Many beer makers remove gluten at the beginning of the brewing process, resulting in a watery, sad thing. Enter San Diego’s Duck Foot Brewing Company. At their new 5,000-square-foot brewery and 749-square-foot tasting room (fits 49 drinkers), owners Matt DelVecchio and Brett Goldstock add a natural, flavorless enzyme at the end that exorcises the gluten but keeps the craft beer taste. The 20 taps will feature pale ales and IPAs, plus concoctions like a chocolate-hazelnut stout and coconut-molasses brown. The space is modern minimalism meets Comic-Con, with concrete, steel, and wood and murals from childhood buddies at Brooklyn design studio Madonna+Child. 8920 Kenamar Drive, Miramar
Stone Brewing Co.'s Craft Beer Ambassador and Certified Cicerone, Bill Sysak (aka “Dr. Bill”), salutes the newbies.
By Bill Sysak
Rip Current Brewing
Hop heads will love the Curl IPA, with 10.3% ABV and strong citrus, tropical fruits, and pine aromas.
Modern Times Beer
Try Fortunate Islands, a wheat beer brewed with West Coast hops. Its citrus and tropical notes are a great choice for warm summer nights.
Modern Times Beer
Modern Times Beer | Photo by Luis Garcia
Nickel Beer Co.
It’s great to see Tom Nickel (owner of O’Briens Pub) back in the brewing game. His beers are exceptional. Try Stonewall Stout, a classic English stout with coffee, chocolate, and vanilla notes.
Saint Archer Brewing Co.
Their connection to the extreme sports community is sure to convert a whole new wave of craft beer aficionados. Try the Pale Ale, a hop-forward California-style pale.
Amplified Ale Works
The in-house craft brewery of California Kebab & Beer Gardens has some delicious food and equally delicious beers. Rare Form, a Belgian quad with notes of fig, plum, raisin, and brown sugar, is the perfect nightcap.
Benchmark Brewing Company
Their Feisty Fleur, with its Belgian esters and light candy sugar notes, is a spot-on representation of a traditional Belgian tripel.
Culture Brewing Co.
The American strong ale clocks in at 7.7% ABV and 100 international bitterness units (IBUs).
Encinitas Ale House is the real deal—a consistently amazing and ever-changing tap and bottle selection, and servers who know their beer. #SDMBeer —@PetCobra
Plan 9 Alehouse. Their pork belly BLT is great and their nut brown ale is the best I’ve had. —@BallTerrence
Phileas Foggs: Great food, great beer, great staff, very clean, killer specials like 50-cent wings and $4 drafts. #SDMBeer —@TuyeYAYA
Bruski Burgers and Beer is my favorite place to grab a beer and food in San Diego. Their burgers beat out any burger joint. The pastrami burger is to die for. —Kyle Rayder via email
O’Brien’s Pub is one of SD’s oldest specialty beer bars. The owner, Tom Nickel, gets a lot of rare, one-off kegs. The prices are still really good—$4.50 for some pints. Some customers have been going there practically daily for close to 25 years. —Peter Hawkins via email
Has to be Blind Lady Ale. Why? Because @LeeChase of @AutomaticBrewCo will sit and talk beer with everyone! #SDBeer —@bernasconi
Hamilton’s Tavern
Hamilton’s Tavern | Photo by Paul Body
Hamilton’s Tavern’s easily my fave bar to enjoy craft brews. Choices galore, tons of events, 2nd Saturday. What’s not to love? —@MatyRice
Oh my fave beer bar is, hands down, Queens Of Beer in #Hillcrest—the world’s first out & proud #LGBT brewery. The pizza = epic. —@AHizz
Tiger! Tiger! is my absolute fave beer bar! The beer selection is always exceptional +food/staff put it over the top! —@jennjjones
Raglan Public House. Great beer selection. Knowledgable servers. Beach vibe. Oh, & good food too! #SDMBeer —@MartinEglitis
Hands down fave beer bar is MonkeyPaw. Fabulous rotating taps, great bottle selection, super knowledgeable staff & great grub! —@JenQFE
Stone Brewing Co.'s Craft Beer Ambassador and Certified Cicerone, Bill Sysak (aka “Dr. Bill”), salutes the newbies.
By Bill Sysak
Rip Current Brewing
Hop heads will love the Curl IPA, with 10.3% ABV and strong citrus, tropical fruits, and pine aromas.
Modern Times Beer
Try Fortunate Islands, a wheat beer brewed with West Coast hops. Its citrus and tropical notes are a great choice for warm summer nights.
Modern Times Beer
Modern Times Beer | Photo by Luis Garcia
Nickel Beer Co.
It’s great to see Tom Nickel (owner of O’Briens Pub) back in the brewing game. His beers are exceptional. Try Stonewall Stout, a classic English stout with coffee, chocolate, and vanilla notes.
