Oceanside's Pizza Royalty + Your Ballot, Explained

Trinacria Pizza Co. is open at 608 N. Coast Hwy., in the former Venetos space, and it's the newest restaurant from one of North County's busiest restaurant families.

Damiano Trupiano runs it, his first restaurant of his own, with his dad, Salvatore "Tore" Trupiano. Trinacria does dine-in, takeout, catering, and beer and wine, with Sicilian, New York, Detroit and Chicago-style pies, according to the restaurant's site and SanDiegoVille.

The family story starts with Tore's father, Dominic, who came over from Italy and passed his love of food to his sons, The Coast News reported. Tore's brother Faro, the youngest son, writes that his parents arrived from Sicily in 1969 and the family has opened more than 20 restaurants since.

In Oceanside, Tore co-owns Mangia e Bevi on Ocean Ranch Boulevard, and the family runs Dominic's at the Harbor.

Faro runs two spots in Fallbrook. Trupiano's Italian Bistro, at 945 S. Main Ave., serves Italian from family recipes, and its menu bills the hand-tossed pizza as "the closest thing to back East pizza." A few blocks away, 127 West Social House is a gastropub with 20 craft beers on tap, burgers and pizza, inside a house built in 1884. A fire badly damaged it in 2016, and Faro rebuilt it.

And who knew the captain of the U.S. Pizza Team was making pizza right here in Oceanside? That's Tore. He won the grand prize at the 2025 REAL California Pizza Contest with a pie called the Creamery Crown and took third in Best of the Best at Pizza Expo 2026 in Las Vegas.

Full transparency — I didn't know there was a U.S. Pizza Team until this week. Now that I do, I'll be lobbying HARD to get pizza making into the 2028 Olympics in LA. WHO'S WITH ME?!

Trinacria is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 608 N. Coast Hwy.

Oceanside has two city measures on the Nov. 3 ballot, and one is getting a lot more attention than the other. I won't tell you how to vote, but I wanted to break them both down so at the very least you know what you're voting for.

The one grabbing the most headlines is Measure S, a half-cent general sales tax that would last 10 years. If it passes, the sales tax in Oceanside goes from 8.25% to 8.75%, and the city estimates it would bring in about $20 million a year for general city services. It would be a new tax, separate from Measure X, the half-cent sales tax voters renewed in 2024 through 2036.

The city has identified projects like the Pier Bridge, Fire Station 8, RE:BEACH and a new police headquarters as places the money could go. But because Measure S is a general tax, the money isn't legally required to go to any of them. That's the distinction you'll hear a lot from the no camp.

Measure S would come with a citizen oversight committee and independent audits, similar to Measure X, and that's a big part of why the San Diego County Taxpayers Association endorsed it. The group pointed to the 10-year sunset, a seat for a Taxpayers Association representative on the oversight committee, a public fund for tracking the money, and performance metrics. That endorsement matters, because SDCTA doesn't hand out support for new taxes easily. It declined to endorse the countywide sales tax on the same ballot.

Speaking of which: countywide, Measure B would add its own half-cent sales tax. If both Measure S and Measure B pass, Oceanside's sales tax would climb to 9.25%.

If you want to hear the arguments, KOCT's Sept. 28 Measure S forum is up for replay.

Now, Measure R is a little less sexy than a sales tax, but it's a change to the city charter and still important, so bear with me. It also got a little heated at KOCT's District 2 forum.

Some background. When Oceanside voters approved the city charter in 2010, it included a provision that bars the city from requiring contractors to sign a project labor agreement, or PLA, as a condition of bidding on or working on city construction projects. A PLA is a pre-hire agreement with unions that sets wages, benefits and work rules for a project. Under state law, if a charter city's rules stop its council from considering a PLA, state funding can't be used for that project.

Measure R would update the charter's prevailing-wage language to match state law and clarify the council's authority over PLAs. City staff say Oceanside currently qualifies for state funding and the change is meant to keep it that way. The council voted 4-1 in May to move it forward, with Councilmember Peter Weiss opposed, and then placed it on the ballot unanimously in June with Weiss absent.

At the forum, arguably the two frontrunners in District 2 split on it. Incumbent Rick Robinson, who voted to put Measure R on the ballot, said he wanted voters to decide, but he raised concerns about how prevailing wage rules could affect small local contractors on smaller projects. He also said there's no formal ban on PLAs in Oceanside: the city doesn't require them, but it has negotiated them before and encouraged developers to use them.

Planning Commissioner Emily Gonzales backed the measure, saying PLAs protect workers and create pathways into the trades through apprenticeships, and that leaving the current language in place puts state funding at risk. She pushed back on Robinson, arguing the city is currently prohibited from requiring PLAs.

So who's right? Both, in a way. The charter does bar the city from requiring PLAs on its own contracts, so Gonzales is right that the city can't mandate them. But it doesn't stop contractors or developers from signing them voluntarily, so Robinson is right that PLAs aren't banned outright in Oceanside. Don't be duped by either side trying to convince you it's any simpler than that.

Ballot drop boxes open Oct. 4, and early voting at the Registrar's office starts Oct. 5.

🍴 Taste Your Way Through Downtown - Check-in 311 N. Tremont St. - Saturday @ 1:30-5pm Self-guided tasting through downtown spots. General admission is $80 with drinks or $60 with nonalcoholic drinks, and $115 VIP gets you in an hour early. Info

🎨 Paint a Halloween Scene - Heritage Park, 220 Peyri Dr. - Saturday @ 3:30-6pm Painting runs 4-6. Ages 21 and up with ID, $50. Register through Oceanside Parks & Rec on Active.com. Info

🎸 Catch Tommy Castro at MLK Park - Martin Luther King Jr. Park, 4500 Mesa Dr. - Saturday @ 4:30-7:30pm Free Levitt BLOC show with Tommy Castro & the Pain Killers. Bring a chair. FREE

🎤 See Hudson Westbrook at Frontwave - Frontwave Arena, 3475 Hero Dr. - Saturday @ 7pm Doors at 6, with Kenny Whitmire and Ethan Burdick opening on the Hits Me Tour. Info

🎡 Hit St. Mary's Fall Festival - St. Mary Star of the Sea, 609 Pier View Way - Sunday @ 8am-4:30pm Fourth year of the carnival, vendors, lowriders and live music. Free to get in. FREE

The dredge wraps around Oct. 19. The fall dredge is still moving about 380,000 cubic yards of harbor sand onto Oceanside beaches, and Harbor Lot No. 12 stays closed for staging until it's done. City of Oceanside

Oceanside's unsheltered count is up. The Coast News reports the point-in-time count of unsheltered residents rose to 362 this year from 318 in 2025. The city is growing Navigation Center beds from 50 to 75, doubling Dreams for Change safe parking to 50 vehicles and replacing its old HOT outreach model with HEART. Coast News

Pier repairs could start in October. The city is taking bids to stabilize the fire-damaged western end of the pier, with deck, railing and lighting repairs to follow in the spring. Coast News

That's the week. Tips, corrections, or something I missed? Email [email protected] or send a DM.

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