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The Top Gun House: Oceanside

One of our favorite photo opportunities, in years past, has been this house, currently known as The Top Gun House.

Built in 1887, the cottage was originally known as The Graves House in honor of its original owner, a physician from Riverside. One of the oldest beach cottages in San Diego County, it boasts an unusual architectural style: Folk Victorian. Designed to evoke the more elaborate Victorian homes of the era, Folk Victorian found favor among homeowners in the late 19th Century due to its ease and affordability. Spindlework detailing and cornice brackets were added to existing homes to create the style, which became common as Western towns were settled around the turn-of-the-century.

The house later became a beach rental before making its appearance as the home of Tom Cruise’s love interest in the movie Top Gun, which grossed over $360 million (more than $800 million in 2019 dollars)—the highest grossing film of 1986. It starred Cruise as a brash young naval aviator training at the elite Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego. The film became a cultural sensation; sales of bomber jackets and aviator sunglasses skyrocketed, Navy recruitment increased, and tourists began taking their photos in front of the newly dubbed “Top Gun House.”

As we all know, time marches on and the little house was located in prime Oceanside beach front property and had to go. Its removal was temporary, however. It was moved, renovated and returned, nestled in the middle of a huge, swanky resort. Once completed, the Top Gun house will be a darling ice cream parlor where customers can enjoy treats in a history that spans 133 years. "I feel the need, the need for... ice cream!" I can't wait.

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Top Gun House: HIGH-Pie For Desserts

Steve and I have been eagerly awaiting the new incarnation of Oceanside's famous Top Gun House. While it wasn't quite ready for its grand opening, just being there, seeing its progress, was pretty rewarding.

Built in 1887, the cottage was originally known as The Graves House in honor of its original owner, a physician from Riverside. One of the oldest beach cottages in San Diego County, it boasts an unusual architectural style: Folk Victorian. Designed to evoke the more elaborate Victorian homes of the era, Folk Victorian found favor among homeowners in the late 19th Century due to its ease and affordability. Spindle work detailing and cornice brackets were added to existing homes to create the style, which became common as Western towns were settled around the turn-of-the-century.

Immortalized in the first Top Gun film, where it stood in as the oceanfront home of Charlotte Charlie Blackwood, the love interest of Tom Cruise’s LT Pete Maverick Mitchell, the historic Graves House is stepping into its next act as a retro pie shop and bakery in downtown Oceanside.

High-Pie retains the nostalgic charm of the Victorian cottage. Relocated from its original spot down the street, the 500-square-foot house was restored as a feature of the pierside Mission Pacific Hotel and the Seabird Resort complex.

When it finally does open, we are promised, "Decorated with vintage furnishings and historical images of the Oceanside area, with set photos from Top Gun paying tribute to the building’s previous on-screen role, the pie shop will showcase its treats on a Willy Wonka-esque conveyor belt. The sweet and streamlined menu revolves around classic fried hand pies in seasonal fruit flavors like apple or cherry and mini pies a la mode filled with house-made mascarpone ice cream. Served on a stick for maximum portability, the ice cream-filled pies will be offered with dipping sauces ranging from chocolate and lemon curd to sea salt caramel." Worth waiting for, right?!

With Top Gun: Maverick, finally making it on the big screen, I'm certain High-Pie will indeed become world famous!

I can't wait to "Fly By Again Soon!" Oceanside is really bringing its "A" game and I think this place will be somewhere I'd like to be.

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Oceanside with Cindy...

Oh man, once in SoCal we hit the ground running with our Thursday morning being spent at the beach.

Oceanside is one of those towns that has so many diverse ways to fill your day. Today, Cindy and I did a little bit of everything (and it was awesome).

First stop... Parlor Doughnuts for my favorite Turtle Cheesecake layered pastry.

We then visited the sadly, not opened yet (noon) Top Gun House. Built in 1887 by Dr. Henry Graves as a vacation home, The Graves House is an oceanfront Queen Anne Cottage and is now recognized as the "last best" existing such house in San Diego county.

This house is best known by most people as The Top Gun House because of its prominent role in the movie of the same name. Scenes between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis were filmed here in 1985 and the popular movie was released in 1986.

In 2022, the house was fully restored in conjunction with the grand opening of Mission Pacific Hotel and The Seabird Resort. It is now a pie shop and on my must visit list. One day!

Next stop was the Seabird to ogle its changing art exhibits. The entire resort is like an art gallery. It is a true Oceanside gem.

