On June 25, Lighthouse Ice Cream will celebrate its 25th anniversary of serving Ocean Beach residents and visitors with some of the best ice cream creations ever scooped into a waffle cone.
“What we do every year on our birthday is offer kid’s cones for a dollar,” Carol Ladiges said. “We hope everyone will stop by to say hello and help us celebrate another year of making friends in OB.
Dick and Carol Ladiges and their ice cream empire are part of the unique history of Ocean Beach and with each year a new chapter is written.
“It was 25 years ago, June 1997, that my husband Dick and I opened up Lighthouse Ice Cream in Ocean Beach on Newport Avenue,” Carol Ladiges said. “This was actually our second shop, in 1982, Dick had a Big Olaf store on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Ladiges has been dubbed, ‘The Queen Of Ice Cream’ by her legions of faithful customers, in fact, a visit to Lighthouse has become a family tradition.
From day one, Carol and Dick began taking photographs of their customers, a few decades later they had enough Kodak moments to cover generations of memories.
“The kids that worked for us in 1982 grew up and in 1997 they brought their kids to our new store on Newport Avenue,” Ladiges said. “So now, we have photos of them from 1982 with their family in 1997. At times we have had five generations with grandparents, even great-grandparents, all having ice cream together in our shop.”
Dick died in 2011, and Carol continued his tradition of giving customers their forever moment of fame, one snap at a time. Ladiges took on the painstaking labor of love one panel at a time, covering each year with hundreds of celluloid memories for all to see.
“People would come in and see their baby pictures,” Ladiges said. “Then they would bring their kids in, and take pictures of them, with their baby pictures in the background. Lighthouse Ice Cream is really a family affair.”
Due to COVID, Lighthouse customers are served through a Dutch window at the front door preventing customers from viewing the panels of photos. However, Ladiges is photographing each panel and will soon be posting them at lighthouseicecreamob.com for all to see.
The Ladiges were a dynamic duo in the ice cream game. They sought out only the best ice cream in addition to creating from scratch waffle cones.
“One of the concepts we took from Big Olaf was to make a sundae in a waffle cone,” Ladiges said. “We took it a step up by purchasing a unique hot iron that allowed us to press two waffles together with ice cream in the center making a hot waffle ice cream sandwich. We have a new ice cream pancake sandwich, too.”
