OB Rag

Most strongly oppose code amendment that could allow community’s oldest homes to be demolished to make way for apartment projects

By Steven Mihailovich / Point Loma-OB Monthly SDU-T / November 12, 2025

A San Diego Planning Commission vote last week isn’t sitting well with Ocean Beach leaders, who just two days before had voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the commission reject a code amendment that could allow some of the community’s oldest homes to be demolished for construction of multi-unit apartment projects.

The city-sponsored amendment to the Municipal Code would enable San Diego’s Complete Communities program to be applicable to homes a century old or more if they are not registered in the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging District, which includes 72 properties built between 1887 and 1931 and listed in San Diego’s historical resources database.

The Ocean Beach Planning Board voted 10-1 on Nov. 4 to oppose the amendment. But the Planning Commission voted 7-0 on Nov. 6 to approve it along with a new policy that would give the City Council authority to overrule the city’s Historical Resources Board when the board designates a property as historic. Under the current system, the council’s discretion to overturn such decisions is limited to when there has been a procedural error — not disagreements about historic value.

A group of up to 60 people gathered yesterday at The Wall, at the foot of Newport Avenue, to remember Tracy Condon. Candles were lit, words were spoken as her loved ones, friends, and strangers came together to commemorate the life of a homeless woman killed in a hit and run on Santa Monica Avenue last week.

One of her daughters was there as well as an ex and the pastor of a local church. TV station 7SanDiego was there and gave a touching news video.

By Donna Frye

On November 18, 2025 at 2 pm the San Diego City Council will be having a hearing to discuss their budget priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

It is Item-331 on the agenda.

There are many very important issues related to the budget and I am only focusing on one of them right now, which is Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera’s proposal to charge a non-resident vehicle entry fee to use Mission Bay Park. The proposal includes fees for parking a vehicle, mooring a boat or launching a boat.

This is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know just where to start.

First, we all know that if this proposal is supported it will only be a matter of time before residents are forced to pay to use Mission Bay Park too. All one needs to do is look at what’s happening at Balboa Park with the proposed parking fees to understand how this works.

Join the OBHS, November 20, 2025, at 7 pm, “El Presidio”, featuring Richard Carrico, at Water’s Edge Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

Think you know the early history of Spanish settlement in San Diego? Know where the first mission in San Diego was located? Were Kumeyaay prisoners executed at the San Diego Presidio? What the heck did those early Spanish colonists eat?

Join one of our favorite speakers and local historian and author Richard L. Carrico as he answers those questions and many more. Richard will walk us through the mid-1700s up to 1845 and literally uncover lost stories and histories.

by Ernie McCray

I remember my grandfather
always saying to me
“Well, son, I guess that’s too much like right”
when my most logical response to a situation
should have been put into action but was not,
and lately I’ve been saying that to myself a lot
as I look at what’s happening
here and there
around the country,
thinking, particularly,
about what if we bypassed all the rigmarole
with regard to Bad Bunny
headlining the halftime show
at the 60th Super Bowl,
singing in Espanol,
and instead praised him
for how he rose
from work as a bag boy at a grocery store
in Puerto Rico
and became a global music icon

Rents are declining across the country according to the Zumper National Rent Index. In fact, it’s the fourth straight month of declining rental prices across the United States.

Yet, what does that mean for renters in San Diego?

The national average price for a one-bedroom rental apartment is $1,650, according to both Zumper and Apartments.com—a price that Californians are hard-pressed to match, with a median rent price of $2,059.

At the top of the rental market in California, sits San Francisco with an average rental price of $3,110 per month, which is 91% higher than the national rent price.

Yet, in Southern California, the rental market “is facing a surge in supply, giving renters a bit more leeway, according to Zumper. Both Los Angeles and Orange County are seeing declining rents. This is due to “massive rental developments have been built and are opening along the I-15 and I-215 freeways in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.”

Proposed Regulation Attempt at Reining in and Taxing Uncertified Pot Delivery Businesses

By Alex Lai / CBS8 / November 9, 2025

San Diego city leaders say some cannabis businesses are evading local rules, and they’re preparing to step in.

A new proposal at City Hall aims to create fair regulations for cannabis delivery businesses operating in the city. Legal dispensaries argue that competition with the unregulated market has gone on for years, prompting one shop, A Green Alternative in Otay Mesa, to sue the City of San Diego over enforcement.

Right now, legal dispensaries pay the city a 10% tax, putting untaxed delivery operations at a financial advantage.

By Dave Schwab / Peninsula Beacon / Nov. 12, 2025

There’s a new restaurant in Ocean Beach on Newport Avenue, and its name is Latin for its function.

