Winston's Beach Club announced Monday that it is closing in its current incarnation, with a "Last Call" celebration scheduled for Saturday, September 26. The venue said the historic music club will reopen in October with a new name, a new look and "mostly new owners," making the announcement less a traditional permanent closure than the end of the Winston's era.
"Last Call! @WinstonsOB (as you know it) is closing," the venue announced on social media. "This historic music venue will reopen with new fire and a new name in October."
The farewell party begins at 9pm September 26 and will feature Fish & The Seaweeds along with special guests, with former employees invited back and longtime customers encouraged to take "one last shimmy on the dance floor." The club also said its remaining Winston's merchandise will be put on sale as it prepares to retire the brand.
Exactly what will replace Winston's remains a mystery. The announcement did not disclose the venue's new name, identify the incoming ownership group or explain what prompted the change, and comments were turned off on the Instagram announcement shortly after it was posted.
There is also an initially confusing wrinkle: Winston's website still shows a substantial calendar of events extending throughout the end of September and all October, including its longstanding Monday-night Electric Waste Band residency, weekly trivia and karaoke and a slate of previously booked concerts. Outside ticketing platforms similarly continue to advertise performances at "Winston's Beach Club" after the September 26 farewell, including reggae artist Keznamdi on October 8 and additional concerts extending into November and December.
That schedule does not necessarily contradict the closure announcement. Winston's specifically said the historic music venue will reopen in October, meaning the physical club is expected to continue operating as a live-music destination even though Winston's as patrons have known it is ending. Existing shows appear positioned to survive the transition, although the venue has not yet explained whether every currently advertised event will proceed unchanged or when ticketing platforms and its online calendar will be converted to the new identity.
For Ocean Beach, it is a significant changing of the guard. Winston's traces its history at 1921 Bacon Street to 1986, when the intimate club began what would become an unusually durable run in a neighborhood where independent bars, restaurants and music rooms have long helped define the community's identity. The San Diego Reader has reported that the space originally had more of a blues-and-biker-bar identity before Bill Winston reshaped it around 1990 for a younger crowd increasingly interested in reggae and jam bands.
California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control records provide another window into that history. A predecessor license at 1921 Bacon Street was issued in July 1987 to O B Zone Inc., whose president, secretary and stockholder was William H. Winston III.
That license was transferred in October 1998 to Blind Winstons LLC, the entity that remains the current ABC licensee. State records list Scott P. Slaga, Michael S. Stifano and Edward William Wigler as members of Blind Winstons LLC and show its Type 48 on-sale general public premises license as active.
The current license is scheduled to expire September 30, just four days after the announced farewell party. ABC notes that expiration information can take up to six weeks to reflect renewal payments, however, and the public record currently shows no active hold, disciplinary action, escrow or notification associated with the license.
The club's longevity is particularly remarkable in San Diego's constantly changing nightlife landscape. Over nearly four decades, Winston's developed a reputation for booking an eclectic mix of reggae, rock, blues, punk, hip-hop, bluegrass, jazz, world music and jam bands, often putting nationally recognized musicians into a room dramatically smaller than the venues they might otherwise play.
Artists associated with the Winston's stage over the years include Steel Pulse, Slightly Stoopid, Melvin Seals & JGB, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, The Skatalites, Ike Turner, Sister Nancy, Los Lonely Boys, Sprung Monkey and numerous others. The venue's small size became part of its appeal, offering San Diegans the increasingly rare opportunity to see established touring musicians at close range.
That residency helped cement Winston's identity as something considerably different from a conventional beach bar. Long before jam bands became a festival-industry staple, the Bacon Street club cultivated a distinctly Ocean Beach mixture of Deadheads, reggae fans, surfers, musicians, neighborhood regulars and touring acts.
The venue also became a gathering place even when there wasn't a touring band on stage. Over the years, its calendar has included comedy, open jams, trivia, karaoke, poetry, football watch parties and other neighborhood events, allowing Winston's to function as both a music club and an informal community living room. Its weekly traditions proved remarkably durable. Electric Waste Band remained a Monday fixture, while OBoke karaoke and Thursday trivia became familiar recurring entries on the calendar alongside an ever-changing rotation of local and touring musicians.
Winston's has come close to disappearing before. In November 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, the club announced it would close indefinitely because restrictions on live entertainment had made continued operation financially untenable. Management said it could not see a viable path forward without another federal loan, grant assistance or the return of live music.
The shutdown ultimately proved temporary. Winston's survived the pandemic and resumed its role as one of Ocean Beach's principal live-music rooms, continuing to host local bands and touring performers through 2026.
This time, the circumstances appear fundamentally different. Rather than warning that the room itself may disappear, Winston's is explicitly telling customers that live music will continue at 1921 Bacon Street after the name disappears.
That distinction also explains why the venue's current calendar stretches well beyond the September 26 "Last Call." Winston's website currently shows programming throughout October, while independent concert listings show previously announced performances extending even later, including shows in November and December.
What remains unknown is how much of Winston's will survive beyond the calendar. The announcement's reference to "mostly new owners" suggests at least some continuity, but neither the composition of the new ownership group nor the degree to which the club's staff, booking philosophy, recurring events and familiar atmosphere will carry over has been publicly detailed.
There is also the matter of the liquor license. Blind Winstons LLC's current license expires September 30 according to ABC's online database, almost perfectly coinciding with the announced transition to a new concept in October. No pending transfer or escrow is currently displayed in the public license record, although ABC cautions that its online records may not immediately reflect renewal activity.
For now, the only certainty is that Winston's Beach Club is ending, but the venue itself is not. The September 26 farewell will give former employees, musicians and generations of Ocean Beach regulars a chance to celebrate a club that spent roughly four decades doing something increasingly difficult in San Diego: remaining unmistakably itself.
Then, sometime in October, the doors at 1921 Bacon Street are expected to open again. The bands are apparently staying. The name above the door won't be Winston's anymore.
