OB Rag

By Richard Schulte / Cool San Diego Sights

At the corner of Shafter Street and Avenida de Portugal, in San Diego’s historic Little Portugal neighborhood, you’ll find this delightful street art. Four electrical boxes were painted last year by students attending Warren-Walker Middle School.

It’s with sadness that we report that Keith Finley, 60, passed away peacefully on June 18, 2023.

Keith is remembered as a very prominent, if not soft-spoken, figure in Ocean Beach back in the late 80s and early 90s. In 1987, he began publishing The Beacon — a real community newspaper for OB and Point Loma — and later sold it to a small-newspaper publishing group that still prints it under the basic same name.

Keith also owned Ocean Beach Books, a secondhand bookstore

Today, Monday, July 10 there is an OB Pier Jump fundraiser — “Jumping to Save Lives” — to support the San Diego Junior Lifeguards — the largest fundraiser of the year for the sponsor, Prevent Drowning Foundation of San Diego.

Jump times are

• 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and
• 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
• The event is for San Diego Junior Lifeguards, parents, and the general public.

Proceeds from this event benefit the Prevent Drowning Foundation of San Diego’s efforts to provide SDJG scholarships and free swimming lessons for underserved youth in San Diego. #obpierjump

by Ernie McCray

Sometimes when
I need to momentarily free
myself from humanity
and all its insanity,
I’ll listen to my man, Ahmad Jamal,
tickle the ivories
as only he can,
captivated
with the way|
he can finger the keys
in a tinkling fashion

OB Tenants Claim they were given illegal rent hikes and eviction notices from slumlord Michael Mills

By Roxana Popescu and Lori Weisberg / San Diego Union-Tribune / July 6, 2023

An Ocean Beach landlord who was able to get more than 100 short-term rental licenses via proxy hosts is now the subject of a lawsuit by two of his tenants.

The tenants are accusing their landlord, Michael Mills, of breaking state housing law and engaging in unfair business practices. Chief among the accusations is that Mills failed to provide a reason for the evictions, a clear violation of the law.

By Valerie Stahl / Tablet / July 4, 2023

The Hotel del Coronado’s Victorian red turrets peak above the sand dunes off the coast of San Diego. Developed by two industrialists in 1888 at the height of the Gilded Age, the “Hotel Del” serves as an iconic California backdrop.

Just 10 miles north, in another oceanside neighborhood called Pacific Beach, sits Bay Pointe Apartments, a 1960s era garden style apartment complex with over 500 units spread across multiple sand-colored buildings.

What do the two complexes have in common? They’re both owned by Blackstone,

By Jillian Wilson / HuffPost & Yahoo / June 29, 2023

The ocean can be anti-inflammatory and exfoliating, experts say. Healing, detoxifying and cleansing are all words you’ve probably heard to describe the ocean.

Now, many people tout the benefits of ocean water when it comes to skin and health issues —

By Thomas Arnold / San Diego Reader / June 28, 2023

Antique stores and malls are fast becoming antiques themselves.

In April 2018, the huge 18,000-square-foot Ocean Beach Antique Mall, located on Newport Avenue just west of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, closed down for good, to be replaced by a Target Express.

More than 100 vendors were displaced. A petition to boycott the incoming Target drew some 1500 signatures; the Ocean Beach Town Council approved a resolution blasting the Target store’s opening

During Surfrider and its partner groups’ “Morning After” beach clean-ups on July 5, the trash collected at the OB Pier site was less than last year’s. This year, 129 pounds were collected compared to last year’s 143 pounds (not a lot, but some at least).

However, it was a different story at Dog Beach. Sponsored by San Diego River Park Foundation, volunteers collected 1,925 pounds compared with the 735 pounds gathered in 2022, over 2 and a half times greater this year.

Two homes in Point Loma have just been designated as San Diego historic resources at the June meeting of the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board.. One on Evergreen Street and another on Sterne Street.

2275 Evergreen Street

2275 Evergreen Street in Point Loma is the T. Claude Ryan House #2, home of the president of Ryan Aeronautical,

A leading member of the group, Neighbors for a Better San Diego, will be speaking tonight, Wed., July 5 on Senate Bill 10, at The Thursday Club at 1224 Santa Barbara Street in Point Loma.

The event is at 6 pm.

Neighbors for a Better San Diego has been leading the fight against Senate Bill 10 (SB10) and sponsored a string of neighborhood rallies in early May against the measure.

However, they have not been active in OB or Point Loma,

At their June meeting, the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board designated the Ocean Beach Pier as an historic resource.

Here is the description in the July-August newsletter of Save Our Heritage Organization:

Ocean Beach Pier, western terminus of Niagara Street, Ocean Beach, was the longest concrete pier on the West Coast when it was completed in 1966, after years of planning, fundraising, and construction.