Saint Archer Brewing Co.
Their connection to the extreme sports community is sure to convert a whole new wave of craft beer aficionados. Try the Pale Ale, a hop-forward California-style pale.
Amplified Ale Works
The in-house craft brewery of California Kebab & Beer Gardens has some delicious food and equally delicious beers. Rare Form, a Belgian quad with notes of fig, plum, raisin, and brown sugar, is the perfect nightcap.
Benchmark Brewing Company
Their Feisty Fleur, with its Belgian esters and light candy sugar notes, is a spot-on representation of a traditional Belgian tripel.
Culture Brewing Co.
The American strong ale clocks in at 7.7% ABV and 100 international bitterness units (IBUs).
The Best Gym in San Diego Isn’t Really a Gym Anymore
Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped "athletic" from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
There’s a version of San Diego that lives in two extremes. On one side, the 5 a.m. crowd: biohackers, marathoners, people who’ve already logged a cold plunge before your alarm goes off. On the other, the after-dark crowd, the ones chasing sunset happy hours and late dinners with friends. Everyone seems to be either optimizing or unwinding, and most of us feel like we’re failing at both.
Fit, San Diego’s reigning Best Gym for the third year running, has built its entire identity around erasing that divide.
Walk into one of Fit’s three San Diego locations on a Tuesday afternoon and the lines blur fast. Someone’s mid-set on the squat rack. Someone else has a laptop open at a café table a few feet away, half-working, half-people-watching. A group is trading plans for the weekend’s event by the recovery lounge. Nobody’s in a rush to leave.
“We’re not competing for the same people,” says Emily Waybright, Public Relations Manager at Fit, addressing the arrival of a national luxury gym chain in San Diego this year. “We don’t really feel like we’re in the gym category. It’s this unique thing.”
That unique thing has a name now. Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped “athletic” from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
It’s a small wording change with a bigger idea behind it. Fit was never built around escaping the workday. It was built around the people who genuinely like what they do, and who want workouts, work, and friendships to happen in the same place instead of three separate ones. Because sometimes red light therapy with a stranger turns into weekend plans.
Fit’s philosophy traces back to its founder, who started the brand nearly two decades ago after failing to find a gym he actually wanted to belong to. He looked instead to the old-school country club, where people came for a shared interest and stayed for the community. His version was made for a younger generation, minus the golf, plus the loud music.
Which makes it a little ironic that the very award putting Fit back in the spotlight this year is Best Gym.
What does the best traditional gym look like when the definition of a gym is becoming less traditional? It’s a fair question, and Fit’s answer is that the fitness industry itself is shifting. The 45-minutes-in, 45-minutes-out model is giving way to something closer to a genuine third space, the kind of role the office and the bar used to play before remote work and changing nightlife habits rearranged how people spend their time
For Fit, community isn’t a marketing add-on to fitness. It’s the through-line. Members aren’t just paying for a treadmill; they’re paying for an entire day of social wellness that’s built on performance, recovery, connection, and a plan for the next event on the calendar. That’s a much harder membership to walk away from.
Ambition and ease aren’t opposites here, they exist side by side, where passion and play share the same morning. On September 12, Fit is hosting Sol, a full day wellness festival at Fit Social. The morning focuses on wellness classes and vendors and then the evening is a full party with multiple DJ sets and an open bar. Think of it as a kick-off to locals’ summer in San Diego.
Ready to see what a social wellness club actually looks like? Visit fitclubs.com, or follow along at @thefitclubs on Instagram.
