Editordude: Before the stairs at Ladera Street at the cliffs, there was nothing except slippery toe holes, a small stretch of rope and the cliffs themselves. Making your way down holding onto a 9' 6" log was taking your life in your hands -- which I did countless times back in the mid-60s. This was the reality of getting to Garbage Beach below until the 1980s. Thanks to Doug Smith, it all changed. By Shona Neufeld / San Diego Reader / Aug. 5, 2026 “San Diego City built a staircase at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Ladera Street.” — from Kathy Blavatt's San Diego's Sunset Cliffs Park: A History, written for the Ocean Beach Historical Society There are other entry points to the beach below Sunset Cliffs; but none of them are as easy to navigate as the Ladera Street stairs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people use them every week. Families come to check out the tidepools, bringing young kids and old folks who otherwise might have trouble making it down there. And of course, there are the surfers, who use them to reach the break at Garbage Beach. There is no mention of Doug Smith in Blavatt's account of those stairs. And even after Adam Bloomberg and the Garbage Beach Surf Club held an event on March 29th of this year to honor Smith’s contribution to the stairs’ creation, you could be forgiven for never having heard of him. They intentionally kept publicity to a minimum, handing out only a few fliers to the regular Cliffs crew in order to reduce crowds and allow easy access for the 91-year-old Smith and his friends. “If we had advertised, it really would have been out of control,” said Adam. (I learned about it from local surfer Richard Aguirre while I was out riding my bike.)