OB Mainstreet Association

The Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association’s Website Investment

December 16, 2010 by Brenda McFarlane
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If you haven’t visited the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association website lately, I urge you to visit it and bookmark it or place it in your favorites. Like our own website, it’s been growing substantially over the years and every time I visit, more information is added. It’s become a good and reliable reference for Ocean […]

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In the early seventies Gary Gilmore found ‘heaven’ and he’s been in Ocean Beach ever since.

October 26, 2010 by Frank Gormlie
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Gary Gilmore – Newport Avenue’s goldsmith par excellence – is proud of the fact that he arrived in Ocean Beach in 1973 with nothing else but the clothes on his back, his guitar, and his leather tools. He had journeyed across the country and had found heaven. And he’s been in OB ever since. His is a true classic rags to riches story. Yet it’s an OB hippie version of the classic. For Gary Gilmore certainly looked like a hippie when he arrived 37 years ago.

Gary’s love for OB is so evident that it’s almost difficult to get him to talk about anything else. This was all apparent as we took our seats for a lunch at the quintessential OB restaurant – the Old Townhouse – featured prominently in the current television series “Terriers” which was filmed in OB.

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Getting to Know the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association, Part 1: The Founders and the Power of Idealism

August 23, 2010 by Brenda McFarlane
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I dropped by the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association (OBMA) the other day to learn more about the group that organizes my favorite event of the year, the OB Street Fair & Chili Cook-Off. It turns out that this active organization is not only a rich source of news about their own activities but have some great stories to tell from the past.

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Reader Rant: Does OBMA rent to anyone during Farmers’ Market?

November 18, 2009 by Source
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by OB Anonymous

The Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association. Will they rent spaces to anyone during The Farmers Market? It appears so.

Perhaps I’m alone out there but I would think that one of the roles of the OBMA is to support the local business’s on the 4900 block of Newport. It’s not bad enough that there is a significant drop in revenue from having all the parking spaces taken from 4900 block merchants, but now, to add insult to injury, they seem to be working against local merchants by renting spaces to jewelry vendors, massage therapists, clothes vendors, hot food booths etc etc etc. How does that help the tax paying businesses on the 4900 block of Newport Avenue?

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Meet your neighbors on the OB Restaurant Walk

November 2, 2009 by Source
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by Cindi Guilbert

I am an Ocean Beach Restaurant Walk newbie. There, I said it. When I first caught mention of Restaurant Walk in a post on OB Rag, I wanted to know more. What’s the story behind the bus? What bands will I see? Which food businesses and bars are participating this year?

I needed to know EVERYTHING that is Restaurant Walk the way Nancy Drew needs a whodunnit. I asked when to expect to see a blog about this event, and a few emails later, found myself offering to dish on the details of one of OB’s best kept secrets…

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OB Flashes – News, Calendar and Discussion Board for Oct 30th – Nov 5th, 2009

October 30, 2009 by Frank Gormlie
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Crane works on jetty repair

Federal stimulus are being used to repair the Mission Bay channel entryway. The project, overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, includes fixing the channel’s south jetty – OB’s north jetty, which was reportedly damaged by an El Nino winter storm ten-eleven years ago. Go inside for link to our earlier post on this.

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OB Rag awarded by OBMA for annual Street Fair coverage

October 23, 2009 by Staff
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OCEAN BEACH, CA. Last night 10/22/09 at the Masonic Temple, the OB Rag received a special award from the Ocean Beach Mainstreet Association for our coverage of OB’s annual Street Fair held last June.

OBMA awarded the blog a 2009 Community Partner Award “For outstanding coverage of the 30th Annual Street Fair & Chili Cook-Off Festival”. Doug Porter and Frank Gormlie accepted the plaque on behalf of the website. Others from OB Rag attending were Lane Tobias and Gary Gilmore – who is also on the OBMA Board of Directors.
It is true that the OB Rag’s coverage of the Street Fair was awesome!

Here’s a break-down of the scope and breadth of what we presented : ….