Encinitas Ale House is the real deal—a consistently amazing and ever-changing tap and bottle selection, and servers who know their beer. #SDMBeer —@PetCobra
Plan 9 Alehouse. Their pork belly BLT is great and their nut brown ale is the best I’ve had. —@BallTerrence
Phileas Foggs: Great food, great beer, great staff, very clean, killer specials like 50-cent wings and $4 drafts. #SDMBeer —@TuyeYAYA
Bruski Burgers and Beer is my favorite place to grab a beer and food in San Diego. Their burgers beat out any burger joint. The pastrami burger is to die for. —Kyle Rayder via email
O’Brien’s Pub is one of SD’s oldest specialty beer bars. The owner, Tom Nickel, gets a lot of rare, one-off kegs. The prices are still really good—$4.50 for some pints. Some customers have been going there practically daily for close to 25 years. —Peter Hawkins via email
Has to be Blind Lady Ale. Why? Because @LeeChase of @AutomaticBrewCo will sit and talk beer with everyone! #SDBeer —@bernasconi
Hamilton’s Tavern
Hamilton’s Tavern | Photo by Paul Body
Hamilton’s Tavern’s easily my fave bar to enjoy craft brews. Choices galore, tons of events, 2nd Saturday. What’s not to love? —@MatyRice
Oh my fave beer bar is, hands down, Queens Of Beer in #Hillcrest—the world’s first out & proud #LGBT brewery. The pizza = epic. —@AHizz
Tiger! Tiger! is my absolute fave beer bar! The beer selection is always exceptional +food/staff put it over the top! —@jennjjones
Raglan Public House. Great beer selection. Knowledgable servers. Beach vibe. Oh, & good food too! #SDMBeer —@MartinEglitis
Hands down fave beer bar is MonkeyPaw. Fabulous rotating taps, great bottle selection, super knowledgeable staff & great grub! —@JenQFE
Two San Diego Wine Pros Are Betting Big on Tinned Fish
With Sosal Line, Heidi Greenwood and Juerie Masters are importing traceable seafood from small producers and building a global pantry business along the way
Courtesy of Sosal Line | Photo Credit: Madison Daube
No matter your job, it’s helpful to find some sort of joy in it to avoid going completely insane. Some people savor the variety of personalities when dealing with customers. Others find comfort in the predictability of closing a bar after last call, counting tips and wiping counters. Perhaps achieving Inbox Zero really gets your blood pumping, or shipping a new product design sparks joy.
For Heidi Greenwood and Juerie Masters, work doesn’t get better than logistics and operations.
“[We] both love all the unsexy parts of supply chain and backend management,” laughs Greenwood. Tracking outbound orders? Ensuring compliance? Managing inbound freight? Stop me if this is getting too hot for you!
Not enough people think about the unsexy reality of running a business before launch, but effectively and consistently keeping an eye on operations separates successful companies from out-of-business ones. Both Masters and Greenwood already own their own businesses—Greenwood is behind the wine zine Campestre Mag and runs the online wine shop Esquina, and Masters co-owns Clos Wine Shop and Fintastic Provisions in University Heights with her husband Paul. Apparently, these gigs weren’t enough to satisfy their collective yearning for spreadsheets and inventory maintenance.
So, they decided to start another business together—Sosal Line, a San Diego-based import and distribution company specializing in global pantry items. The pair launched Sosal Line at the beginning of 2025 and currently only sell three brands of tinned fish, but Greenwood says they plan to expand their offerings as they discover other small or family-run businesses that share their values.
“We want to work with brands and with products that really have a sense of place and actually tell a story—not just the product, but the people behind it too,” she says.
Masters and Greenwood are both Korean-American and named this burgeoning business after Haenyeo, the legendary free-diving women of Jeju Island in South Korea. Traditional Haenyeo equipment and garb include oribal (swim fins), yeoncheol (lead belts to help them sink), and the company’s namesake sosal, a hand-held fishing spear (sometimes called jaksal).
The average person, if sitting completely still, can stay underwater for up to a minute and a half at most. Haenyeo can hold their breath for up to three minutes while actively foraging, harvesting, and swimming. Scientists say these diving women spend more time underwater than any other group of humans on earth. Not badass enough for you? The average age of Haenyeo is around 70.
Courtesy of Sosal Line | Photo Credit: Luke Schmuecker
“Fishing is a strong heritage for Koreans, and it’s the same here in San Diego with the Portuguese settlers,” Greenwood explains. (We aren’t the tuna capital of the US for no reason.)
Sosal Line carries 100 percent traceable, wild caught fish from Galicia in Northern Spain and the Pacific Northwest, all family-owned companies who don’t compromise on sustainable practices. Tinned fish has never been more popular—or more debated—but there’s more to it than cute labels designed for maximum Instagram reach. “I want to know who I’m purchasing from,” says Greenwood. One of their suppliers, Craft Fish Co., which is based in San Diego but fishes in the PNW, is run by JJ and Jessica Gerritsen. JJ catches, Jessica packages, and it’s a business relationship on a first-name basis. “You can’t find that when you’re working with some nameless brand.”
San Diegans can find Sosal Line products at local retailers like Clos/Fintastic (obviously), allmine in Oceanside, Always Hungry Grocery & Goods in Carlsbad, J. Brix Wines in San Marcos, Collins & Coupe/Tablespoon in North Park, and Green Acre in La Jolla. They’re also available in select retailers in Northern California, Oregon, Arizona, and strangely enough, South Carolina. Expanding its client base is, of course, a goal. But not at the expense of quality or joy of discovery.
“I would love to see people try food from different cultures and be excited about it,” says Greenwood. “Maybe make them want to travel to experience different areas of the world.”
Beth Demmon is an award-winning writer and podcaster whose work regularly appears in national outlets and San Diego Magazine. Her first book, The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider, is now available. Find out more on bethdemmon.com.
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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