OB Rag

By Frank Gormlie

Coming on the heels of the electoral defeat of the community plan for Barrio Logan in the June 3rd Primary, there’s now yet another community whose plan in trouble, and this time it’s Ocean Beach.

After a 12 year process of updating its community plan, Ocean Beach finally had a Draft Update that was supported and endorsed by every community group in the village. The OB Town Council was on board as were the merchants’ association. Plus other groups as well, like the Friends of the OB Library.

But on its way for the anticipated final approval by the City Council, the OB Community Plan ran into a roadblock: the San Diego Planning Commission.

At their May 29th hearing on the Plan, the Planning Commission – having listened to City staff endorse it, and after nearly every Commissioner praised OB’s “unique character”, turned around and …

By Tony de Garate/ Special to the OB Rag

An architect may have been mistaken about zoning regulations when he drew up plans for a three-story, mixed-use project with 17 luxury condos and retail space in Roseville, the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) decided June 19 at its monthly meeting.

Tony Cutri, architect and vice president of Martinez + Cutri Corp., said the project provided 42 parking spaces – 11 for retail, 31 for condos. But a resident, Marian D’Angelo, said she had researched zoning ordinances and spoken to city planners who told her parking requirements were higher.

By a 9-1 vote, the board decided …

By Jim Miller

Tony Gwynn died last week and it stopped me. In part it was because he died too soon at 54, only four years older than me and many of my friends who grew up watching and admiring his skill as a player. As is always the case when someone who has been a part of your collective experience goes, there is a new hole in your life, that sense that something’s missing that won’t come back except as a ghost, a haunting memory.

But it was more than that. With the death of Gwynn, San Diego lost the last of his kind, a Southern California product who went to school at SDSU, came up with the Padres, and stayed here for his entire career, …

An unidentified white woman in her twenties, was apparently killed by a hit-and-run driver early Saturday, June 21st. Her body was seen around 6:00 a.m. near the eastbound on-ramp of I-8, right off Ocean Beach.

Police said her injuries were consistent with being hit by a vehicle. If true, she is another victim in a string of San Diego hit-and-runs of late.

Her body – seen by a passing motorist – was found in pickleweed and brush in the 4600 block of Nimitz Blvd. There were no witnesses.

Some of OB Rag Email Contacts Stolen – As He Calls for His Former Contacts to Email Him

Yes, it is true, and at first, I sort of laughed it off, as I went ahead and changed my password to the email account that was hacked on Thursday, June 19.

But then I realized all 2300 of my email contacts were gone ! – stolen by the hacker. Hundreds of those were my OB Rag email accounts. (It was my personal yahoo email account that was hacked – not the OB Rag gmail account.)

From Surfrider Foundation Press Release

Celebrate the Surfrider Foundation’s 10th Annual International Surfing Day!

The Surfrider Foundation San Diego County Chapter is teaming up with FM949 to host a free family-friendly in Ocean Beach. During the day, the Surfrider Foundation will be set up, along with a local surf school who will be offering free group lessons at 3pm and 4pm (limited spaces available), and local surfboard shapers who will be showcasing some of their boards.

The colorful Charles Collier gave away 60 acres to Ocean Beach “for the children of San Diego” over 100 years ago. These 60 acres were carved up over time by the City, the voters and other factors.

Voters approved a school on the parkland – originally called “Collier Jr High”, now Corriera Middle School -; the YMCA came in, a church followed, …

Dear UCSD Activist Alumni,

By Monty Reed Kroopkin

The OB Rag and San Diego Free Press have published a fine article, written by the Che Cafe Collective. Please circulate it widely. OB Rag / SDFP editor, Frank Gormlie, is an alum of UCSD. Alumni of the UCSD co-ops are mounting a call for all alumni to write to the University telling them we are cancelling the “planned giving” that we previously intended to do upon our demise, until and unless they back off and treat the Che Cafe and all the co-ops with proper respect.

By Kyle Trujillo, UCSD Undergrad

On Wednesday of finals week, June 11, I cut short a study session and hurried across campus to Scholar’s drive to the Ché Cafe Collective. I knew it as the Che. Besides, it had recently been stripped of its “collective” status. It was the first time I was going to a meeting and not a show.

As I approached the colorful building I slowed down to listen. The walls could talk. The faces of Rigoberta Menchu, Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Karl Marx, former student Angela Davis, and a prowling black panther.

Think you always have a choice over how to give birth? Think again.

By Michele Goodwin / AlterNet

When most women become pregnant, understandably they believe the choice of how they give birth will remain theirs; whether to deliver vaginally or through cesarean surgery or where to give birth, at home or at a hospital. Decades ago, those decisions were well within the domain of pregnant patients whose reproductive liberty and autonomy interests gained constitutional recognition in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

After all, whose body is it anyway? But what may have seemed clear-cut decades ago, is now put to the test by doctors and lower courts.

Signatures in Support of Plan Close on 2,000

It’s not that often that there is unity in Ocean Beach. It’s uncommon to see every OB group and organization line up together. In fact, it’s pretty weird to see the village so united.

But it’s happening – and I saw it yesterday while collecting signatures in support of the OB Plan.

I personally witnessed individuals who haven’t spoken to one another for maybe ten years – being pals out there at the Farmers’ Market on Wednesday. The camaraderie was obvious – ‘we’re all in this together on this one’ was the unspoken sense.

As I asked passersby to sign the Petition in support of the Plan, standing out on the sidewalk with my clipboard, to a person, those who stopped and listened to my spiel ended up signing it, except one couple from Point Loma.

For once, OB is united and unified in the unqualified on-the-street endorsement of what the Community Plan stands for.

Statement and press release from the Ché Café Collective

By Davide Carpano, student at UCSD and member of the Ché Café Cooperative

The Ché Café, a 34-year-old student-run cooperative at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has been under attack by the administration for the past two months and was served with a 30-day notice of eviction on June 13, 2014.

The notice was given to the students and their lawyer during a meeting initiated by the University to discuss on the future of the Ché. The student members of the Ché were under the impression that this meeting was part of the informal mediation and dispute resolution process they had requested several weeks ago.