Walk Newport Avenue this month and you'll pass two storefronts mid-transition within sight of each other. At 5049, a combined bar-and-taco concept that lasted less than three years is being gutted for something new. At 4994, a taco operation that keeps outgrowing its own success just opened its third location.
Neither story is really about food or drinks. They're about what it actually takes to survive on a three-block business strip where the audience has seen every borrowed concept come and go, and rewards the ones that were built for OB specifically.
Three Tenants, One Storefront
The address at 5049 Newport Avenue has not been kind to whoever leases it. Its earlier tenant was JJ's Sports Bar & Grill, and after that came a joint Cass Street Bar & Grill and Harry's Taco Shop concept sharing the same space, an arrangement SanDiegoVille described as an unusual attempt to transplant two Pacific Beach concepts into the heart of Ocean Beach. Cass Street Bar had started across town in Pacific Beach before expanding into the OB location, and Harry's Taco Shop was launched by the team behind Mike's Taco Club. Neither was built with this corner in mind, and the combined concept lasted less than three years before folding.
That track record is why the operators moving in this summer are framing their concept so differently. As SanDiegoVille put it when covering the transition, unlike the tenants it replaces, the new occupant "appears designed specifically around a singular identity rather than repurposing brands that originated elsewhere." After multiple attempts at transplanting something that worked somewhere else, this one is starting from scratch on purpose.
What's Moving In: Drink 182
The new tenant is Drink 182, a bar, coffee shop, and arcade concept built around pop-punk nostalgia, opening at 5049 Newport Avenue under the ownership of local operators Jason Wildes and Joshua Dunn. The venue secured an active Type 47 restaurant liquor license through Drink 182 OB, LLC, and the business had targeted a mid-to-late July 2026 opening, so if the timeline held, it should already be pouring coffee by the time you're reading this.
The people behind it have real ties to the scene the concept borrows from. Co-founder Jay Nightride runs the music production studio Nightride Visuals, has worked with artists including Steve Aoki, Lil Jon, and Fall Out Boy, and plays in Death Cab for Karaoke, a live karaoke band that performs monthly at Soda Bar. His partner Tony Jaw has spent over a decade in local bar and hospitality work, most recognizably running the karaoke booth at Redwing Bar & Grill. Morning coffee service comes from James Coffee Co., whose co-owner David Kennedy plays in Angels & Airwaves alongside blink-182's Tom DeLonge, which is as close as the venue gets to an official band connection despite the name. After dark, the menu shifts to New England-style beach pizza, a niche style one of the founders picked up growing up near Boston, plus cocktails, local craft beer, and arcade games. The walls carry original artwork from San Diego artist Konecki.
The detail that matters most for anyone who actually lives in OB: the operators have said they plan to stay open until 2 a.m. on weekends and on Wednesdays specifically, timed to the Ocean Beach MainStreet Association's weekly farmers market, which runs Newport Avenue every Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. That's not an accident. A bar built around nostalgia and community only works if it plugs into an event the neighborhood already shows up for.
A Few Doors Down, A Different Kind Of Problem
A few storefronts away, at 4994 Newport Avenue, Chula Tacos opened its third location on August 1, according to San Diego Magazine's coverage of the expansion. This isn't a business trying to find an identity. It's one that keeps running into the opposite problem: too many customers, too fast, in spaces too small to hold them.
Founder Munoz's original stand got shut down by the city over complaints about noise and traffic, a shutdown caused directly by how popular the concept had become. He didn't sit on it. From the time the city closed him down to the time he had keys to his first brick-and-mortar space was less than two days, and he was already in talks to hand his old space at 1719 Palm Avenue in the Nestor neighborhood to another restaurateur rather than let it sit vacant. His second location, in Chula Vista, caught fire on Valentine's Day and is slated to reopen this fall at 689 H Street. The third just landed on Newport Avenue, and he's already scouting a fourth somewhere between Ocean Beach and Morena Boulevard.
Munoz has been candid about where he thinks this is headed:
"I'd like to become the In-N-Out of tacos."
That's an aggressive comparison for a three-location operation, but the growth pattern backs it up. This isn't a business testing whether OB will accept it. It's a business that has already outgrown two other neighborhoods and picked Newport Avenue as its next stop.
Two Corners, Side By Side
| 5049 Newport Ave | 4994 Newport Ave | |
|---|---|---|
| Former tenant(s) | JJ's Sports Bar & Grill, Cass Street Bar & Grill, Harry's Taco Shop | N/A (new location) |
| Problem it solves | Replacing imported concepts that never fit the block | Adding capacity for a concept that keeps outgrowing its space |
| New arrival | Drink 182 (bar, coffee, arcade) | Chula Tacos (third location) |
| Target opening | Mid-to-late July 2026 | August 1, 2026 |
| Built by | Local operators Jason Wildes and Joshua Dunn | Founder Munoz, expanding from two prior locations |
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
Newport Avenue isn't turning over because OB is suddenly attracting outside investment or losing its character. It's turning over because the strip has gotten specific about what it will and won't tolerate. A borrowed concept, however competent, can burn through multiple operators before someone finally builds something from the ground up for this exact block. Meanwhile a concept with a genuinely differentiated product, in this case a taco shop with a fast-growing following, can get shut down for being too successful in one spot and simply open somewhere better a few months later.
If you've lived here a while, you've probably watched this pattern before without naming it. The businesses that stick around Newport Avenue tend to be the ones with a specific reason to exist here, whether that's Hodad's world-famous burgers, the antique district that makes OB the largest in the county, or a Wednesday farmers market that's been running long enough to anchor two new business plans around its foot traffic. The ones that struggle tend to be the ones that could have opened on almost any commercial strip in San Diego and just happened to land here.
If You Want To Beat The Crowd
Both openings are worth a walk regardless of which side of that pattern interests you more. Drink 182 is easiest to catch on a Wednesday evening, when the farmers market crowd spills down Newport Avenue between 4 and 8 p.m. and the bar plans to be open to meet it. Chula Tacos, if its first two locations are any indication, will keep drawing enough traffic that an early visit beats a weekend one. Either way, the same three-block business strip has two new reasons to slow down this month, and neither of them requires you to drive anywhere else in the city to find them.
Whether you're watching Newport Avenue's storefronts change because you live two blocks away or because you're weighing what a neighborhood like this actually offers day to day, that kind of turnover tells you more about a place than a listing sheet ever will. If you're thinking about what it would take to call Ocean Beach or another San Diego neighborhood home, especially if you're using a VA loan or relocating on a military timeline, Alanna Strei can walk you through what these neighborhoods are really like to live in. Book your free VA relocation consultation and start with the block-by-block details that actually matter.
