OB Rag

By Bradley Granieri / The Point – PL Nazarene University / Oct 8, 2025

Having a fantasy football team isn’t all that fun. But watching that team beat somebody else’s is thrilling.

I didn’t start playing fantasy football because I loved watching the NFL. Four seasons ago, I barely watched football. I said “yes” to joining a league because I was bored, and figured doing so would give me something mildly interesting to do in math class. But when the next season rolled around, I agreed again.

“It’s a fun thing to talk to your friends about, even though I don’t really care about football,” Kate Walter, a third-year applied health major, said.

Just like Walter, I don’t care all that much about the NFL, but I still sign up because it’s what happens off the field that makes fantasy football truly matter. It’s the community and competition that comes from it that keeps me coming back year after year.

When I started my first fantasy football team four years ago, I didn’t know how anything worked. I was a rookie, but I quickly learned the basics in a trial-by-fire period of just a few short weeks. What I learned was that fantasy football put me, the “coach,” in control of a virtual team composed of real NFL players who play against other virtual teams.

From Neighbors for a Better San Diego

By Kate Callen

The OB Rag staff is delighted to learn that the City of San Diego cares so much about listening to constituents that it is publishing an Inclusive Public Engagement Guide to train city employees on how to elicit feedback.

But we’re not sure why city employees would need such training. Weren’t they hired as public servants for their ability to serve the public? Is it really so difficult to hear what constituents have to say, take notes, and use that information to create more community-friendly policies and programs?

Apparently, it is. As the Rag frequently reports, the Gloria Administration has a stunning record for spurning community input and evading public inquiries. Its culture of mendacity earned our Mayor the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2024 “Wall Award” as “the person or public agency that made it difficult for journalists to do their jobs by ignoring information requests or otherwise compromising the public’s right to know.”

By Bernie Sanders / Reader Supported News / October 12, 2025

Trump is rapidly moving us toward authoritarianism. While the country focuses on Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional ICE raids, his threats to arrest political opponents, the militarization of our cities and his crackdowns on universities and law firms, it is important that we not ignore what is happening to the American media landscape.

In recent years, a handful of media conglomerates have increasingly owned and controlled what the vast majority of Americans see on television, hear on the radio and read in newspapers. But it is not just corporate ownership of broadcast and print media.

As internet use explodes, we are also witnessing the growing concentration of ownership of our social media platforms. Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on earth, owns X, formerly Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg, the third wealthiest man in the world, owns Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram. Jeff Bezos, the fourth wealthiest, owns Twitch, along with the Washington Post. And Larry Ellison, the second wealthiest man in the world and a key Trump ally, recently purchased Paramount, which owns CBS and other outlets. It has been reported that Ellison is planning to acquire CNN and is working with Trump in an effort to control TikTok.

Editordude: Our good friend Judy Miller had a letter to the editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune printed the other day about the mailboxes in front of the OB Post Office — and it’s quite shocking actually. Here it is:

OB Post Office changes seen as unhelpful and dangerous

After 5 p.m., you can no longer mail a letter at the Ocean Beach Post Office. Outside, there used to be four mailboxes, accessible 24/7, but now there is only one, a strange-looking potbellied creature that is padlocked after 5 p.m.

by Ernie McCray

Racism is showing itself
during these most worrisome times
in a form
I’ve never seen until now.
I mean it used to be
that white supremacists
would do harm every now and then
to some Black or Brown folks
and non-white immigrant folks
and then there would be a lull
in their racial shenanigans
and society would plug on.

Join us Thursday, October 16, 2025, 7:00 pm, at the Ocean Beach Historical Society program “Lot 9, Block 86 of Point Loma Height, Then and Now“, at Water’s Edge Community Center, 1984  Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

One of the first houses on the hill, this beautiful old residence on Narragansett Avenue has been home to three generations of Ferol Henkels’ family. 

