OB Rag

By Shannon Handy / CBS8 / July 8-9, 2026 

Researchers reveal alarming statistics about gray whales, declaring a “catastrophic mortality event” along the West Coast as strandings escalate dramatically this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a staggering 145 gray whales have been found stranded dead on the West Coast, including regions in Mexico and Canada, marking a significant increase that could make 2026 one of the deadliest years on record for these marine mammals.

The current stranding rate starkly contrasts with the previous two decades, where the average number of stranding per year was around 43 from 2006 to 2023. In 2025, the number surged to 179, raising further concerns among scientists and conservationists.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society “Ye Old Tale of King Snedley’s Beer and Holland Embassy on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard”

Mark your calendar for… Thursday, July16, 2026, at 7 PM.

By Quinta Jurecic / The Atlantic / July 6, 2026

Nearly six months have passed since federal officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. No one has been arrested, the Trump administration has provided no reason to believe that any serious investigation is taking place, and federal officials continue to stonewall state and local investigators in Minnesota.

This inaction was predictable. The day after Good’s death, Vice President Vance insisted at a press conference that the agent who shot her would face no criminal charges. “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance told reporters. “He was doing his job.” Soon, Stephen Miller doubled down on the message, announcing “to all ICE officers” that “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.” Federal agents apparently received the message: The next day, an ICE agent fired a gun into a Minneapolis home, wounding a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. The week after that, Pretti was killed outside a doughnut shop. The Department of Homeland Security called him a “domestic terrorist” and said that the officers who shot him had acted in self-defense.

Typically, after a contentious killing by a law-enforcement officer, the Justice Department would launch a criminal civil-rights probe. Following George Floyd’s murder, for example, DOJ conducted an investigation alongside Minnesota law enforcement, and both federal and state prosecutors brought separate charges against the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. So far, though, the federal government has succeeded in protecting immigration officers from serious consequences for the violence of what DHS termed “Operation Metro Surge.”

By Kate Callen

The City of San Diego had a one-time-only opportunity to compensate Southeastern San Diego for decades of neglect and broken promises. It has thrown that away to hand an iconic community parcel over to a national developer with a checkered history.

On July 7, by an 8-1 vote, the City Council denied an appeal to stop D.R. Horton, which is facing class action lawsuits across eight states, from building 123 homes on a 31-acre hilltop plateau in Emerald Hills.

The future owners of those homes will have exclusive access to a beloved natural asset: a stunning panoramic 360-view of the San Diego-Tijuana coastal region. People in the surrounding communities, who have long treasured the vista from the Radio Towers Hill, will be shut out.

And their dream of building a landmark destination like the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles that would bolster the local economy has now collapsed.

Communities across the city have endured similar heartaches when iconic properties, like the Little Red Bungalow in Mission Hills, are razed by out-of-town developers.

But the Emerald Hills loss is uniquely tragic. It happened because in 2019, someone inside City Hall targeted Southeastern communities by slipping the infamous “Footnote 7” into the municipal code.

By Patty Ducey-Brooks / Presidio Sentinel  / July 4, 2026

Five years ago, many of us from throughout the city of San Diego and county, made a decision to not support the major development of the NAVWAR site, which is on Pacific Highway in Old Town. It literally backs up to the most western part off Old Town San Diego.

Though over 5,000 people from throughout the county of San Diego signed a petition in opposition of the major development proposed for the site, which includes high rises for hotels and some housing, it has recently become a subject of town hall meetings by various community groups, including the Peninsula Community Planning Group.

No surprise to the citizens of San Diego, City Hall has been backing a massive high-rise development for NAVWAR. This would gridlock coast traffic and create a huge visual obstruction of the bay and ocean views for residents near the site. It would also change the character of Old Town San Diego, the “birthplace of the State of California”. Ironically and for obvious reasons, Old Town San Diego State Park is the most frequented state park in the state of California that doesn’t receive fair funding though it brings in the most revenue annually to benefit the state park system.

Previously, Save Our Access, a 501c3 nonprofit, favored having the Navy renovate NAVWAR with creation of an area river trail park on part of this public land, which could be used by all San Diegans for recreational purposes.

The Navy’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the reuse of the 70.5 acres NAVWAR sites in the Midway district was presented. The EIS’s “preferred alternative” was a NAVWAR high-rise commercial development consisting of 106 buildings stretched for half a mile along I-5 that reach up to 350-feet in the air. This plan included ten thousand new residential units for 14,000 residents.

A View From the United Kingdom

By Will Howard / Dangerous Minds – UK / July 4, 2026

July 4th is more than just a holiday in the United States of America. It’s a marker of the time the country threw off the shackles of oppression and told the (once) most powerful country in the world exactly where they could stick them.

Precisely what they did with those shackles of oppression afterwards is a different and much, much more depressing story, but that’s for another time.

The question is, how do you celebrate it? There’s an argument to be made that it should be a sombre reflection. After all, declaring independence led to a blood-soaked war which cost the young nation thousands of lives. They won, but by the absolute skin of their teeth and not without a lot of help from Britain’s countless other rivals.

