Teri: “That area of the boardwalk almost could look like a road.”

“What in the hell is that car doing?” said Stephanie Z. when she saw a black SUV driving along the Pacific Beach Boardwalk — on February 7.

“The driver stopped and tried to reverse,” she recollected, “but since there were a lot of people out on the boardwalk, the car couldn’t.”

Nighttime boardwalk driver photo by Stephanie

Stephanie is a certified nursing assistant student that lives on the boardwalk a couple of blocks south of Pacific Beach Drive. While she and her neighbor were walking to the store, she took a photo of the questionable vehicle by Whiting Court and direct-messaged it to me.

“The driver parked, a group of young guys hopped in, and the car left,” she explained. “This was a black SUV that I often see out on the weekend here in PB. I think it is either Lyft or Uber drivers who are not familiar with this area. Sometimes on the app’s GPS, the driver will be told to go down a certain alley or street over here by the boardwalk and it could be confusing and half the time, they end up a block or so away from you.”

Stephanie: "I think it is either Lyft or Uber drivers who are not familiar with this area."

Teri is an Uber driver with a 4.98 (out of 5) rating that knows the boardwalk area well. The near three-mile boardwalk runs along the coast from Law Street in Pacific Beach to the Mission Beach Jetty.

“I do know that there are some passengers who expect you to pick them up in odd places or sometimes illegal spots. Then at times, passengers try to get in your car when you’re in the middle of the road and don’t give you a chance to pull over safely out of traffic. So it wouldn’t surprise me if a passenger would expect the driver to go onto the boardwalk to pick them up.”

Teri saw a photo of a black car stuck on the boardwalk with a pedestrian waiting behind a line of cinder blocks. “That area of the boardwalk almost could look like a road,” she commented.

Roxanne is a nanny that frequently rides her bike on the boardwalk; she’s seen three vehicles driven on the boardwalk that were not from the police or lifeguards.

Roxanne: “Is this person an idiot?”

“Is this person an idiot?” she commented as she noticed a black vehicle blocking the boardwalk. “I think it’s the people that are from out of town: they don’t pay attention, end up on the boardwalk and don’t know how to get out — usually they have Arizona plates.”

“I think the reason why they are driving on the boardwalk is due to no median to stop the cars from driving up on the boardwalk,” Stephanie said.