OB Rag

By Jim Miller

Along with so many people last week, I watched the events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold with profound dismay and anger while fighting a sense of despair over the intractable nature of American racism. We all knew it was coming, but that didn’t soften the blow.

On the social media, one might also have predicted the outpouring of callousness and hate toward Michael Brown and those protesting the Grand Jury verdict, but it made it no less loathsome. Even the subsequent torching of Michael Brown’s family church was not a shock, just eerily resonant.

The San Diego School District sold the property of the former Barnard Elementary School over in the Midway area about 2 years ago. Now, it’s the site of a massive construction project that will when completed host 180 apartment units and 10 townhomes.

The project – called the Barnard Apartments – is on 9.5 acres and will be a gated apartment complex. A company called the Monarch Group bought the site at auction for a reported $16.5 million, and plan to have the project completed by January 2016.

The apartments will include one-, two-, and three-bedroom units, as there will be 19 residential buildings. In addition, plans call for a rec building with a fitness center and “teaching kitchen”, and there will be a swimming pool and an artificial-turf dog park. Each apartment will have their own garage space as well.

Over the course of about 12 hours, protesters in San Diego blocked two freeways in solidarity with people in Ferguson, Missouri, upset with the decision by the Grand Jury not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

Last night, Tuesday, demonstrators in City Heights of San Diego moved down from University Avenue and blocked I-15 for a few minutes. Some arrests were made by police.

Then this morning, Wednesday, about 50 protesters from UCSD shut down I-5 northbound for about a half hour. No arrests were made in this action.

By Ernie McCray

Last Saturday was a very pretty day and to celebrate the beauty of it all I took off on a walk at a nice steady pace. As I moved along I gave thanks to the very universe for my being able to take in such a sparkling day up and about on my old size 14 feet.

I thought of so many things I’m grateful for: a great childhood, athletic glory, a marriage that thrilled my soul until my soul-mate passed away and then another fine woman came my way; children, grand children, great-grand-children, leading positive lives; college degrees; having traveled to exotic places overseas.

An armed robber who went after targets of opportunity mainly in Point Loma, was just arrested, police say.

Channel 10News reported:

A community relations officer for the San Diego Police department posted a note on social media Monday saying the serial armed robber had been arrested.

Here is what we reported in early October about the seemingly random targets: …

It was a big day on Saturday over at the Dog Beach Dog Wash, OB’s iconic dog wash storefront, a really big day – actually a LANDMARK day.

At precisely 8:10 a.m., on the 22nd of November, the dog wash folks washed their 500,000th dog.

At that moment, GusGus – the dog – and his mom, Chris Uzeta (from Clairemont , was the Dog Wash’s 500,000th dog wash – or the half millionth dog wash!

Too upset over what was announced last night in the failure of the Grand Jury to indict officer Darrin Wilson in the murder of Michael Brown to post today.

There are planned protests, vigils and demonstrations in 120 American cities today, Tuesday, Nov. 25th, including several in San Diego.

The OB Rag has a brand new poll – begun today, Nov. 24 – on the City installing a “round-about”…

OB Rag readers who participated in our most recent poll, voted overwhelmingly to keep the current “hippie floral” design on the OB Hostel on Newport Avenue.

67% of our readers want the new owners of the hostel, USA Hostels, to keep current paint job.

22% of those who responded want to see the exterior painted over. Seven per cent had no opinion.

In a recent post by our writer Matthew Wood on an interview with the new staff of the hostel, the issue was raised whether the new owner and its management would paint over what Wood called the “OB-esque Hippie Floral Design”.

Much to their surprise, walkers on the Ocean Beach Pier on Saturday, Nov. 22nd, were confronted much to their disgust with ceramic models of aborted fetuses. The grotesque models were on a table along with pamphlets and books being handed out to anyone interested by an anti-abortionist group.

The table had a canopy and had been set up close to the stairs leading to the beach. It was staffed by about 5 people – one of whom held a toddler – and had been set up by a group named the Saint Paul Street Evangelization -with an address of 525 B Street Suite 2200, in downtown San Diego.

By Jim Miller

It’s Thanksgiving week and Walmart is getting ready to ruin the party by asking nearly one million of its workers to come in on the holiday to get a jump-start on the Black Friday consumer frenzy. Given its size and influence, Walmart’s move, if successful, is likely to set a trend in the industry and wreck Thanksgiving for millions more underpaid service sector workers in the future.

Fortunately, OUR Walmart is responding in kind by promising the biggest Black Friday Strike ever with allies in labor and the community promising to join hands with them in their protest. As Think Progress recently reported:

Workers have gone on strike and protested for the past two Black Fridays.

Wall Street Fraud on a Massive Basis

By John Lawrence

In an article in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi lays out the case involving massive fraud on the part of JP Morgan Chase, one of Wall Street’s biggest and un-finest banks, considered too big to fail and, evidently, too big to prosecute for the massive criminality it is guilty of. It has been well documented what they and other Wall Street banks did that caused the financial crisis of 2008.

First, their counterparts lured everyone with a beating heart into their offices and gave them a mortgage regardless of their credit score, regardless of whether or not they were working, regardless of whether they could even afford to make a mortgage payment. Countrywide is the prime example of the predatory recruitment of low income people in order to turn them into homeowners despite their inability to pay.