Used Surf
Founded in 2005, Used Surf began in a space barely bigger than a closet, but with ambition that stretched to the horizon. Today, it stands as the world’s largest shop dedicated solely to used surfboards — a cathedral of second chances, with more than 800 boards in stock at any given moment.
Icons of Surf
Inside Icons of Surf, the air smells faintly of resin and wax — the scent of devotion. Boards line the walls like relics, each one hand-picked, each one carrying the fingerprint of a California craftsman. You’ll spot names like Timmy Patterson, Chris Christenson, Matt Biolos, Wayne Rich, and a rotating cast of Southern California’s shaping elite — the people who make magic from foam and foam from faith.
T Patterson Surfboards
From humble beginnings came a lifetime of innovation. In the 1980s, as performance surfing exploded, T. Patterson Surfboards became synonymous with speed, precision, and that electric connection between board and body. Timmy shaped for Andy and Bruce Irons, C.J. and Damien Hobgood, Yadin Nicol, Matt Archbold, Griffin Colapinto, and countless others whose lines at Lowers helped define modern California surfing. His boards have danced across reefs from Pipeline to Bells, from the WSL tour to backyard barrels that never made the highlight reels.
Catalyst at Bashams
Catalyst at Basham’s in San Clemente is where surfboard heritage meets modern craftsmanship. Once Brad Basham’s legendary board-builder supply hub, now reborn under Catalyst’s banner, it remains the heart of California surf culture—where resin, foam, and passion collide to shape the future of surfing on Calle de Los Molinos.
Freeman Street Surf Shop
On 208 North Freeman Street, a few blocks from the Pacific, stands a shop that feels both brand new and long remembered. Freeman Street Surf Shop may be a recent addition to Oceanside, but it carries the bones of those that came before — Modern Beach Supply, the CRIME Shop — and the timeless hum of salt air, wax, and stories that have always lived in these streets.
Witt’s Carlsbad Pipelines
The night air of Carlsbad carries a kind of salt-bitten poetry, and on the boulevard, the glow of Witt’s Pipelines still hums like a lantern in the fog. This isn’t a place you simply walk into—it’s a passageway into the marrow of surf culture itself. For decades, kids pressed their noses against the windows, eyes wide at boards they couldn’t yet afford but knew they’d ride someday. Fathers brought their sons, daughters picked out their first wetsuits, and drifters wandered in after long swims in the Pacific, looking for a sense of belonging.
Sun Diego Carlsbad
Sun Diego was born in 1981, back when San Diego’s surf scene was still raw, half-punk, half-paradise. Over the years it’s grown into an empire of surf, skate, and streetwear, yet here in Carlsbad the soul of the brand feels distilled. The building is a relic, a keeper of stories from another age, yet inside it pulses with the youth of an eternal summer. It’s as though time stands still, the past and present braided together like kelp in the tide.
Encinitas Surfboards
The shop began in 1975, when two craftsmen — Marc Adam and John Kies — who had cut their teeth at Koast Surfboards, decided to take a risk. With tools in hand and salt in their veins, they opened a place of their own. Not much in the spirit has changed since then — the door still exhales the scent of wax, the walls still echo with surfers trading swell forecasts, and the boards remain sacred objects. Marc still presides over the store, and John still shapes — his Kies Custom Shapes line tying the present to the shop’s earliest days.
Asylum Surf Shop
In the dim hush of pre-dawn, when Oceanside still yawns and the Pacific hums just beyond the pier, Asylum Surf waits with its neon promise. The old awning, shaped like a curling wave, feels like a wink to every surfer who’s ever rushed down Mission Avenue with wax in one pocket and sand still clinging to their feet. The shop itself has weathered decades—born in the late ’80s under another name, reborn as Asylum in the ’90s—and it carries the patina of continuity. Fathers and sons have owned it, families have worked its counters, and generations of surfers have passed through, each leaving behind a trace of their saltwater stories.
Mitch’s Surf Shop
Mitch’s is woven into the identity of Solana Beach, standing as both a time capsule and a living, breathing part of North County’s surf lineage. For countless surfers, the memory of pulling into the shop before a dawn patrol session, wax still cool from the night air, is as much a part of the experience as the first drop into a clean left at Seaside Reef.
Surf Ride Surf Shop
South Oceanside has always carried a certain grit softened by salt air. Long before the city polished its edges, this stretch of Coast Highway was home to working-class families, roadside diners, and a raw, unfiltered surf culture. Dawn patrol meant empty streets, headlights cutting through marine layer, and surfers heading toward the jetties, Buccaneer Beach, or Oceanside Pier before the town stirred awake. Here, surfing wasn’t a pastime—it was an identity, baked into the rhythm of life.
Bing Surfboards
Leucadia has always felt like one of those sleepy coastal enclaves where time hangs suspended just before dawn—the streets still quiet, the smell of salt in the air, and the Pacific waiting at the end of every road. For decades, this pocket of North County San Diego has been a haven for surfers chasing something more than just waves: a sense of identity, rebellion, and community. It was into this landscape that Bing Surfboards found its way, carrying with it a deep-rooted heritage in shaping the sport.
ET Surfboards
Every surfer who came of age in the South Bay carries a memory of ET: a first board, a last repair, a conversation that unlocked the secret of a wave. At dawn, when the streets are empty, the shop becomes myth, and to pass it is to acknowledge that surfing is not just an act, but a way of belonging.
JS Industries Surf Shop
Oceanside has always been a frontier town for surfing—where the military’s grit meets the dreamer’s salt-soaked freedom. And here, in the dark before dawn, the surfer steps past JS’s glowing insignia, a reminder that every ride is part craft, part faith, part history. The shop is still shuttered, but its spirit is awake, whispering to those on the hunt for that first clean wave of the day.
Gary Linden’s Surf Shop
At 3:30 in the morning, Oceanside is emptied of its noise, stripped of its daytime disguises, and what’s left is a kind of naked poetry. The surf shop on the corner — Gary Linden’s place — sits there like a sentinel, humming under a sodium lamp glow.