Craft Beer San Diego (Pt. 2): Beeramar - The Nerdy and The Newbie

The F-14 Tomcat, one of the many fighter planes to find action in the former
NAS Miramar's Top Gun program (original photo from Wikimedia Commons;
original photographer - Photographer's Mate Airman Jhi L. Scott)

1986 saw the release of the smash movie "Top Gun" (the nickname for the Navy Fighter Weapons School), where Tom Cruise's character Maverick overcomes long odds and tragedy to earn his place among the best pilots in the service. As the film roared to be the top gun at the box office (just edging out, yes, Paul Hogan and his "Crocodile Dundee"), I doubt anyone people who lived around NAS Miramar and the surrounding Miramar neighborhood, which had served as home for the program since its inception in 1969, would've or could've suspected that just ten years later, the program would be literally flying the coop.

Indeed, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1993 recommended the base be transferred to the Marine Corps to consolidate their area presence into one location, and that the Top Gun program be transferred to NAS Fallon in the high plateau of Nevada. Despite local objections, the last of the program's planes roared off Miramar runways on May 29, 1996, never to come back to San Diego.

Similarly, if one were to poll the locals during the final days before the program's departure in 1996, I suspect very few if any of them would have foreseen that their neighborhood would become the craft beer hub that many have dubbed "Beeramar" one decade later.