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“It’s always friendly, and always fun to people watch.” While biking, he says, he still eats at the same places he’s been eating at for years, mostly little Mexican joints such as Oscar’s, La Playa, and La Perla. “The atmosphere hasn’t changed much over the years,” he says. He still rides his swing bike on the Mission Beach Boardwalk at least once a week, and says the only thing that has really changed for him is that back then, he was riding a skateboard instead of a swing bike.

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Ruriberto’s is still a liquor store where creeps like to hang out to watch the bikini girls shop for water and snacks, plus several T-shirt and swimwear shops, and a bar, the Coaster Saloon, that since 1982 has been one of the area’s favorite watering holes for locals, alongside the Pennant, The Beachcomber, and The Open Bar.ĭwight Arnold, 60, has been coming to Mission Beach since the late ‘70s, and he lived in Pacific Beach for six years in the ‘80s when he worked for local radio station 91X. Kojack’s, a Greek place just a few doors down from Hamel’s, still serves the best gyros in town, as it has since the shop was first opened by Mike Soltan back in 1983.

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There’s still a Mexican fast-food place down on the northwest corner, at Mission Boulevard, though it was initially a Roberto’s Taco Shop and has since progressed through a series of “berto” names before settling on the current Mr. The rest of Ventura Place also hasn’t changed much over the years. And there were older couples in touristy attire - floppy hats, floral prints, even an occasional fanny pack - holding each other’s hands or gripping canes. There were teen boys on skateboards and entire families on bicycles, the majority of them rented from one of the handful of nearby bike rental shops. (It is officially known as Oceanfront Walk, but everyone calls it “The Boardwalk,” even though it’s not made of wood but, rather, paved concrete.) On my last visit, during the February heat wave, there were pairs of young girls roller-skating in bikinis, their tans so even they looked airbrushed. The Mission Beach Boardwalk could be a commercial for San Diego summer – even when it’s not summer. Bike rentals, skate repair, T-shirts, swimwear, towels, and whatever else you might need for a day in the sun, sand, and surf – it’s all there, as it has been since brothers Dan and Ray Hamel first set up shop in a former beachfront gym back in July 1967, the Summer of Love, with a starting inventory of twenty-four used Stingray bikes (purchased at a police auction) as well as two dozen surfboards. And Hamel’s Action Sports Center, situated in a waterfront building remodeled many years ago to resemble a cartoonish castle, remains its soul. The foot of Ventura Place - which is what West Mission Bay Drive is called as it stretches west for one more block past Mission Boulevard - remains the heart of Mission Beach.

But the coaster was resurrected in 1990 as the cornerstone of a new shopping center that also saw the refurbishment of another historic relic, the Mission Beach Plunge, a huge indoor swimming pool. Spreckels, the historic wooden thrill ride fell into disrepair and became one of the city’s first homeless encampments after the 1976 closure of the Belmont Park amusement park.

The Giant Dipper roller coaster still beckons visitors from the southwest corner of Mission Boulevard and West Mission Bay Drive.īuilt in 1925 by sugar magnate John D.

Unlike Downtown, Old Town, Little Italy, and North Park, Mission Beach hasn’t been made over or “reinvented.” Drive down Mission Boulevard, which bisects the narrow isthmus south of Pacific Beach, or walk two and a half miles along the oceanfront Boardwalk, and you won’t find many changes from what things were like a generation ago. Welcome to Mission Beach, where time has stood still - sort of. Arnold (fourth from left) judging the 1986 Miss Mission Beach bikini contest with 91X's Rob Tonkin (second from left) and consultant Joel Stevens (seated, right, with hat).

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