Brad Fernbaugh and Cody Machado want the replacement project for the Ocean Beach Pier, closed since 2023, taken off the back burner.
But the city’s current budget woes seem to preclude work on a project that is estimated to cost up to $190 million.
So, with the OB Pier Replacement Project undergoing environmental review until next spring. the community activists have launched a pier fundraiser titled The ’66 Poster Project.
Available now through 66poster.com and at participating Ocean Beach stores, the poster project is generating funds by selling historic 1966 surfing posters for $45 to kick start the pier’s replacement and eventual reopening.
“We want to get as much of that into the fund as possible,” said Fernbaugh, who is spearheading the fundraising campaign, built around OB’s connection to the 1966 World Surfing Championships.
A tribute to San Diego surf history, the 1966 competition, held near the Ocean Beach Pier, is remembered as a pivotal event in surf culture.
Fernbaugh, a 15-year OB resident, notes, “The pier holds a special place in my heart.” Of the pier’s closure the past three years, he added, “It bums me out.”
Fernbaugh got attached to the pier initially because of its history. His wife’s grandmother, “Miss Billy” Riley, was the one who organized the World Surfing Championships in OB. ABC’s Wide World of Sports televised the event.
A graphic designer, Fernbaugh not only came up with the idea for the pier poster fundraiser, but also built the website to support and promote it.
“This is to celebrate the 60th anniversary of that groundbreaking contest that took place here,” Fernbaugh explained, adding that the man who won that 1966 contest, Australian surfer Nat Young, revolutionized surfing. Young emphasized turns from the top to the bottom of the wave rather than simply riding down the line.
After re-creating the 1966 surfing poster and building the website to promote it, Fernbaugh presented his idea to the Ocean Beach Community Foundation, founded in 2000.
The foundation president and advocacy committee chair, Cody Machado, was impressed by Fernbaugh’s concept and its timeliness, given that the city is in the middle of the environmental review stage of the Pier Replacement Project. The public will have a chance to review the document before the project enters the final review stage.
Of the pier project’s estimated final build time, Machado said that the city expects it to take eight to 10 years. But he was quick to add, “Without the funding in place – that is very optimistic.”
When he joined the board, Machado said, he expected to find out “what’s going on” with the pier. But “it became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that they didn’t have many updates.”
Fernbaugh hopes the fundraiser will show some progress, perhaps even “excite some corporate sponsorship, some funding from a big source.”
Machado said that the consensus on the development corporation’s board is that something needed to be done to get the pier replacement project moving.
“Our whole team is community volunteers,” noted Machado. “There’s only so much you can do, unless you have somebody dedicated to it all the time.”
“We want to promote awareness, get the city excited about it (pier replacement) again, just use any method possible to get attention,” said Fernbaugh. “And this is one vehicle that can do it.”
