Search: Word to the Wise

By Geoff Page

A person attending a Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning Group’s regular monthly meeting for the first time might have found a number of things about the November 16 meeting to be puzzling. The meeting was really illustrative of this “community planning group.”

Taking Roll

The puzzling would have begun with taking roll. Chair Dike Anyiwo took roll counting six group members present. Anyiwo determined that was a quorum.

Stephen Fredman graduated from Point Loma High School in a large class of 900 students in 1966. I was there – that was my class too.

Like many alums, Stephen left this “waspish, uncool Navy town” and he ended up teaching modern American poetry and poetics at the University of Notre Dame for 37 years. He’s written a book of poetry, translated several works from Spanish, and authored five books of literary history and criticism. Now the local boy has published his latest work, Pass Through, and partially at least, it’s about growing Jewish in Point Loma.

“Shoeshine Willie” – Willie Washington — passed on Saturday, January 22. Known for his iconic shoeshine shack on Newport Avenue in OB, Willie had become one of several unofficial mayors of Ocean Beach. He maintained his shoeshine business for over four decades.

At his own request, there will not be a funeral service, but some community members are still collecting donations that will be given to local veteran charities in his honor.

Willie was a legend and officially closed his business this past November.

By Diane Bell / San Diego Union-Tribune / Nov. 20, 2021

An Ocean Beach landmark has closed forever.

Willie’s Shoe Shine, a tiny shed in the parking lot of Mallory’s furniture store on Newport Avenue, has shut its single door.

“Shoeshine” Willie Washington officially has retired. For as many as five decades the retired Marine, now in his mid-80s, has either worked in Ocean Beach in a shoe repair store or run his own drive-by/walk-by business out of a parking lot shed.

He grew into a legend and an icon and even has been referred to as the unofficial mayor of O.B. Willie, as everyone calls him, always has a smile and a kind word and seems to know everyone, their children and their kids’ children. “He’s been a mainstay on Newport for decades,” recalls Frank Gormlie, publisher of the “OB Rag,”

By Edwin Decker

Dear Ed, I am a bartender and have a regular customer who doesn’t tip. It’s not that he doesn’t have enough money. He drinks a lot, buys top shelf drinks for himself and others and often runs up a hefty tab. He’s a really nice guy and I don’t want to offend him, but still, enough is enough. Should I take him aside and politely say something?

Sincerely, Slightly Riled by a Regular

Dear Riled,

Nope. No. Absolutely do not confront him – politely or otherwise.

by JW August / Times of San Diego / April 30, 2021

It was back in 2016 when Geoff Page noticed during his runs up and down Ocean Beach Pier what he thought were troubling structural problems.

Page has a construction background, so he says he couldn’t help but notice excessive wear and other damages to the supports for the 1,971-foot pier — the longest concrete pier on the West Coast.

It was also the same year that Ocean Beach celebrated the iconic pier and its 50-year survival of many of nature’s challenges. Over the decades, massive waves have taken a toll on the pier but how serious the problems may have become had never been made public by the city.