Progress May Sweep Away Old Surf Shop
In the fight between the proprietors of Moondoggies beach bar and Harrys’ Surf Shop, each brings a different slant on life.
Skip Frye, co-owner of Harrys’, is tubular. Brett Miller, operator of Moondoggies, is dot-com.
Miller, 31, is a restless entrepreneur eager to make his mark on the Pacific Beach neighborhood that houses both Moondoggies and Harrys’. Frye, 58, is marinated in mellowness and quite comfortable with his status as a longboard surf legend.
Both have visions for Pacific Beach.
The problem is that Miller’s vision of a first-class beachfront restaurant and 40-room resort goes straight through Harrys’ shop, as well as two adjoining businesses and a parking lot. The owner of the property sides with Miller and has served notice that Harrys’ and the others have a date with demolition.
Of such collisions are land-use disputes made, and this one has stoked a good deal of debate in Pacific Beach. Surfers and slow-growth advocates have rallied to the defense of Harrys’, but many in the business community say Miller’s project is the kind of upgrade that the community sorely needs.
For all its laid-back attitude, P.B., as it is known locally, has suffered of late from too many $1-a-drink bars, too much crime and too little private investment.
Pacific Beach Hasn’t Kept Up
P.B. is the poor relation of San Diego beach communities: Ocean Beach is funky, Mission Beach has its glorious aquatic park and roller-coaster and La Jolla glitters with money and manicured sand.
But P.B., save for the landmark Crystal Pier and a few other attractions, has lagged behind other beach areas. City Hall has even thought of making parts of it a redevelopment area, a dubious distinction usually reserved for the most blighted of areas.
Harrys’ is not the only surf shop in P.B. If productivity were the only measure, Harrys’ might not even rank near the top.
But when Mayor Susan Golding lost a World Series bet in 1998 to New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, she knew exactly where to get something quintessentially San Diegan for Giuliani: a hand-formed surfboard by Skip Frye.
We’re not talking some shorty, prefabricated board favored by poseurs, but a classic longboard for surfers truly dedicated to the endless pursuit of the perfect wave.
Beyond selling boards and serving as an informal surf museum, Harrys’ has been praised for helping deter pushers and riffraff from hanging out in an adjacent parking lot. Before Harrys’ moved in 10 years ago, the building on Felspar), just a few steps from the beach, was an eyesore and a magnet for trouble.
Still, when city officials and business boosters learned that Miller wanted to raze Harrys’ and invest $6 million on his restaurant-resort package, they shrieked the economic equivalent of cowabunga.
Miller, in a short span, has proved himself a smart and hard-working businessman.
He was attending San Diego State and selling real estate when he bought a struggling beer joint called Moondoggies in Pacific Beach in 1989. In 1993 he opened a second, far more posh outlet in La Jolla with a surf theme and full menu.
And in 1996, he opened yet another, much larger, Moondoggies in Pacific Beach on Garnet Avenue, two blocks from the beach. The original Moondoggies, farther away, was renamed The Dog.
Miller surfs occasionally but prefers jet-skiing and flying his own plane. He has a working relationship with one of the area’s major landowners, Vern Taylor, 84, who owns the property where Moondoggies and Harrys’ are located.
“I look at property all the time,” Miller said. “I want to see what’s going on, what are the potentials. I’m very ambitious.”
Indeed, even as he steers the restaurant-resort plan through the neighborhood planning board, the California Coastal Commission and the City Council, Miller has clinched another deal.
He bought out a venerable P.B. eatery called the Old Ox and plans a major renovation before reopening it as a Mexican restaurant called Gringo’s.
“I’m going to give a preview to P.B. of what I can do to a property,” he said. “The Old Ox is in dire need of a face lift and we’re going to give it one.”
Of course, with youth and ambition come impetuosity, and Miller concedes making some mistakes. Referring to P.B. as “seedy” in an interview with the Beach & Bay Press was probably one such misstep, judging from the angry letters the newspaper received.
Posting a building application notice from the Coastal Commission on the outside wall of Harrys’ without warning the tenants was a prescription for trouble.
“It was not the smartest thing I could have done,” Miller said. “I was excited [to get the application] and I let my excitement get the best of me.”
The notice did not greatly ruffle Frye or co-owner and fellow surfing great Hank Warner. They have learned to handle life’s wipeouts. (Both are formally named Harry, hence the name of the shop).
In 1968, Frye blew a radical cutback and lost the U.S. Surfing Championship to Corky Carroll. If it bothered him, he’s never let on.
Frye’s wife, Donna, runs a slightly higher temperature. She’s a full-tilt beach preservation activist.
She’s the force behind Surfers Tired of Pollution, or STOP, a grass-roots group that has been accusing Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego) of being weak on clean-water laws despite his image as a surfer. A bust of Bilbray sits in a toilet bowl at Harrys’.
When the power drill began to burrow into the wall to affix the building application notice, Miller says, Donna Frye hurled an expletive at him. She denies that.
“If I had gotten really mad, I might have picked him up and punched him out but I would never resort to vulgarity,” she said.
‘I Feel Kind of Like the Old Hawaiians’
The Fryes and Warner have long known that the owner would someday sell the property. For that reason, their lease is month-to-month and the rent a modest $1,000 a month for 3,800 square feet. Still, the impending loss of Harrys’ is painful.
“I feel kind of like the old Hawaiians when civilization finds out how neat their place was and decided to take over,” said Skip Frye.
“What’s happening to us is symptomatic of what’s going on with the coast: Things like public parking, access to the beach and viewsheds are being wiped out,” said Donna Frye.
The area is zoned for “visitor-oriented” commercial uses such as a hotel. But no land-use application is a slam-dunk--particularly when it involves a clash between an ambitious future and a mythic past.
There are issues of density, parking, view blockage and traffic patterns that have yet to be resolved. Miller’s bid for a liquor license for his restaurant could be his undoing.
Pacific Beach has five times the number of liquor licenses that the Alcoholic Beverage Control agency considers ideal. Police say the neighborhood has a serious problem with drunk driving and rowdiness, particularly by collegians.
The Police Department and neighborhood planning committee have opposed attempts by bar owners to expand their businesses or extend their hours. The town council dropped its sponsorship of the Pacific Beach annual block party because of crowd problems linked to alcohol.
“Right now there are two main reasons people come to Pacific Beach: to go to the beach or to drink,” said Michael Zucchet, a member of both the P.B. town advisory council and the planning committee. “A lot of good people are trying to see that second reason eliminated.”
The planning committee, which advises the San Diego City Council, is set to consider Miller’s building permit application Feb. 28.
For Harrys’, the obvious move would be to find another location. But rents are escalating beyond the reach of the business, which has put a higher priority on artistry than profit.
“I want only the best for Harrys’,” Miller said. “If I could help them find something else I would. But if I found something that cheap, I’d probably take it myself.”
If they lose their fight to save Harrys’, Frye and Warner figure they’ll end up working for one of the mass-production surfboard outfits. In San Diego, a good surfboard maker is never unemployed for long.
“I don’t worry much about it,” Frye said. “If that’s what happens to me, that’s where I was meant to be.”
