OB Rag

By South OB Girl

While thousands of people were attending Comic-Con last week, Marvel Comics announced the release of a new comic book series on Friday July 22. The superheroes will be women. And the series is being written by women. George Gene Gustines, writing in The New York Times July 23rd issue, did an interesting review of the series, entitled, “Marvel Shines a Spotlight on Women.”

Wakanda is a fictional African country, and the world of the Marvel series, Black Panther. World of Wakanda will be a companion series. And will premiere in November.

The current Black Panther series is written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. The new comic will be written by two women, who are writing comics for the first time: the feminist writer Roxane Gay and the poet Yona Harvey.

By Ernie McCray

Maria and I just spent 38 days in Europe with a stop in Philly on the way home, a vacation that had a combination of both joy and misery and ended with notions of hope.

It began with a man driving us from the Madrid-Barajas Airport to our hotel, talking about politics all the while. He wanted us to know that Spaniards, as we Americans do, have a few Donald Trumps around town. He had a lot to say about our president, a man he admired “for how he stepped up and got the U.S. out of the recession.”
All that made us feel very welcomed and eager to explore the city. Then came Orlando, news that weakened our knees. Our tragedies, kind of, I think, seem even more dismal when you see them from far away, in another culture. You kind of feel that it reflects on you in some way.

There’s been yet another death at Sunset Cliffs – this time a man fishing near Luscom’s jumped into the ocean on Sunday, July 24th around 1 pm, reportedly to cool off, and ran into trouble immediately, according to bystanders. Luscom’s is near Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Monaco Street.

He’s been identified as San Diego resident AbelkHalek Boutayeb, 61.

Boutayeb had been fishing for about2 hours when bystanders saw him either climb down the cliffs and got in the water or jumped in. As he struggled, he hit his head against the reef. One or 2 people jumped in and tried to save him, and one of them tried to keep the victim afloat.

Latest Is 2nd Death – Plus Two Serious Injuries – at Sunset Cliffs This Month

This most recent fatality comes just 3 weeks after a man fell to his death on July 5th near Ladera Street along Sunset Cliffs. And it comes just 11 days after …

By Bryon Morton

The Ocean Beach Historical Society had a presentation to coincide with the Ocean Beach Pier turning 50 years old. There was a briefing and celebration at the Point Loma United Methodist Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd last week on Thursday, July 21stat 700PM.

Ralph Teyssier lectured on the engineering and building that went into the Ocean Beach Fishing Pier.

Per the Historical Society’s web site:

“Leonard Teyssier, Ralph’s father, was owner of one of the largest construction companies in San Diego in the mid- 1960s. Leonard’s firm, Teyssier, Teyssier, Inc., built the Ocean Beach Pier.”

Ralph spoke to a packed house and engaged the audience with slides of historical photographs and architectural blue prints of the Ocean Beach Fishing Pier. He had been a teenager during the construction progress and was on-site to witness much of the pier fabrication and construction.

The Ocean Beach Town Council is looking to fill a vacancy on its Board of Directors.The following is from their website about applying:

Are you interested in becoming more involved with your community? If you have a strong desire to promote the general betterment and beautification of Ocean Beach and the welfare of our residents, then please consider applying for the vacant seat on the Ocean Beach Town Council Board of Directors. We provide a great venue for you to engage deeply in our community and make a meaningful and lasting impact.

To become an appointed board member, you first must be a dues-paying member of the OBTC, which requires that you live, work, or own a business within Ocean Beach. If you are not a member, you can apply and pay your dues directly on our website .

Letter of Interest Needs to Be Submitted by August 5

Once a member, please submit a letter of interest for your appointment to a vacant seat.

At the upcoming OB Town Council meeting on Wednesday, July 27th, the board will announce the awards of their OB Community Grants program.

The board has selected local organizations, groups, and persons that promote the general betterment and beautification of Ocean Beach and the welfare of its residents.

The meeting is open to the public, of course, as the OBTC invites all to “Come learn more about these important community groups and initiatives and lend them our collective congratulations.”