Vinum Locus (literally “wine place”) is owned by native Italian Luigi Agostini, who also owns Pizzeria Luigi, recently opened at 5003 Newport Ave. in a space formerly inhabited by a tattoo parlor.

The new establishment is filling a gap left by the departure of Gianni Buonomo Vintners, which has moved to the Midway District.

“We knew with Gianni Buonomo leaving, there was going to be a little bit of a vacuum, and we wanted to open a wine bar on Newport that was also serving food that is a little higher end,” said executive chef Nicholas Vassari. “So we stepped into that niche.”

Vassari graduated from The Culinary Institute of America, a private culinary school with its main campus in Hyde Park, N.Y. He was also chef de cuisine at Nobu Hospitality.

By Danna Givot / Op-Ed SD Union-Tribune / November 12, 2025 

Three years ago, Mayor Todd Gloria unveiled his “Build Better San Diego” initiative, with an ambitious goal of eliminating inequities between our city’s wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods. Build Better San Diego intended to replace crumbling infrastructure and improve public services in our older and long-neglected communities south of Interstate 8.

But our mayor’s pledge now rings hollow. In fact, recent and upcoming community plan updates will only reinforce the cruel reality of “two San Diegos,” not the “one city” he promised. If the mayor and his planning department get their way, our lowest-resourced, infrastructure-deficient neighborhoods will be burdened by extraordinary levels of up-zoning and density, with no funding for desperately needed parks, libraries, and fire and police stations.

The most shocking example of “one city, two realities” is the proposed College Area Community Plan Update

Plastic in your green bin? Batteries in the trash? City inspectors are checking to see if your garbage is in compliance

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / November 11, 2025

San Diego has begun sending teams of trash inspectors to neighborhoods across the city to gauge whether people are using the proper bins for trash, organics recycling and traditional recycling of glass, metal, plastic and paper.

The inspectors — code compliance officers who’ve been nicknamed “lid lifters” — aren’t issuing fines or punishing city trash customers who mistakenly put the wrong items in either their gray, blue or green bins.

Focused on education instead of punishment, the inspectors place either “oops” tags on bins that contain improper materials or “do not collect” tags on bins with dangerous materials like propane tanks or lithium batteries.

Customers who get a “do not collect” tag must remove any dangerous materials and then call the city to send out a trash crew to handle the container.

By Ezra Klein / New York Times / Nov. 10, 2025

Back in September, when I was reporting an article on whether Democrats should shut down the government, I kept hearing the same warning from veterans of past shutdown fights: The president controls the bully pulpit. He controls, to some degree, which parts of the government stay open and which parts close. It is very, very hard for the opposition party to win a shutdown.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that Democrats were winning this one. Polls showed that most voters blamed Republicans, not Democrats, for the current shutdown — perhaps because President Trump was bulldozing the East Wing of the White House rather than negotiating to reopen the government. Trump’s approval rating has been falling — in CNN’s tracking poll, it dipped into the 30s for the first time since he took office again. And last week, Democrats wrecked Republicans in the elections and Trump blamed his party’s losses in part on the shutdown. Democrats were riding higher than they have been in months.

Then, over the weekend, a group of Senate Democrats broke ranks and negotiated a deal to end the shutdown in return for — if we’re being honest — very little.

By Jillian Butler

Ocean Beach has always been more than just a San Diego neighborhood. It’s a community with history, charm, and a deep sense of independence.

Few people embody that spirit more than Denny Knox, the longtime CEO of the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association (OBMA). From helping her in-laws run the beloved Cabrillo Art Center on Newport Avenue to overseeing one of the city’s most active business districts, Knox’s life has been intertwined with Ocean Beach for decades.

In this conversation, she reflects on her early years, the evolution of OB’s business community, and the challenges and triumphs of keeping a small coastal district thriving in an increasingly digital world.

Q:  Please tell me a bit about your personal history–the high school that you went to, siblings, and what your parents did for a living. I am told that you helped your parents run a business in OB and I would love to hear about that.

A: Actually, I was born in New York, lived in Old Greenwich, Connecticut until I turned 13 years old. My folks decided to leave the New York madhouse and moved the family to Scottsdale, Arizona where I attended high school. After high school, I fled the heat and ended up going to Cal Western University [ed: today Point Loma Nazarene University] in 1966 as an English Major.

I absolutely loved the weather and the coastal access and Ocean Beach was my favorite place to go. I met Roberta and Gene Knox in 1968 who owned Cabrillo Art Center on Newport Ave.