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Ocean Beach (San Diego, California)

USA / California / San Diego / San Diego, California
 community, neighbourhood, draw only border
Ocean Beach is a small 742-acre beach community a few miles northwest of downtown San Diego.
OB is about as unpretentious as San Diego beach living gets. Sunny days are punctuated with the occasional jet roaring overhead, the barking of happy dogs partying at Dog Beach, waves pounding the coastline of Sunset Cliffs. It's a place where Halloween and New Year's Eve are high holy days, and the O.B. Chili Cook Off, the Christmas Parade, and the 4th of July fireworks show are annual traditions.

In many ways, it's kind of a quiet sleepy place that time forgot. It's one of the few places left in San Diego (or the rest of the country for that matter) where the shops are locally owned and managed, and there isn't a Baby Gap and a Pottery Barn on every corner. Well, at least not yet. A few years ago Starbucks moved in, and it caused quite a controversy. Many communities would welcome a Starbucks - it means gentrification. For OBecians, it means homogenization, something that for the most part has not taken firm root in our beloved little community. And we like it that way.

Anyway, there's a lot to be said for this funky little beach town, with its odd collection of antique stores, bars, Deadheads, restaurants, musicians, activists, bikers, artists, and feral cats. We may not all agree on everything, except that we all call OB our home.
www.oceanbeach.com
www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/profiles/oceanbeach...
www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/profiles/maps/mapoc...
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Beach,_San_Diego,_California
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   32°44'42"N   117°14'28"W

Comments

  • Greg (guest)
    Yes, and it is a very sad year, this one where a local optometrist is buying up all the OB mainstreet buildings, raising the rents, and forcing the small ma/pa shops out. There is a push to make this perfect area, into the same old crap that resides up and down the coast...where you can't even find a parking spot and your just paying your good money out to HUGE money. It bites.
  • Famous Anon (guest)
    I love this place. Don't change
  • Hocus Pocus (guest)
    Unpretentious? Guess again!
  • Kevanalden (guest)
    The ugliest beach in San Diego but I like the bohemian atmosphere.
  • ekeenan
    Ocean Beach, summer of 1967. I'll never forget. It was the best summer ever.
  • austen02
    I love OB! I lived on Muir St. for a year during college and it was so much fun!
  • DW (guest)
    Spring of 1980 when I was 20 years old!
  • Show all comments
This article was last modified 11 years ago