The current showing at OMA West, an Annex Gallery of Oceanside Museum of Art is titled, NEXT STOP OCEANSIDE.

"Railroads played a critical role in the development of the city of Oceanside, with an important stop along the West Coast route that helped put the city on the map. Trains don't just carry passengers, objects, and packages-they carry hundreds of concurrent stories."

"In this street photography exhibition, six Oceanside High School students, from the Pirate Pics photography club, spent over a month documenting the comings and goings of passenger trains through the Oceanside Transit Center. Their goal was to capture the stories racing through Oceanside everyday, often unseen and unconsidered by residents of the city. The resulting images show a candid and truthful look at the daily goings on at the train station; a snapshot of both tourists and local commuters who depend on Amtrak, the Coaster, and the Metrolink to get them safely to and from our beautiful city of Oceanside."

A first for Cindy was a visit to the California Surf Museum. Founded in 1986, it has served tens of thousands of annual visitors from over 40 nations around the globe. With a permanent collection which chronicles the history of surfboards and wave-riding, the museum also offers many revolving exhibits each year. In its current museum-quality space, it has acquired a rare set of archives and collections gathered over more than 30 years, comprising one of the world’s richest troves of surfing history.

An interesting beginning to our surf lesson was found at the exhibit, Where’s the Surf? Find swell direction with Wave Science.

"The Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP) is an extensive network for monitoring waves and beaches along the coastlines of the United States. CDIP’s buoys measure sea surface temperature and wave direction in addition to wave energy. In 1996, the program started to make its data available in real-time over the internet, including the highly popular swell models. Today, all of CDIP’s data and products are available on the web in near real-time." While I didn't fully grasp the complexity of it all, it was a new science for us so that made it pretty cool.

Next we were introduced to Donald Takayama through The Shaping of a Surfing Legend.

"All advances in surfing style and performance starts in the shaping room. You could say that the effect the end-product produces is simply the result of innovation or design, but what of the role of the artisan creating it by hand? Is there something more they bring to it? Something extra that certain craftsmen can transfer to the craft they are creating."

Through this display, we learned that Donald Takayama was that kind of shaper and destined to become a maker of such magic. And he seemed like a really good guy.

Through six decades of board-building, he leaves behind a legacy of designing surfboards that not only accommodate style and function but advance it.

I appreciated seeing the Expanded Timeline of Surfboards, a collection of surfboards chronicling the history of surfing.

I spent a surprising amount of time learning about Bodysurfing, the art and sport of riding a wave without the assistance of any buoyant device such as a surfboard or bodyboard. Bodysurfers typically equip themselves only with a pair of specialized swim fins that optimize propulsion and help the bodysurfer catch, ride and kick out of waves.

In the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci experimented with various devices to improve the human physical condition: wings, vehicles and swim fins. At the same time, Hawaiians were leaving petroglyphic records of their wave-riding prowess.

Colonial Americans were not known for their agility in the water. A Boston newspaper reported, "The most frequent use of the harbor is for transport, and drowning. But one 11-year-old boy loved to swim. The ingenious child strapped thin planks of wood to his feet and hands, thus increasing his speed and efficiency in the water." Young Benjamin Franklin had discovered the swim fin.

In 1940, American gold medal yacht racer, Owen P. Churchill, was inspired by local Tahitians using handmade swim fins. Upon return to the U.S., he received a license from de Corlieu to produce his own rubber fins and renamed them swim fins. They were black and cost $4. Churchill Fins saw action in World War II with the British Frogmen and U.S. Navy.

I learned as long as surfers have been surfing, photographers have tried to capture their wave skills. This was a very cool camera.

“I’d paddle out at Windansea, take some pictures, slam the lens cap shut, then just throw it over the wave. It would pop to the surface like a buoy.” That’s Woody Ekstrom describing the way he deployed the camera housing pictured here. (originally built by Doc Ball in 1937). I would love that!

More my speed is the childhood favorite, the 51 year old Boogie Board. Its unique history was thoroughly explained in Let’s Boogie! Tom Morey and the Evolution of the Boogie Board.

Catching waves on a board while lying on one’s belly is one of the oldest forms of surf-craft riding, dating far back in Polynesian and other cultures. Then, in the early 1970s the modern bodyboard was launched — a soft, flexible piece of foam that offered a path to limitless fun in the ocean. It ultimately became known as the Morey Boogie.

