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The OB Rag blog and website was first initiated by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones in late October 2007 and our original intent was to ply the San Diego scene with news and commentary from a distinctively progressive and grassroots perspective, and to also provide a forum for those views. Importantly, we also wanted to provide some kind of web platform for the Ocean Beach community. And in the Spring of 2013, we opened up a small office within the Green Store on the 4800 block of Voltaire Street. In October 2013 – we reached our 6th anniversary – and we’re still going strong. We’ve changed a lot – writers and bloggers have come and gone – but the Rag continues to provide a web platform for OB residents and merchants, and covers local OB and Point Loma news, issues and events. Significantly, the OB Rag staff began publishing a new online journal for all of San Diego – the San Diego Free Press. It jumped out in June 2012. Many of the then people who were then writing for the Rag didn’t live in OB and we eager to begin writing about their own neighborhoods or about San Diego more in general. (Now – at the end of 2013, the San Diego Free Press matches and surpasses the readership of the OB Rag – as it has its own very-involved editorial board and more contributors.) Some brief history about the OB Rag website: Besides providing a news site for OB, we also wanted to be a resource for San Diego’s peace movement – as the Iraq War was still going on. At our year anniversary – late October 2008 – we had a daily “visitor” or reader average of over 250. Around that time, we decided to focus more of our attention and energies on OB itself. By October 2009 we had a daily visitor count somewhere between 500 to 900. And we were taking advertisements and sponsorships and selling hot-looking T-shirts. Our stats just continued to rise dramatically over the months. In March 2010 we are averaging between 750 and 1,000 visitors a day, and with over 26,000 visitors for that month. That June we had 34 visitors short of 40,000, and by that Fall it was 1,200 to 1,400. Then in October 2010 we had 43,000 visitors. In the Fall of 2011, and our very best month – October 2011 we had 108,000 visitors – this was during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Other milestones: we had our one-millionth page hit in mid-December of 2010, and our two-millionth hit in November 2011. Since then, our stats have leveled out due to the impact of the publication of the San Diego Free Press. We’ve had a plethora of writers, bloggers, contributors, photographers, and close supporters over the years – some of whom continue to write and contribute.