Hammering waves and fires have taken a toll on San Diego’s iconic piers this year.
Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach has been shuttered on-and-off since December. The Oceanside Pier remains charred and partly closed after flames engulfed it in April. And just last month, officials said storm-weary Ocean Beach Pier won’t reopen as they focus on designing a replacement.
But the San Diego region still has one pier left standing: the Imperial Beach Pier.
So far, the IB Pier has been the only ocean pier in the county to make it through the summer without a major closure. As of this week, it remains fully open to the public and was bustling with visitors.
On a hot summer afternoon earlier this week, people were taking advantage of that.
Young couples ambled out along the pier’s wooden planks, weaving between parents taking pictures of their kids and fishers waiting patiently for a bite on their lines. At the far end, a slow trickle of customers passed in and out of the Tin Fish, the tiny seafood restaurant known for its seafood tacos and local band performances.
Closer to shore, visitors camped out in the shade between the pier’s faded pilings and relaxed at the tables outside Cow-A-Bunga Ice Cream. Flocks of pelicans sailed overhead, and shorebirds wandered through the surf below.
Fernando Marquez, 57, had taken the bus up from Tijuana to visit the pier for the first time in months. He grew up in Imperial Beach and remembered boogie boarding and setting up campfires in the sand with his friends decades ago.
“I just wanted to come and see how it was,” he said. “It’s still the same old pier, man.”
The year hasn’t been without its challenges. The worsening cross-border pollution created by Tijuana’s failing sewage system has heightened worries about illnesses and choked some of the flow of visitors, according to local businesses. It has also raised questions about whether fish caught in Imperial Beach and Coronado are safe to eat.
Like other parts of the county, the beachfront town has also endured fierce storms and early signs of sea level rise, triggered by human-caused climate change. Earlier this year, pounding waves shook the Tin Fish.
The pier has seen its share of damage and reconstruction too. It was originally built in the 1960s, according to the Port of San Diego, the waterfront authority that owns and manages the pier. In the following decades, it was destroyed in a storm and saw multiple rounds of renovations.
Still, the IB Pier has endured. It holds on to the title of southernmost pier in California. Its largely wooden construction also endears it to many, including Chula Vista resident Feddy Johnson, who had come to fish for bonito and perch on his day off earlier this week.
“It’s just a better vibe,” Johnson said as he threaded a chunk of fresh mussel onto one of his fishing hooks. “Concrete seems like I’m walking on a sidewalk.”
For IB resident Trisha Baglioni, the pier will always be the place where she would go out fishing with her father at 5 years old. They wouldn’t always catch anything, but she loved spending time together out over the water.
Baglioni now manages the Tin Fish. Every morning before work, she walks out to the railing behind the restaurant and takes a moment to breath in the feel of the ocean.
“I don't think I could ever have a bad day while I'm at work,” she said. “I can wake up and not want to do anything. (But) I come out, I step onto the pier and I get about halfway up — and all the cares were left back there.”
