OB Rag

By Katharine Trendacosta / Electronic Frontier Foundation

California’s net neutrality bill, S.B. 822 has received a majority of votes in the Senate and is heading to the governor’s desk. In this fight, ISPs with millions of dollars to spend lost to the voice of the majority of Americans who support net neutrality. This is a victory that can be replicated.

ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast hated this bill. S.B. 822 bans blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, classic ways that companies have violated net neutrality principles. It also incorporates much of what the FCC learned and incorporated into the 2015 Open Internet Order, preventing new assaults on the free and open Internet.

Matt Madruga has lived on the 4600 block of Long Branch Avenue in Ocean Beach for 16 years – he still lives in the house his grandparents bought back in the mid-1950s.

So, Matt – who runs a small diving and yacht services company – knows about the large Torrey Pine that towers over the eastern end of his block.
This is the same Torrey that was saved by the community 7 years ago from the city wanting to chop it down

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

For the children of steel
The Atlantic recently ran an article about the long term impacts of the now largely defunct steel industry in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock resident Tony Buba has produced a short documentary about the environmental racism that has created an overlooked health crisis among residents in the area, particularly among African Americans who were segregated in neighborhoods closest to the mills. The incidences of cancer and lung disease are shocking.

For those of us who lived in any one of the mill towns dotting the Monongahela River (Mon Valley) in southwestern Pennsylvania and lost loved ones to those diseases,

The Ocean Beach Planning Board will take a look at a project proposed for the northwest corner of Froude and Del Monte, plus possibly appoint new board members and take up a slew of recommendations coming in from the board’s transportation sub-committee.

The board meets Wednesday, September 5 at the OB Rec Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue, starting at 6pm. (The official agenda is posted below.)

1750 Froude Street

Richard Harmon, new owner of 1750 Froude, has a Coastal Development Permit and tentative map for his proposed project for the board to review

It has been the worst of times and the best of times for the American Labor Movement in 2018.

Economic inequality has continued to spiral out of control as policy coming out of Washington, DC designed to tilt the scales in favor of the rich and corporations weakened the rights of working Americans at every turn.

At the Supreme Court level, anti-labor justices joined the assault against labor and undermined public sector unions’ rights to collect dues.

On Thursday, August 30, proponents of over-turning last month’s San Diego City Council vote establishing limits on short term vacation rentals turned in – what they say – is more than 62,000 signatures to the county Registrar of Voters.

In order to force a public vote on the restrictions, Airbnb and Homeaway representatives need 36,000 valid signatures of registered voters. They and their consultant, PCI Consultants, employed an army of signature gatherers across the city who in turn employed aggressive tactics to wrest signatures from unwary residents.

An observant OB Rag staff member has observed these signs that have appeared on Cable Street between Santa Monica and Newport.

Are they an indication of militant Jesus freaks on the move, or are they signs of the coming Apocalypse?

They are high enough that they had to be placed using a ladder or by someone standing on top of a vehicle.

By Ernie McCray

There have been moments
in mourning
the loss of my son
that I’ve felt like a boat
being battered in rough seas,
swirling and whirling
in pounding
un-relenting waves,
and then there comes
a little break
as the waters, seemingly,
hurl me towards the shore,
and a memory,
like one I had the other day,

by Joaquin Antique

It’s been six months since the OB Rag first published an article about the CannaBus shuttle service to urbn leaf dispensary in Bay Park.

Monday through Friday the bus still departs from the foot of Newport near the pier parking lot but weekend service to and from Ocean Beach has been cancelled.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the shuttle now services Pacific Beach,

A sexually aroused dolphin has been getting so close to human swimmers at a picturesque French beach in the northwestern Brittany region that the local mayor has closed the beach at the village of Landévennec in Finistère to bathing.

Brittany is a region of France known for its beautiful beaches with beaucoup swimming and sailing opportunities.

The local mayor, Roger Lars, issued a new law prohibiting swimmers from getting closer to 40 meters (close to 130 feet) to the dolphin, whose name is Zafar. The dolphin has a name, you might ask with eyebrows raised? Mais qui.

It has come to this: Trader Joe’s in San Diego filed suit on Friday, August 24 against the aggressive tactics by pro-Airbnb signature gatherers after all kinds of complaints by shoppers at local stores came in.

The company is asking a judge to halt the gathering of signatures for petitions in front of its stores, after customers complained of overly aggressive signature solicitors at stores in Point Loma, Pacific Beach, Hillcrest and Mission Valley. Trader Joe’s is asking for a restraining order against Airbnb and the firm that’s collecting the signatures, PCI Consultants.

By Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD

Fifty years ago this week, I was in Chitown.

Having just finished my medical internship and working several years with the famous pediatrician Dr. Ben Spock on anti-war issues, I was in a white coat among the checkered blue caped and the robin’s-egg blue helmeted police and real people.

I will never forget walking along the lines of scared, sweating teenage national guardsmen with fixed bayonets,