mayor Gloria

Before a packed community meeting room, the Ocean Beach Planning Board last night rejected a proposed development with 20 units on Point Loma Avenue. The vote was 7 to 1 – and immediately, applause broke out.

Board member Kevin Hastings made the successful motion to reject the project — an earlier motion to approve it failed for lack of a second — and Kevin based his motion on the loss of commercial space and for being out of compliance with the OB Community Plan.

By Geoff Page

A volleyball company’s use of OB’s sands to make money has residents who live nearby upset. This was all detailed in The Rag’s February 22 piece. It appeared that this problem was solved recently when the city denied Volo Sports, the subject of the previous Rag story, a permit to use “pop-up” volleyball nets.

The immediate issue, the apparent reason why the city denied the permit, was a safety concern brought forward by the lifeguards. The official word from the lifeguards is not forthcoming, but it is known the objection had to do with “pop-up” volleyball nets.

By Frank Gormlie

In my book, The May 1970 Rebellion – about the  height of the anti-Vietnam war movement, I discuss “outside agitators.” Here’s an excerpt:

From college administrators, mayors, local politicians and governors to the President of the United States, the real instigators of all the violence and turmoil were the outside agitators, the Weathermen, professional instigators and rioters.

For example, Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn blamed “outside agitators” and “professionals” for the disturbances at the University of Kentucky. At Ohio University Athens and at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, outside agitators were blamed for the violence.

The May Rebellion of 1970: It Hastened the early withdrawal from Cambodia and the End of the Vietnam War

By Frank Gormlie

The month of May 1970 was the very height of the anti-Vietnam war movement — and I just wrote an entire book about that fateful month, The May 1970 Rebellion. Here, then, is an excerpt from an earlier edit.

The May Rebellion changed America and changed American politics forever – both in the immediate sense and over the ensuing decades.

There’s a movement afoot to have the San Diego County Grand Jury investigate the city of San Diego’s planning process, and it just recently picked up support from the La Jolla Community Planning Association.

The idea for such an investigation started with a complaint from the Community Planners Committee, which meets monthly and is composed of the leaders of community planning groups across the city. (OB Planning Board head Andrea Schlageter chairs the CPC.)

CPC has asked the planning groups to “endorse a request for an investigation of the San Diego city Planning Department, Development Services Department and reporting structures that have led to improper project classifications, improper legislation of municipal code and non-compliant communications.”

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa / May 2, 2024

San Diego State University and the California State University Chancellor’s office now claim there are no public records related to a 2022 proposal from a private developer to build a new sports arena at no expense to taxpayers within the SDSU West campus in Mission Valley, although a term sheet was reviewed in mid-2022.

SDSU President Adela de la Torre, several University officials, and two private businessmen flew to Texas on a private jet in May 2022 to tour a similar sports arena built at the University of Texas at Austin’s campus

By Chris Lindahl / Patch San Diego / May 5, 2024

From automatic service charges to vague “living wage” fees, California restaurants have increasingly been tacking on extra costs to diners’ bills in recent years, much to customers’ chagrin. But starting later this year, that practice will become illegal — the menu price (plus tax) is all you’ll have to pay.

Signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October and set to take effect July 1, SB 478 will prohibit hidden fees, defined by state officials as fees in which a seller uses an artificially low advertised price to attract a customer, disclosing additional required fees in fine print or tacking on unavoidable charges later in the buying process.

By Jared Aarons / ABC10News / May 02, 2024

By Jared Aarons / ABC10 / May 02, 2024

A team of researchers from UC San Diego has come up with a unique solution to help with the world’s plastic problem.

They created a form of plastic that can basically recycle itself.

Dr. Adam Feist and Professor Jon Pokorski combined traditional polyurethane with a microbial spore to create plastic that can break down in compost or any other natural environment in around 5 months.

They published a paper this week in Nature Communications detailing their process and results.

“There are some studies that show, of the millions, trillions of microbes out there, some can eat the plastic itself,” says Feist. “So we were saying if we combine them together, what would happen? And how can that better facilitate that massive problem we have with polymers everywhere?”