By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag
A December 1928 photograph captures the Strand Theatre on Newport Avenue when it was only about 3 years old, its Mission Revival architecture standing prominently along one of Ocean Beach’s emerging commercial streets.
The theater opened Nov. 6, 1925, replacing the earlier Ocean Theatre and giving the growing beach community a larger movie house. According to the city of San Diego’s Ocean Beach Community Plan, The Strand became an important neighborhood landmark and helped spur development along Newport Avenue. The building was designated Historic Resource Site No. 561 on Dec. 20, 2002.
The Strand arrived at an interesting moment in American entertainment. Movies were evolving rapidly, and theaters were becoming gathering places as well as destinations for the latest films. The Strand served children and adults, with Saturday serials for younger audiences and new movies for evening crowds. A plaque on the building recalls the weekly screenings and the black-and-white sundaes sold at the neighboring Strand Sweet Shop.
For generations of Ocean Beach residents, The Strand was much more than a neighborhood movie theater. By the late 1970s, it had developed a following for its eclectic programming, including Friday and Saturday night screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It also showed films such as Woodstock, The Endless Summer, Gimme Shelter and Rust Never Sleeps, according to OB Rag’s retrospective on the theater.
The Strand faced one of its biggest controversies in 1982, when it began showing X-rated films. Ocean Beach residents organized protests and collected petition signatures opposing the programming. The city also pursued legal action over the screenings, which officials said violated restrictions on adult films near residential areas and other protected locations. In November 1983, The Strand returned to conventional movies, although protesters remained concerned that the X-rated screenings could resume.
Changing moviegoing habits eventually proved harder to overcome. The Strand closed in 1998, ending nearly three-quarters of a century as Ocean Beach’s movie house.
The building, however, was not finished without controversy. After it was sold in the early 2000s, plans to convert the former theatre into a tourist-oriented retail store prompted another round of community activism. Ocean Beach Grassroots Organization activists and other residents feared the historic interior would be gutted. OB Rag reported that nearly 200 letters supporting preservation efforts were collected and sent to the mayor.
Those efforts did not save the theater interior. The building was gutted, and Wings, a beachwear and souvenir retailer, opened in the space in 2003. The former theatre’s retail use continued, and the business today is listed as Breeza Beachwear at 4948 Newport Ave. The original movie-house interior is gone, but the building’s exterior survives, along with its historic designation.
The Strand’s story reflects the importance of neighborhood sheathes in Ocean Beach’s past and the challenges of preserving historic buildings as communities change. Although the movies stopped decades ago, the building remains a reminder of the community’s efforts to shape the future of one of Newport Avenue’s most recognizable landmarks.
Sources:
San Diego History Center — Early San Diego Theatres, including the Strand and its December 1928 photograph:
https://sandiegohistory.org/collection/photographs/Theatres/
City of San Diego — Ocean Beach Community Plan, historic context and Appendix C:
https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/ocean_beach_community_plan-final_document_reduced_0.pdf
City of San Diego — Historical photograph of Newport Avenue and the Strand Theatre:
https://www.sandiego.gov/digital-archives-photos/newport-avenue-strand-theatre-ocean-beach-1958
OB Rag — “The Strand Theatre-Part 1: the Year the Porno Theatre Was Stopped”:
https://obrag.org/2010/09/the-strand-Theatre-part-1-the-year-the-porno-Theatre-was-blocked/
OB Rag — “The Strand Theatre of Ocean Beach – Part 2 – Memories from the Seventies”:
https://obrag.org/2010/09/the-strand-Theatre-of-ocean-beach-part-2-memories-from-the-seventies/
OB Rag — “Strand Theatre Building in Ocean Beach Is Up for Sale”:
https://obrag.org/2017/06/strand-Theatre-building-in-ocean-beach-is-up-for-sale/
Strand Theatre in Ocean Beach on Newport Avenue, c. 1928. (Photo and caption info courtesy of the San Diego History Center)
From 1963 to 1965, I stood at the front of the Strand Theater in Ocean Beach as a teenage usher, watching the whole neighborhood pour through those doors like clockwork. Mrs. Balcum owned the place then, a quiet woman with a firm sense of order, and every Saturday at 10 a.m. the Strand transformed into a three?hour carnival for kids. OB parents would pull up in station wagons, drop their children off, and trust us to keep the peace while the screen lit up with serials, cartoons, and cliffhangers. The RC Cola promotion was the heartbeat of those mornings—six bottle caps got you in free—and kids arrived clutching them like treasure. The lobby filled with the smell of popcorn and the chatter of a hundred voices, and next door the Strand Sweet Shop overflowed with kids buying ten?cent sundaes before the show. I remember the raffles, the noise, the way the lights dimmed and the whole room fell into a hush as the projector flickered to life. For those few hours, Ocean Beach felt like the safest, happiest place in the world, and I had the best seat in the house.
After reading your comment I felt like I had just read something out of a James Lee Burke novel. And that’s a big compliment.
This is a wonderful memory — thank you so much for sharing
best years. strand theater ‘MOZART’ BROUGHT IN-BURRITOS AND OUR SONS
Whenever it was in the early 1970’s that “The Yellow Submarine” played the Strand, I took my daughter and another little kid to the Saturday show there. Beforehand, I made a U-turn on Newport for a parking spot and got a ticket. It was worth it.
Saw many movies there as a kid in the 70s.
If I ever win the lottery, one sign will be that I’ll move back to San Diego and try to buy that property and turn it back into the Strand Theatre.
Yeah, not likely. But an attractive fantasy.
I believe I first walked into The Strand to see a Western movie in 1956 at age nine. I had been hooked on local movie theaters in Belmont Shore, Long Beach at least three years earlier, so was primed to become a regular Saturday movie kid. I still have some 25 cent ticket stubs from The Strand glued to a memory album. My routine was to eat an early breakfast, then walk from Piedmont Drive in the Sunset Cliffs neighborhood down to dangerous trails along the cliffs eventually arriving at Newport, then hit every magazine shop, Ma & Pa Zeke’s Antiques, drug stores, sundry stores, toy and gadget shops, eventually laying down my quarter for a ticket to see whatever movie or double feature was playing. Fun memories of Westerns, science fiction flicks, war movies, and even romances. In those days, there was a 5 and dime store next door where I would buy small toys like marbles, balloons, and plastic soldiers to amuse me on the walk back to my home after the show. I stopped my Saturday routine in 1962, when my parents sold the Piedmont Street house and we moved to the highlands above Pacific Beach. Once I got hold of a car in 1965, I occasionally went to movies at The Strand, but also spread out to drive-in theaters and the Downtown scene. Actually, in the Summers, I often took the bus downtown to see really fancy theaters like the Fox, Spreckles and California. Truly fun memories.