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Original OB Rag Memorialized in Plaque On Newport

September 21, 2009 by Frank Gormlie
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OCEAN BEACH, CA. The original OB Rag – that iconic Ocean Beach underground newspaper – and our blog’s namesake-, received an honorable mention in a plaque fastened to the side of the old Bank of Italy building recently. That building, on the northeast corner of Newport and Bacon, has been many things over the years.

Today a corporate coffee shop, an ATM, and a hairstyler is in the building; but yesteryear it was the Bank of Italy.

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Latest U-T Puff Piece on OB Celebrates Our Music

August 17, 2009 by Source

Editor: Every now and then the Union Tribune publishes a puff piece about Ocean Beach. They did it again – and this time it was about OB’s music and the CD Waves with music from OB bands.

WHERE SURF MEETS SONG

By Mike Lee / Union-Tribune / originally published August 15, 2009

Ocean Beach in San Diego is known for its Bohemian vibe, a very long pier and, of course, its foamy curls.

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Free Concert: OB “Waves” Party Set to Rock at Masonic Temple

July 15, 2009 by Doug Porter
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Producer Chuck Schiele and the OB Mainstreet Association (OBMA) joined forces this year to produce a CD called “Waves” featuring bands based in Ocean Beach with songs about life in our community.

They are hosting a CD release party this Friday (July 17th) at the Masonic Temple, located at the corner of Santa Monica St. & Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

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Show Me the Money – Part II – Where Did the Street Fair Money Go?

July 11, 2009 by Gary Gilmore
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by Gary Gilmore

The rockets’ red glare is gone. The echoes of the bombs bursting in air have faded. The volleys of marshmallows have been put to rest for another year. It’s time for an accounting. Where did all the money go?

At the risk of tainting the innocent pleasure that our fireworks bring to the happy hordes of revelers that flock to our little beach town on this holiday I’m going to tell you what they cost.

Twenty five grand. $25,000. …

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The Saga of the July 4th OB Parking Lot Controversy

July 9, 2009 by Frank Gormlie

Originally posted July 9, 2009

by Frank Gormlie

Earlier this week I set out to get to the bottom of this July 4th OB Pier Parking Lot controversy. On Monday, July 6, the Reader ran an on-line article that we supplemented about how 26 RV owners were evicted from the Pier parking lot by police in the early morning hours of July 4th. They were threatened with arrest and having their vehicles impounded. The police wanted the parking lot for their own vehicles. …

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OB Street Fair: SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

June 27, 2009 by Gary Gilmore
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by Gary Gilmore

There’s more to our little Street Fair than chili, music, beer & good times.

What makes this whole extravaganza tick is money. That’s right, crass as it may seem, it’s money that makes the Street Fair go ‘round.

All 250 vendors (give or take a few) with their colorful booths, … had to fork over $365 bucks each …

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Taggers In OB – Local Smoke Shop May Be Source of Supplies

June 11, 2009 by Doug Porter
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by Doug Porter

A few weeks ago I posted an article here about some corporate sponsored spray painting that occurred on the sidewalks of Ocean Beach. It seems as though a company called Nutrisoda (or somebody in their employ) decided that a little guerrilla marketing in OB would be a good way to launch their San Diego marketing blitz. Their cutesy sidewalk slogans angered many small business owners who ended up having to scrub the stuff off their sidewalks.

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The Kids – the Young and Homeless of OB

June 8, 2009 by Mary E. Mann
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by Mary E Mann

For weeks, starting in he beginning of May, I was getting up early and taking walks around Ocean Beach. I was looking for the groups of kids (teens and twenty-something’s mostly), who I have heard described as “Pier Kids”, “Anarchist Kids”, “Street Kids”, “Kids with backpacks”, and “Those kids who wear a lot of brown and have dogs, and sometimes cats on leashes”. I will refer to them here as The Kids. The Kids are, in fact, the young and the homeless.

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Neighborhood Pride – Making the OB Brand A Reality

February 27, 2009 by Doug Porter
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by Doug Porter

Only a fool would deny that the economy, both locally and nationally, is in the tank. By every measure the future looks mighty bleak, with or without a stimulus. Rising unemployment, sagging industrial production, ever-tightening credit and the collapse of the housing market all add up to a very grim picture, particularly if you are a retail merchant located in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California.

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