The parallel universe where the nascent United States lost the Revolutionary War wasn’t a million miles away from happening, so perhaps Independence Day should be a day of remembrance, filled with quiet marches, a wreath around a statue, and a prayer for those lost.

Or, I guess you could house enough beer and hot dogs to kill a bull, blast some Guns N’ Roses as loud as it will go, and pass out watching the mother of all fireworks displays. That does sound a little more fun, to be fair.

This is, actually, in accordance with what the Founding Fathers actually wanted. In a letter that none other than John Adams sent to his wife Abigail, he detailed that the American Independence Day “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Ironically enough, it wasn’t actually the 4th of July he was talking about, but the day that Congress first voted to approve the Declaration of Independence, July 2nd.

The point still stands, though, and one wonders what he would have thought of the way that Ocean Beach, California, decided to celebrate American Independence.

 El Pueblo Viejo de San Diego: Hiding in Plain Sight, Part 5

By Alexander D. Bevil, California State Parks Historian II (Retired) / SOHO / July-August 2026

The following California State Landmarks (CHLs) reflect the years 1821 to 1847 when San Diego evolved from a military outpost to a Mexican pueblo.

CHL No. 74: Casa de Carrillo (see above)
Presidio comandante Francisco María Ruiz reportedly built this house next to his pear garden in 1810 for his cousin and fellow soldier Joaquín Carrillo and his large family. On April 15, 1829, Ruiz’s godchild Josefa Carrillo—with the help of her cousin Pio Pico, a caballero and future Mexican governor of California—eloped with ship captain Henry Delano Fitch to Chile. After her brother Ramón Carrillo sold the property, the large casa deteriorated, leaving only a single-room structure. Given landmark status on December 6, 1932, local businessman George Marston repurposed the building in 1931 as the Presidio Hills Golf Course’s clubhouse. He later deeded both the building and the course to the City of San Diego.

Hailed by legendary film critic Roger Ebert as best film of the year and the ninth-best overall film of the 2000s.

By Kendra Syrdal / Parade / July 6, 2026

Based on writer and director Cameron Crowe’s real-life experiences as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone, the movie Almost Famous has become a cult classic sensation since its release in 2000.

When Crowe was just 16 years old, he spent three weeks touring with The Allman Brothers Band and interviewing its members as well as the road crew. Because Crowe was younger than many of the journalists, he was more inclined to interview the hard rock bands that his older colleagues didn’t yet understand. Because of this, he landed interviews with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, and Eric Clapton.

This is what would serve as the inspiration and backbone for Almost Famous.

Crowe used many different points of reference when he created Stillwater, the fictional band, for the movie. According to Greg Allman’s 2012 memoir, My Cross to Bear, many of the moments and aspects of the film are taken from Crowe’s time spent with the band for the 1973 Rolling Stone cover feature. The movie was shot over the course of just 92 days, around San Diego, Ca. on Ocean Beach and Sunset Cliffs.

The soundtrack for Almost Famous has been lauded as one of the best compilations of music made for a movie, with some even considering it the best of all time. In 2001, it took home the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

U.S. Hits 81 Targets in Iran; Iran Attacks 85 U.S. “Assets”; Oil and Gas Prices Rise, Stocks Fall

Just when you thought you could settle into the summer, with gas prices coming down and some things appearing to get normal — BOOM! Trump’s war with Iran is back on and he says the MoU is over.

Ostensibly because Iranian forces attacked three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump’s military unleashed a barrage against 81 Iranian targets and in response, Iran attacked 85 targets considered U.S. “assets” within the region.

The Iranian foreign ministry stated that the U.S. attacks violated Article 1 of the MoU relating to the ceasefire, Article 5 – related to the management of the Strait of Hormuz, which says Iran is responsible for managing passage through the waterway – and Article 10, which pertains to a waiver on Iranian oil exports.

The impacts of all this was immediate. Oil prices rose and the Dow Jones initially fell 700 points this morning.

The tankers Iran struck were attempting to skirt the passage way that according to the MoU, Iran is responsible for managing.

Now Trump says the ceasefire deal with Iran is “over”, and that dealing with Tehran is a “waste of time”.

In the middle of the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump also threatened more attacks tonight, Wednesday. (He also ramped up his insane pressure to get Greenland.)

Everyone is urging calm and a return to the ceasefire and more negotiations.

By Shannon Handy / CBS8/ July 6, 2026

(slighted edited for clarification)

Visitors to Mission Bay now have to walk further to find a public restroom, as the city began closing nearly half of the facilities around the bay starting Monday, July 6.

A total of 13 out of 28 public restrooms will be shut down by the end of this week due to budget restrictions, a move that many local visitors and business owners are criticizing. [and just plain locals.]

The closures, which come after the 4th of July holiday, aim to save the city approximately $546,000, primarily from cleaning and maintenance costs.

Affected restrooms include:

Movement Against ‘Golden Pacific Powerlink’ 

PRESERVATION ACTION ALERT
Help Protect Backcountry Historic Resources and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park