OB Rag

Here’s a bunch of seemingly unrelated articles that have been sitting in my “in-basket” for a while — some for months. Yet, they deserve attention –so here they are:

It was supposed to be a California utopia. It turned into a ghost town.

By Tessa McLean, California Editor – SFGate / June 17, 2024

Just off the Pearblossom Highway, 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, six crumbling stone columns rise from patches of dusty brown weeds. Two of the wider set pillars contain capacious brick fireplaces, the blocks deteriorating inside. The foundation of a once-grand building stretches out into the flat plain, carpeted with shards of glass and rusty beer cans. At its northern end, a short staircase leads to nowhere.

From 1914 to 1918, an actual building stood here — a bustling gathering place for California’s most important utopian commune-turned-doomed desert experiment. When wandering the site today, close your eyes and you might be able to imagine happy residents dancing or talking politics on a cool California desert evening, the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.

The remains of a grand hotel and social hall are the only recognizable infrastructure left of the failed town, which is visible even from the highway — if you don’t blink. The foundations of other nearby buildings sink into the ground, faded blue and purple graffiti covering the splintering stone, the lettering disappearing into low concrete walls. From the middle of the ruins, trailers and warehouse structures under the power lines jolt you back to the modern day from any dreams of early 1900s life.

Here is a screen recording of a 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired December 22, 2025 but was pulled last minute for unclear reasons. Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway.

It was pulled due to corporate censorship.

Here is an analysis by Salon – Reader Supported News

CBS News segment yanked off the air at the last minute by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was apparently showcased in Canada, with its content quickly spreading online.

The “60 Minutes” story, “Inside CECOT,” featured testimonies from Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration from the U.S. to CECOT, a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. Weiss canned the segment on Sunday, just three hours before it was set to air, saying it “wasn’t ready” to be presented.

Edited From JP Theberge

Following the October 2025 approval of the Harmony Grove Village South (HGVS) project by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, a number of groups filed a lawsuit challenging the County’s decision, citing serious wildfire safety risks and violations of state and local law. These groups include the Elfin Forest / Harmony Grove Town Council and the Endangered Habitats League.

The approved project would allow more than 450 homes to be built in a designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, relying on a single dead-end road as the only evacuation route. That road far exceeds current fire safety limits, and the project was approved without secondary access that is required to protect residents and first responders during a wildfire.

The Town Council represents residents of the largely rural, fire-prone Harmony Grove and Elfin Forest communities near Escondido. Endangered Habitats League is a statewide environmental organization that opposes unsafe, fire-prone sprawl development.

Wild weather caused a tree to fall on a house in Ocean Beach. No one was injured, but the person inside had to exit through a skylight due to the doors being jammed by the fallen tree. The house at 4720 Narragansett was red tagged until the tree is removed. Bad luck on a Christmas Eve.

Check out Ed Baier’s video.

by Ernie McCray

2025.
A year in which I often
watched, in disbelief and grief,
as a president who, between
cheating at golf
and decorating
the White House with gawdy appearing gold leaf,
constantly and relentlessly
stood before a mic
spewing
disgraceful overly racialized
cockeyed jive
in braggadocious tones
about the crackdowns,
featuring ridding the country of dark-skinned immigrants,
he had going on
on our borders
and in our cities and towns,

By Joni Halpern

It is often said by holiday revelers that they are exhausted by the holiday season. Too much pressure to meet expectations. At the close of the season, those who participate in the festivities are ready to seek rest and distance from others. Those who spend the holidays alone await the return of the everyday hum of relationships among colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances who might have been away spending time with loved ones.

In either case, people seem spent emotionally and financially by the holidays. They are relieved when the Holiday Spirit retreats into its lair like the octopus off the island of Maui who I heard escaped the commotion and expense of energy from too many visitors by sliding into a Coke bottle on the ocean bottom, reaching out one last tentacle to slap sand over the bottle and align small rocks to cover the opening. Like that octopus, the Holiday Spirit can almost be heard breathing a watery sigh of relief as it settles back for another nine months until the merchandising gods dig it up and force it to overtaxed prominence.

In America, it is at least substantially true that the Holiday Spirit involves a full-court press to convince us that those to whom we desire to show love or friendship, respect or neighborliness, connection or concern can only become aware of this message by conveyance of some material object, preferably purchased, sometimes homemade, and only rarely labeled “fruitcake.”

