Monday nights at Winston’s Beach Club in Ocean Beach have been the same for nearly 35 years. The same band, crowd and jam.
Sept. 22, though, was the last Monday night at “Winston’s.”
Monday morning the live music venue and bar that has operated since 1987 announced its closure at the end of week. It will reopen under a new name, not yet revealed, sometime in October or November, according to an Instagram post. The venue’s ownership has shifted, with the owner of Club 710, Scott Slaga, taking a larger stake in the future of Winston’s.
Yet Grateful Dead Mondays with Electric Waste Band are set to continue. Ed Fletcher plays drums with the band. He joined about two years after it started, and has played with them since.
He said when they were informed of the temporary closure, they thought that they would need to look for a new space for a while, but were told that they won’t be missing many Mondays, if any. Fletcher said they’re expecting to maintain their weekly Monday night slot at 1921 Bacon St., but they won’t stop playing if that’s not possible.
“If worst comes to worst, the Harp is right down the street,” he said.
Fletcher, donning a graphic tee of Jerry Garcia, looked around before the band began its set. He said in the early years of Electric Waste Band, they “played to the doorman.” Now, in his estimate, 75% of the people around the room, filled by around 80 people, come here on a weekly basis.
“Sometimes I think they’re more into this band than I am,” he laughed.
Paul ‘Doc’ Farrell has known the Electric Waste Band for nearly 30 years. He doesn’t miss too many Monday nights.
“As long as these guys are here on Monday nights, that’s the only thing I come here for,” he said.
“I don’t care what they call it.”
Jess Vaccaro does care what it’s called. She’s been going to Winston’s on Monday nights consistently for the last two years. She first came to Winston’s on a visit from Chicago. Her deadhead friends in the Midwest told her it was the place to see. She was supposed to visit San Diego, and move to Colorado thereafter. Winston’s was something that drew her here to stay.
Mondays are an important part of her week. She said she shapes her plans around the day.
“I’m very sad to see it leave, to whatever extent that means. Even if it’s the name,” she said.
While Vaccaro knows she’ll be at the first Monday the Electric Waste Band plays after the venue reopens, she doesn’t know how the lineup of bands will look in the future. She comes to Winston’s on other days for more Jam Band shows. The idea of those musicians not being in the lineup anymore, “breaks her heart.”
The speculation is that DJs could dominate the new lineup.
Kevin Rudnik points out the new lights already installed in the rafters. They weren’t on for Electric Waste Band, but he’s ready to work with them. He says the other sound guys who work at Winston’s might have a hard time — they don’t know how to work lights. He does.
Rudnick works sound at Winston’s and at the Music Box. One’s a job to him, the other he calls his second home. He’s at home this night, or rather “Monday night, church night,” he clarifies.
As he sees it, there’s no reason that the Harp, The Holding Company and Winston’s all can’t survive as small independent venues on the same block. But he’s quick to add that the music industry is an entirely different landscape than what it was years ago. “Venues under 500 [capacity] are not able to make money,” he said.
Competition is healthy, he said, but he does realize all Ocean Beach’s venues are competing for mostly the same type of crowd. After all, he said, “no one is doing hardcore DJ sets.”
Jefferson Jay believes the name change is a signal to everyone that things are going to change. What that change looks like, he said, is a big unknown.
“Obviously [the owners] don’t want it to be ‘Winston’s anymore… They want everyone else to know it’s over,” Jay said.
Jay tries to make it to Winston’s two to three times a month for Electric Waste Band — a band he inducted into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame, which he created. He said Winston’s has held a special place in his life. He watched the venue struggle after COVID and its temporary closure in 2020. A change in direction could keep another music venue alive, but Jay said he has no expectations for what that will mean, good or bad: It will just be different.
“I hope they cater to OB and not the PB crowd they want,” Jay said.
Whether the neon lights spelling “LIQUOR” or the lightbox sign that reads “Live Music” still hang on the wall is up in the air.
The regulars at Winston’s – or whatever’s next – will soon find out.
