Shawn Styles / CBS8 / Sept.22, 2026
The Ocean Beach Pier has been closed for nearly three years, leaving many residents frustrated and saddened by the loss of one of the community’s most recognizable landmarks.
For local graphic designer Brad Fernbaugh, the closure is personal.
“The pier holds a special place in my heart,” Fernbaugh said. “My wife’s grandmother is the one that put on the contest, and it’s been closed for three years. I look at it every day and it bums me out.”
Fernbaugh is behind the “’66 Poster Project,” a fundraising campaign built around Ocean Beach’s connection to the 1966 World Surfing Championships. The competition, held near the Ocean Beach Pier, is remembered as a pivotal event in surf culture.
A tribute to 1966 surf history
Fernbaugh recreated the style of the original poster used to promote the 1966 contest.
“The original that looks like this was done for the 1966 contest, so I replicated something similar,” he said.
The artwork also honors Australian surfer Nat Young, who won the championship. Young’s approach represented a shift in surfing style, emphasizing turns from the top to the bottom of the wave rather than simply riding down the line.
Fernbaugh brought a smaller version of the poster to a monthly Ocean Beach community meeting, where he presented the idea to Ocean Beach Community Foundation President Cody Machado and the organization’s vice president.
“They had just finished their meeting,” Fernbaugh said. “I walked in with a small version of the poster. I said, ‘Hey, I got this idea,’ and he and his vice president lit up with excitement.”
Funds set aside for pier
Machado said the project arrived at a moment when residents were increasingly eager to support the future of the pier.
“It was a match made in heaven. You couldn’t have wished for better timing,” Machado said. “It’s like the community as a whole knows something needs to be done. The whole town is in a place to start doing something.”
Money raised through poster sales will be placed in a separate account designated for the Ocean Beach Pier project, organizers said. The goal is to make the money available when the city needs support for the pier’s future.
“We can make sure that the money gets directly to the pier project when the time comes, [if] the city needs that money,” Machado said.
For Fernbaugh, the campaign is about more than commemorating a major moment in local surfing history. He hopes it gives the community a tangible way to help bring its landmark back.
“It would mean that we have a pier again and that I had something to do with it,” he said.
Where to buy
The ’66 Poster Project is available through 66poster.com and at participating stores in Ocean Beach.
Somehow I doubt very much that this will raise much of the new pier’s cost anytime soon but hey, it’s a nice gesture and I applaud the effort.
It’s sort of obvious that the city isn’t really going to find the hundred million+ anytime soon. Even at $45 a pop (minus, of course, the cost of producing this poster and marketing), this will be less than a drop in the bucket. At least it’s a start, though!
However much the actual cost will end up being with the continuing rise of Trumpflation, a new pier will, without a doubt, be much more expensive than the earlier estimates is what I’m guessing. IF it ever gets built of course. It may not.
But first things first, and that is the dismantling of the rotting hulk of the old one without destroying the reef below with hundreds of tons of concrete landing on it. This needs to be done before anything else happens. With no real maintenance anymore, pilings breaking off, rusting metal and crumbling concrete, it needs taken down before it falls down. Which is what will happen whether the city builds a new pier or not because if they don’t get around to doing anything but watching it fall apart into the ocean piece by piece, eventually the big sections of the deck will let go.
This in itself is going to be damn expensive. Millions of tax dollars. tens of millions perhaps, just to demo it and remove the debris to landfills or whatever they do with all of it.
Does anybody know if there is any funding for that first stage work tucked away somewhere in whatever passes for a ‘budget’ in San Diego’s right-wing wealthy power structure? They controls just about everything (excepting the RAG of course!)? I mean, how much did the city spend on just the cute designs they published?
But I like the artwork of this new poster, he’s a skillful artist, and keeping the concept of a new pier in the public eye is a noble cause. Somebody should be doing it.
The original ’66 poster that’s on the front room wall, even as faded as it is with the thumbtack tears in the corners, still makes me smile.
Good luck.
sealintheSelkirks