There also will be a brief presentation from the Office of Councilmember Lorie Zapf on …

Here is a video honoring the 50th anniversary of the OB Pier. Produced by Randy Lane, it’s a video of artist Diane Marie Cobert-Brunner and her 3d artwork, “Ocean Beach Fishing Pier”.

It’s currently showing at Teeter on Niagara.

TO ACCESS VIDEO, COME INSIDE …

Editor: Our prodigy media project, the San Diego Free Press has something to be very proud about; they just brought home nine awards from the San Diego Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists last week.

Many of the volunteer writers who won awards have their articles re-posted here at the OB Rag. (OB Rag editors sit on the editorial board of the SDFP.) Here is the report:

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As we enter our fourth year here at the San Diego Free Press, there could be no greater gift than to be the platform that allows eight volunteer writers worthy recognition among a Society of Professional Journalists. We are intensely proud to be working with these incredibly talented and passionate people.

The San Diego Free Press itself was also recognized for its role in online journalism.

The awards are as follows: …

One of the great pleasures of my life to date was having access, for a period of several years, to a dingy little studio by the sea in Ocean Beach.

It was so small that when you rolled out the futon, it took up the entire room. The kitchen was too tiny for a dinner table, the hot water frequently didn’t work in the bathroom, and the constant noise and pot smoke from the neighbors streamed through the cracked, paper-thin walls.

It was paradise.

The saving grace, no, the miracle, of this claustrophobic hovel was that you opened the door to the ocean and within a few steps you arrived at a disheveled patio full of rusty tables and moldy plastic chairs overlooking the cliffs and the pounding surf below. As with the dramatic difference between the cell-like studio and the big blue sea, on the patio, the juxtaposition of grit and grandeur was striking, and somehow perfect.

Will Donald Trump have Hillary Clinton arrested if he is elected in November? His base sure wants it.

With loud chants of “Lock her up! Lock her up!” reverberating through the cavernous arena at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the delegates displayed for millions of viewers the war cry of the assemblage.

Whenever Trump or Chris Christie or anyone else among the second and third-string speakers on stage called the Democratic Party nominee out for alleged “crimes”, the chant would go up.

It wasn’t easy watching Trump’s speech last night from Ohio. But I forced myself to do it. My housemates all took cover as the convention blared from the living-room widescreen.

By Local One

I attended the Peninsula Community Planning Board meeting last night (Thursday, July 21) and listened intently to the presentations made by Mayor Faulconer’s representative and the head of the Developmental Services Department.

Boy oh boy, what a bunch of packaged lies we were fed last night. The people can see with their own eyes that the community is being snookered with regard to the lack of enforcement, and continuing DSD approval, of numerous violations of the existing MC defined 30 foot coastal height limit.

Speaker after speaker last night quoted directly from the Municipal Code in which the law is absolutely clear with regard to measuring the 30? height, but City representatives from the Mayor’s office and DSD kept insisting that the City Attorney’s office interprets the voter approved Proposition D very differently than any common sense reading of the law.

Further, the Mayor and DSD shut down the Emerson Street project based on a violation of the FAR standards, NOT the obvious violation of the 30 foot coastal height limit.

Councilwoman Lori Zapf on Thursday, July 21st, introduced the newly-installed police surveillance cameras at a brief news conference held on the greens near the OB Lifeguard Station.

With ranking police officers and OB merchants on both sides of her, Zapf led off the presser before 2 TV cameras, and a handful of protesters opposed to the cameras.

Zapf said that over a year ago, police leaders at Western Division working with her office to come up with safety measures came up with the idea to install ten cameras along OB’s waterfront.

Now they’ve all been placed, from the OB Pier to Dog Beach, and the signs went up just now, Zapf said, and the cameras can now go live.

Emphasizing the cameras were a crime-prevention tool, a deterrent, they’ll make the beach more safe, she said, mentioning that the cameras will bring relief to the tourists worried about being victimized.

Why the cameras? Zapf asked.