OB Rag

Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents: Coastal Scrub to Garden Fair, by Nancy Carol Carter, Thursday February 16 at 7:00 pm at Water’s Edge Faith Community – 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.  

After many years of debate and controversy, a formal plan for the landscaping and planting of San Diego’s City Park was adopted in 1902. Much of the original plan was shelved when preparations for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition began in earnest.

When the Olmstead Brothers Landscape firm bowed out of the Exposition team, opportunity fell to two “accidental landscapers.”  Balboa Park historian Nancy Carol Carter will describe how this precarious predicament resulted in the richly planted and beautifully maintained grounds

The OB Rag International Desk reports on little-known news. Here’s the latest:

Despite China’s spy balloon and deteriorating relations between governments, consumers in America and manufacturers in China broke trade records in 2022.

Fortune magazine reports: Trade between the US and China is on track to break records, a signal of resilient links between the world’s top economies amid the heated national security rhetoric in Washington and fears of “decoupling.”

The OB Rag National News Desk reports on news often over-looked. Here’s the latest:

A Biden administration task force designed to reunite children separated from their families during President Trump’s presidency has reconnected nearly 700 children with their families, officials said Thursday. President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families that were split up under the Trump administration’s

By Sarah Gleason / LomaBeat.com / Feb.8, 2023

An uptick in reported catcalling incidents at Point Loma Nazarene University has led the Assistant Director of the Department of Public Safety (DPS), Kaz Trypuc, to look into the events for patterns and perpetrators. However, Trypuc is unable to say if the increase is due to either a rise in incidents or reporting of incidents.

Next week, San Diego and Imperial County artists and creative practitioners can apply for part of the $4.75 million Far South Border North Creative Corps grants. The application portal will open on Feb. 15, 2023. This is an exciting opportunity, the City’s Communication Department is saying. Here’s more:

The Far South Border North initiative will be implemented in partnership with the San Diego Foundation, San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition and the Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties. The partnership combines government, foundation and community collaboration, providing financial support to artists and cultural practitioners to:

By Geoff Page

The meeting was held in the EF Language School as advertised. The first floor of the building is a very large open area, much of which is dedicated to a cafeteria, and the meeting area appeared to be a sectioned off part of it. It was separated from the eating area by some cloth partitions on stands. The partitions were mainly delineators and did not form a solid wall. A lot of noise filtered through from the many young diners.

There were 50 to 75 people in attendance. It is difficult to judge how many attended from the public as opposed to the various groups of professionals there to show the project. The room was set up in five stations where people could talk about what that particular station was set up to show.

By Katie Morris / LomaBeat.com / Feb. 8, 2023

In Jan. 2023, Sciences Po, one of France’s top universities, sent an email addressed to all students and faculty announcing the ban on the use of ChatGPT and all other Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tools.

Using machine learning to generate human-sounding responses, ChatGPT interacts with users conversationally and will provide a detailed response when given instructions via a prompt. It can write code and essays, solve math problems and has passed exams from U.S. law and business schools.

Anyone interested in running for a position on the Ocean Beach Planning Board has one week to submit their application.

The annual Planning Board election will take place on March 1st at the OB Rec Center with online voting opening up on February 22nd. Eight seats are up for election.

To be on the ballot you must have your application in by the 15th of February. Write ins will be accepted up until the day of the election, but you will still need to have filled out application.

On Monday, Feb. 6, the San Diego City Council felt the public’s pushback on skyrocketing bills and record levels of natural gas prices being charged by SDG&E.

Half a dozen different organizations held a press conference outside City Hall and called on the Council to hold public hearings on the January rate hike SDG&E customers saw on their bill.

The groups say the City Council should conduct hearings because the city of San Diego in 2021 signed a 20-year franchise agreement with SDG&E that retains the utility as the exclusive provider of electric and gas services within the city limits.

On Monday, Feb. 6, the City of San Diego announced that Midway Rising, the team pushed by Mayor Gloria and selected by the City Council to redevelop the Sports Arena site, will host its first quarterly public meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 8.

The meeting will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and held at the EF International Language Campuses located at 3455 Kenyon St., San Diego, CA, 92110.

Apparently, for several years, the City of San Diego didn’t need no stinkin’ trailers. The City sat on 20 trailers provided by the State for short- and medium-term housing for people experiencing homelessness. For three years – and is just now readying 13 for a Rose Canyon site along Morena Boulevard that will serve households sometime later this year.

Some background: during the height of the pandemic, the California Department of Social Services created a critical program, Project Roomkey,that sought to provide housing to unhoused people outside the network of group shelters where infections were rampant. Project Roomkey allowed state officials to offer cities and counties more than 1,500 trailers that could serve as short- and medium-term housing for people