San Diego U-T Editorial Board / October 10, 2025

On Oct. 3, a U-T editorial was posted that said the San Diego City Council’s decision to delay adopting huge water and sewer rate hikes at a meeting in which several members decried the high cost of living was a hollow gesture. Our warning: Even after a bait-and-switch campaign to force 226,000 homeowners to pay far more for trash service, the first-ever parking fees at Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo, and the adoption of costly “dynamic” parking rates downtown, elected leaders were just getting started in trying to raise revenue by any means necessary. Doing so was an easier way for them to deal with their chronic overspending than taking on public employee unions by freezing compensation, utilizing technology to downsize the city work force or using “managed competition” to provide services more cheaply.

A day later, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera confirmed we were correct. At Politifest 2025, sponsored by Voice of San Diego, he called for the city to charge fees to tourists who wanted to go to Mission Bay and Torrey Pines Golf Course, and to add to the taxes already paid by owners of second homes and vacation rentals.

When Trump is fighting the “enemy within” America and kicking out anyone who can’t prove they belong here?

By Robert Reich / Reader Supported News – Substack / October 13, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the U.S. will allow Qatar to build an Air Force facility at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, where Qatari F-15 fighter jets and Qatari pilots will train alongside US troops.

“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase the lethality, interoperability,” Hegseth said at the Pentagon during a meeting with his Qatari counterpart Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. “It’s just another example of our partnership. And I hope you know, Your Excellency, that you can count on us.”

What?

New controversial law mandates dense housing near transit, overriding local zoning to address California’s housing crisis

By Steve Puterski / Substack / October 11, 2025

In a sweeping move to reshape housing near transit, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 on Friday, October 10, triggering major zoning changes and fierce backlash from cities across the state.

The bill, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), expands Transit-Oriented Districts (TODs) to every transit station and bus stop. The bill requires cities and counties to upzone land with significant density requirements, such as a minimum of five to six stories (55 to 65 feet), a minimum density of 80 to 120 units per acre (depending on the tier), prevailing wages, strict labor requirements and more.

Bianchi Pizza and Pasta
Bahia Hotel
998 West Mission Bay Drive
San Diego, CA 92109

By LK Bruce

As is often the case, there is good news and bad news. So it was when a foursome headed over to the Bahia Hotel to try out its relatively new restaurant, Bianchi Pizza and Pasta. (Not on the Peninsula but close enough for those who hate to leave “the Shire.”)

Located at the roadside/ front of the hotel, unlike the Bahia’s other restaurant, Dockside 1953 which is on the water, Bianchi is equal parts inside and outside with an enormous fireplace outside and enormous Neapolitan pizza oven inside. The vibe is casual,  comfortable and pretty. Given the Bahia owners’ passion for cars, the inside walls are adorned with posters of Bianchi autos and bicycles.

The menu doesn’t overwhelm. Offering six appetizers, four salads, six pasta dishes and nine pastas, you don’t need a half-hour to decide what to order.

A very cool special is the Italian Date Night on Wednesdays where you and your paramour can share a Caesar salad, 750ml of house wine – Line 39 Pinot Grigio or Cabernet Sauvignon – and one pizza for $44. That is a deal our friends were only too happy to seize.

In the fall of 1964, over 60 years ago, the young students on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley found themselves in an untenable situation. Campus activists had set up information tables in Sproul Plaza on campus and had solicited donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of them had traveled with the Freedom Riders and had worked to register African American voters in Mississippi that previous summer.  At the time, however, existing rules for fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.

In mid-September, a school dean announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment and fundraising by student organizations would be “strictly enforced.” Two weeks later, a graduate student sitting at one of the civil rights tables refused to show his identification to campus police and was immediately arrested and placed inside a campus police car on Sproul.

Suddenly and spontaneously hundreds of students who witnessed the arrest, surrounded the police car, sat down and refused to budge. While the graduate student sat in the backseat, student activist leaders mounted the car and began to give speeches on free speech and against political restrictions. Students remained around the car for 32 hours and at one point, there were an estimated 3,000 students blocking its movement. People used the car as a speaker’s podium and held a continuous public discussion on rights, free speech and student liberties. This continued until charges against the graduate student were dropped.

It was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s and was the birth of the Free Speech Movement.