OB Rag

Poem and Photos by Kathy Blavatt

Days’ glow shortens as Autumns sunsets grow more spectacular as fiery skies reflect on the mirrored waters.

Silhouetted palms reach over the horizon as the breeze sways the lanky trunk bodies in dance to the fronds’ clap.

The sky subsides into pastels, then darkness, as tides change the glassy waters into a rumbling of waves.

By Geoff Page

A person attending a Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning Group’s regular monthly meeting for the first time might have found a number of things about the November 16 meeting to be puzzling. The meeting was really illustrative of this “community planning group.”

Taking Roll

The puzzling would have begun with taking roll. Chair Dike Anyiwo took roll counting six group members present. Anyiwo determined that was a quorum.

A week before Thanksgiving, parents were told that Honey Bear Daycare and Child Care Center would be closing for good the day before T-day. The day care center at 4426 Mentone Street has been in existence for 55 years, so it was quite a shock to parents — and staff.

Teachers were given a week’s notice to find a new job — which was very abrupt but even worse because it was during the holidays.

A locally-owned coffee house is moving into the former US Bank at 4827 Newport Avenue in OB. Spill the Beans is apparently on a binge; it currently has two locations in Gaslamp and Seaport Village, and is set to open their Ocean Beach and Mission Valley locations next year.

Their website doesn’t give out too many details, but offers this:

By Ernie McCray

I’ve always taken
Thanksgiving Day
literally
as a time to be thankful,
to be grateful
for just being,
having nothing to do
with colonizing Pilgrims
breaking bread with Indians
or any such thing
and as I look back at my memories
of Thanksgiving
with my family

OB’s ranting “Whistler” has been at it again. This time, he traveled to Maricopa County in Arizona and yelled “election fraud” at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors last week, despite evidence that both Maricopa County and statewide elections were fair and free from fraud.

Matt Baker, if you recalled, received national notoriety back in August 2021 when he addressed the San Diego County Board of Supervisors by whistling and yelling at them about COVID mandates.

From OBTC:

The OB Holiday Parade will be on Newport Ave between Sunset Cliffs and Abbott Saturday, December 3 • 5:05 PM.

Each year on the first Saturday in December we gather as a neighborhood to celebrate community, honor history, and mark the beginning of the holiday season in Ocean Beach. The Ocean Beach Town Council is proud to continue this long standing tradition with this year’s 43rd OB Holiday Parade with the theme Jingle All The Waves.

The small group of assailants of an OB man ten days ago all caught on surveillance video have still not been caught by police.

On Friday, Nov. 18, around 9:30 pm, Woody Boethel was jumped by about five people — all assumed to be houseless — out in front of Hodad’s. The assault was captured by a Hodads videocam and many viewers have since watched the brutal beating.

Many were saddened when they heard that Mike Davis had passed back in late October. Davis was an activist and historian with a San Diego connection and, as Thomas Reifer in a thoughtful tribute in the Union-Tribune wrote, “embodied a rare combination of brilliance, storytelling and committed scholar activism.”

He is probably most famous for publishing the “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles,”in 1990, which since has become a “bible” at architectural schools. Then came his “Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster.” And many more.

Restaurant Review

Himalayan Palace Restaurant
3760 Sports Arena Blvd. #5
The Midway District off San Diego, CA 92110
619-510-4966

By Judi Curry

A funny thing happened on our way to eat at an Indian restaurant. My daughter Stephanie and I decided to go to our favorite Indian restaurant on Midway and easily found a parking space right in front. We walked into the restaurant and saw a group of people standing in line but no movement.  Like sheep, we also got in line. But they weren’t seating anyone.

Since we were both craving Indian food, I remembered that there was an Indian restaurant just behind the Red Lobster on Sports Arena and we decided to go there instead — the Himalayan Palace. 

Three weeks ago, the Chula Vista City Council did something very cool and very historic. On November 2, they unanimously approved the renaming of Discovery Park in the Rancho del Rey Community to Kumeyaay Park of Chula Vista. They said the designation recognizes the Kumeyaay people, who are native to the region with 13 reservations.

A Christopher Columbus statue stood in the park for 30 years but was removed and placed in storage two years ago after repeatedly being targeted by somebody who obviously wasn’t down with the forefather of the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples being displayed in the park.

Editordude: The following by Paul Grimes is taken from a couple of comments he made to Geoff Page’s post that spoke of bicycling in the Peninsula.

By Paul Grimes

I could see k-rails going onto a street like Nimitz due to speed and few cross streets to contend with. The city needs to qualify such installations by traffic volume, speed, available width, curb cuts, intersections, and bike usage

The last one doesn’t seem to be on the radar – the other day I walked from Voltaire to Rosecrans via Wabaska and Nimitz. In that roughly 30-minute hike I saw 1 bike in the expensively provided protected bike lane on what bikers call a major bike thoroughfare to move across San Diego.

There appears to be no real plan to build a network and no real standard for which type of bike facility the city installs.