Today's makes way for Schooners Station

When the owners of Today’s Pizza and Salad in Encinitas took over the restaurant four years ago, they decided that the long-established live-music nights should remain. The play-along, amateur musician nights attracted from 20 to 60 players in an evening, as well as their friends and families. Some nights were standing room only.

Every Wednesday night for almost a decade, musicians gathered at Today’s to play Hawaiian music — ukuleles, steel drums, guitars. On Thursday nights, Today’s hosted a bluegrass night, when locals brought their fiddles, steel slide guitars, and even occasionally a washtub single-string bass. Sundays you could find live county & western or jazz music at the pizza joint.

Today’s Pizza, located in the Santa Fe Plaza just west of I-5, closed on November 30. Members of the restaurant’s e-mail list were advised the week prior that they would be closing and that the new owners would reopen the restaurant on December 7, under the name Schooner Station Pizzeria and Sports Pub.

New owner Keith Armstrong confirmed on December 8 that with the sports bar theme, Schooners would not be moving tables and chairs to make room for the music nights. “There will always be a game on,” he said.