MARCH 17, 2016 – SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE BEACON
READERS CHOICE AWARDS
R E TA I L / S E R V I C E S
2 0 1 5 Readers weigh in on Ocean Beach favorites Ocean Beach has been Ocean Beach since 1887, which means it's only 37 years younger than the state of California. Developers Billy Carlson and Albert Higgins changed the neighborhood's name from Mussel Beach then to make things a little more appetizing for would-be investors – let mussels spoil even for a day, and you've got an aroma issue that makes La Jolla Cove smell like a freshly minted crop of Spanish lavender. Outside of that, Carlson and Higgins were shrewd businessmen whose acumen rested on fairness and customer service – tenets that today's Ocean Beach retail merchants observe as in the days of yore. They know how to tailor their products and services to the customer's goal, whether it be that extraattention food co-op, that friendly optometrist looking after your precious
vision or that forward-looking estate planner with only your family's future interests at heart. Accordingly, we often ask our readers to pick the “best of” retail and services industries around Ocean Beach and neighboring Point Loma – after all, you guys know the merchants as well as the merchants know themselves, because you stroll our business districts every day in search of their services. Here, in The Peninsula Beacon Readers Choice Awards 2015, you're the judges – more important, you're the jury. And not only did you weigh in on the neighborhood's best of the best; you also chose the categories under which their names appear, making this project a truly reader-intensive enterprise. That special piece of apparel to mark that special night contid on page 2