Classic California Surf Shops

Since the 1950s opening of Gordie Surfboards beneath the city’s landmark pier, Huntington Beach (nicknamed “Surf City USA") has been home to a remarkable 47 surf shops, as well as the headquarters for both Quiksilver and Roxy. Two don’t-miss shops, though, are Jack’s Surfboardsand Huntington Surf & Sport.

Indeed, surfing’s equivalent of Times Square or Hollywood and Vine might be the intersection of Huntington Beach’s Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway. On one corner is Jack’s Surfboards, a surfing palace that began as a modest shop in 1957. Outside, you can pay tribute to surfing greats memorialized in a slew of granite monuments at the Surfing Walk of Fame.

On the opposite corner is Huntington Surf & Sport’s flagship store, which is home to the Surfers’ Hall of Fame—the sport’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—thanks to the footprints, signatures, and handprints of the biggest names in surfing. A statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the three-time Olympic swimming gold medallist and Hawaiian surfing icon who helped bring the sport to Huntington Beach, stands in the plaza outside. Inside, you’ll find a surfing megastore, with a huge wetsuit room and a massive collection of boards from leading shapers. Take a break in the store café Java Point, where you can hang with surfers fresh from the lineup along the Huntington Pier.

With its enormous selection, E.T. Surf—in L.A. County’s Hermosa Beach—is absolutely out-of-this-world. The store’s initials don’t stand for “extraterrestrial,” though, but rather shop founder Eddie Talbot, who began the business in 1972 after working for legendary big-wave rider Greg Noll (who had his own shop, until 1971).

Today, the Aviation Boulevard shop, a bit inland from the beach, is quite literally packed to its wooden rafters with pretty much anything surfers and non-surfers will need. TimeOut Los Angeles described the shop as “two stories of controlled chaos,” but a friendly, attitude-free staff will guide you through the labyrinth. There are endless flip-flops, from the likes of Olukai and Rainbow. Skateboard decks line the walls in one section, while surfers can climb past vintage pictures on a veritable stairway to heaven to the board room of their dreams.

As proof of San Francisco’s depth of culture, the city can even boast of having serious surf street cred. Surfing legend Jack O’Neill pioneered the city’s surfing scene back in the early 1950s. In those pre-wetsuit days, O’Neill rode a balsa wood board, braving the frigid waters and the notoriously fickle waves at Ocean Beach’s Kelly’s Cove, then later opened Mollusk Surf Shop, one of the world’s first surf shops, just off the Great Highway.

A few short blocks from the beach, Mollusk Surf Shop is a very different kind of surf shop from O’Neill’s original store, down the coastline in Santa Cruz. It serves as a bit of a hangout for the San Francisco surfing community, and, of course, sells boards—everything from longboards from Marina del Rey’s Anderson surfboards to barely four-foot-long paipos, a wooden bodyboard by Wegener Surf of Encinitas. Shop for wetsuits and vintage-style board shorts sewn right in San Francisco, as well as arty T-shirts that pay tribute to the local surf scene, whales, and even harvest moons.

Indeed, Mollusk isn’t only about the sport of surfing, but also about the art of surfing: The shop has books, a gallery space for art shows, and live music events (don’t miss the second-floor space that looks like a weird wooden submarine). The shop has also expanded into Southern California, with locations in Silver Lake and Venice Beach.