The Rag has an update on the Corey Bruins’ criminal fraud case stemming from allegations against him that he stole thousands of dollars of funds from the then-OB Town Council.

A Rag reporter attended his readiness conference just recently. During that brief conference, the parties agreed that the preliminary hearing scheduled for January 26th in the New Year will go as scheduled — unless a plea is reached before then.

Preliminary hearings — or “prelims” — are part of the process in which any felony is charged. It gives the prosecution a chance to place sufficient evidence before a judge in order for the case to proceed. It also causes much of the evidence to be brought out into the light of day, before the public as it were.

By Brian White / CBS8 / December 19, 2025

Imagine driving across a busy bridge at night with little to no lighting. That’s the concern one CBS 8 viewer is raising after noticing all the streetlights out on the Sunset Cliffs Boulevard bridge near Ocean Beach.

Lifelong San Diegan Carole Otterstad says she first noticed the problem months ago while driving a route she travels often between Point Loma and Pacific Beach.

“I noticed that it was darker, then all of a sudden realized, ‘Gosh, the lights are not on on the bridge,’ and so then I started paying closer attention to it,” Otterstad said.

Otterstad says she’s filed several “Get It Done” reports with the City of San Diego since November. She says all of the streetlights on the Sunset Cliffs Boulevard bridge over the San Diego River are out. In addition, many lights along the approach from Ingraham Street are not working, and several lighted street signs in the area are dark as well.
She believes the lack of lighting creates a dangerous situation, especially at night.

by Lawrence A. Herzog / Beach & Bay Press / Dec. 21, 2025

San Diego (and southern California) face a watershed moment in our quest to build more affordable housing near the sea. We are in, let us call it, a “zeitgeist design moment,” when intersecting concerns — environmental protection of our precious coastal zone, community character in low- to medium-density beach towns, social justice, and the right of all citizens to housing — collide.

This has created a maelstrom of decision choices that challenge elected officials, planners and designers. A buzzword that continues to pop up in these debates is “density.” How much is acceptable and where?

But, glaringly absent in these conversations about affordable housing, density and land use, is the question of “place.” We cannot look at a new building proposed for a given location merely in terms of its height, floor-area ratio, or the number of affordable units, or even what it looks like from the outside.

We must also consider the larger context, the types of nearby commercial establishments, the scale of existing buildings and homes, and their relation to the street, how people move around, and the mix of land uses, neighborhood institutions, cultural landmarks, and local ecological features — in short, the overall quality of the “place” where a building sits.

By Anonymous 

‘Twas the night before Christmas in San Diego town,
And all through the streets, potholes still could be found.
The meters were standing with QR codes near,
In hopes that a plate number soon would appear.

The trash cans were placed by the curb with great care,
Though fees now were charged just for leaving them there.
The residents nestled all snug in their beds,
While nightmares of parking fees danced in their heads.

By Kate Callen

Paid parking in Balboa Park is scheduled to begin Monday, January 5. If you’re willing to pay standard hourly or daily rates, permit kiosks have been installed, and their operation will be familiar: punch in your license plate number, choose length of visit, and pay with a credit card.

But if you want to use the discounted permits that were promised to San Diego residents, you’ll have to trust that City Hall can roll out a new multi-step system of permit application and payment in just 10 business days – including two city holidays.

In the seasonal spirit of good will, we are going to believe that. For once, the Rag will have faith that Mayor Todd Gloria will fulfill a pledge to the people of San Diego. We’re just not sure how he can pull it off in such a short time.

The original plan was for paid parking to begin in October. But under fire from angry constituents, the City Council decided in mid-September to extend the start date to January 1.

On December 18, we asked the Mayor’s office if another postponement might be in the works. The answer was “No.”

by Dave Schwab / Times of San Diego / Dec. 19, 2025

The battle over the controversial 23-story Vela “Turquoise tower” project in North Pacific Beach could be headed to court.

The development at 970 Turquoise St., which includes both hotel rooms and residential units, with some reserved for low-income residents, has become a poster child for growing opposition to city policies meant to spur dense homebuilding.

But even city officials who have long been advocates for the city’s housing push have sided with local opponents who say the project is out of scale with the neighborhood.

Los Angeles-based developer Kalonymus and its attorneys are now arguing the project should be considered “automatically approved” because the city missed a state deadline meant to expedite housing approvals. Their argument would require the city to issue building permits immediately.

City planners acknowledge that the project has not been approved yet— but they say Kalonymus itself has played a big role in the project’s delay.