The boogie board is the brainchild of restless genius Tom Morey, who, although an excellent stand-up surfer, kept looking for new ways to catch waves. A mathematician and engineer, Morey was taken with the idea of a small, lightweight craft while he was living in Kona, Hawaii in the early 1970s. The name Boogie comes from Tom's love of various music genres. “Boogie swung, and it had a wiggle and a jiggle to it,” said Tom. “The name fit perfectly.”

In the 1980s bodyboarding became the fastest-growing watersport in the world.

Now, after a half of a century of production, there are scores of companies making their version of Tom Morey’s unassuming plaything, yet many of us still refer to bodyboards “Boogie boards.” The name still sticks – kind of like Band-Aid, or Coke, Kleenex, and Vaseline.

More recent, astonishing history was revealed with Courageous Inspiration: Bethany Hamilton.

The exhibit tells the story of Bethany losing her left arm to a Tiger shark while surfing at Tunnels Beach on Kauai, how she survived that attack through the help of Alana Blanchard and her family, and the determination exhibited by Bethany to not only recover from the incident, but return to surfing a mere three weeks after the attack. But she didn’t just return to surfing – she returned to competitive surfing – and she continues to do well in surfing contests around the world and even surfing big waves.

Her story and her positive outlook on life have caused her to be in demand as a motivational speaker. She has inspired countless people to overcome adversity and not give up on their dreams. The exhibit features the surfboard Bethany was riding on that fateful Halloween day in 2003, the bathing suit she was wearing, the documentary Heart of a Soul Surfer, and several photographs and newspaper clippings. Inspiring indeed. WOW.

We then left the beach and meandered about at the Farmer's Market.

Our final stop on our Oceanside explore was at the public library. The setting, in the heart of the city, is one of the more beautiful libraries I have visited. What a fabulous morning of friendship, discoveries, and sea breezes. I loved it all.

“A good friend listens to your adventures. Your best friend makes them with you.”

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Oceanside Day with Cindy!

It seems like forever since Cindy and I had a girl day. Oceanside, a convenient meetup spot, offered us diverse activities with which to fill our day.

Breakfast and travel talk about Paris was al fresco at Petite Madeline Bakery. We were even treated to a gentle sprinkle which was so welcomed.

Since we were heading to OMA's WPA exhibit, our next stop was at Oceanside's post office, a Works Progress Administration project. The WPA was responsible for building Oceanside’s first permanent Post Office in 1935.

This historic building also contains two projects commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, which like the Federal Arts Project, provided murals and other art forms to decorate public buildings. The first commissioned project is the carved wooden eagle and grille over the front entrance which was done by sculptor and actor, Stuart Holmes.

The second is this beautiful 16' x 6' mural of the San Luis Rey Valley and its Mission, titled Air Mail by Elise Cavanna, an American film actress, stage comedian, dancer, and fine artist. For almost 90 years Air Mail has hung in the Post Office's lobby. It is estimated that there are only 900 to 1,000 of these original WPA postal masterpieces left. Every year murals are lost due to the closing or sale of post offices or outright negligence. My dream trip would be to travel the country finding all the Post Office Murals that remain, before they are gone forever.

I wanted to introduce Cindy to Oceanside's Museum of Art. I'm liking this local treasure more and more. We began our explore with Art for the People: WPA-Era Paintings from the Dijkstra Collection.

We were blown away by the realism in the artwork by Connie Jenkins in her exhibit Intertidal Paintings from the Channel Island.

Light, Color, and Desire by Janet Taylor Pickett is described as "pathbreaking work explores Blackness, identity, and history... Polemical, unique, politically and socially committed, the art included in Light, Color and Desire demonstrates Taylor Pickett’s arrival at a distinct narrative voice inspired by Johannes Vermeer, Henri Matisse, and Frida Kahlo."

Our final stop was at High-Pie, a dessertry delightfully located in the Top Gun House. I have blogged about this historic home and its cinematic significance several times. This was the first time we've timed it right to actually partake of its culinary treats.

Built in 1887, the cottage was originally known as the Graves House in honor of its original owner, a physician from Riverside. One of the oldest beach cottages in San Diego County, it boasts an unusual architectural style: Folk Victorian. What made the home truly famous happened almost 100 years later when in 1985, Paramount Pictures rented the house for two weeks and used it as the home of Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood, played by Kelly McGillis in the blockbuster movie Top Gun.