A catastrophic electrical failure has shuttered the Nugget Grill & Pub, the legendary bar and music venue that served Cal State Long Beach for 49 years.
“We were looking forward to one final semester in the space,” said Cyndi Farrington, chief business officer of Beach Shops, which operated the Nugget. “We didn’t get to have that final curtain call.”
The Nugget, one of the last buildings open on CSULB’s dining plaza, was slated to close in December. But last month, corroded water heaters leaked onto an electrical transformer, causing a power outage and more than $1 million in damage — too expensive to repair for the short-term, Farrington said. Current and former students flocked to social media to pay tribute to the iconic institution, which will get another life in a modern student union, slated to open in 2028. Already, The Beach community feels a Nugget-sized void.
Since it opened under that name in 1976, the Nugget has been a “central gathering place” for students, said Barbara Kingsley-Wilson, a lecturer at CSULB and the “unofficial historian of the university,” according to her colleagues.
“There have been a lot of memorable cultural events that happened while you were sitting at the Nugget, and that’s where you found out about them,” Farrington said. As an undergraduate, she watched NCAA playoff games and the O.J. Simpson trial there.
The pub hosted impressive headliners, from the Eagles to John Prine to bands with Southern California roots. Alum Andrew Oshrin remembered flipping a bar table (after one too many pitchers) when Black Flag canceled their show. And Lori Peacock slung pizza at the Nugget’s counter — only realizing afterward she’d heard history. “Oh my gosh, that was Sublime,” she said, “I saw them play, and I didn’t even know it.”
Peacock told these stories to her son, Dylan Peacock, a junior at CSULB, who was excited to forge his own relationship with the storied establishment. He and his classmates have spent hours studying and eating at the Nugget, one of the few places to congregate on campus now that the student union is closed for renovations.
The closures have “taken a wrecking ball to a lot of student life,” Kingsley-Wilson said. The union will get $315 million worth of upgrades, funded through reserves, donors and increased student fees, according to Associated Students, Inc. A new Nugget will open in the union and will honor the look and feel of the old pub, Farrington said. But students won’t reap the benefits for another three years.
“Taking away such a big part of campus was really disappointing,” Dylan Peacock said. Without the Nugget and the union, the library is overcrowded, he said, and the options for buying food and studying collaboratively on campus are limited.
Still, students have survived extended Nugget renovations before. In April of 1987, the Daily Forty-Niner published the headline “Remodeling keeps beer taps under wraps, students groan,” reporting on the frustrations prompted by the pub’s delayed facelift. By the fall of 1987, when the Nugget reopened, the Forty-Niner published new student complaints: too much Formica, not enough beer.