Icons of Surf
There’s a pulse that runs through San Clemente — part salt, part sawdust, part memory — and if you follow it long enough, it’ll lead you straight through the doors of Icons of Surf. This isn’t a shop built for tourists or trend-chasers. It’s a temple to craftsmanship, a curated ode to the shapers, riders, and dreamers who built surf culture one rail at a time.
Inside, 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.
Icons doesn’t just sell boards — it tells stories. Walk through and you’ll see the lineage of surf design unfold before you: from classic longboard outlines that whisper of Doheny days to high-performance blades tuned for Lowers’ precision. This place is both archive and atelier, a living gallery that keeps the culture grounded while everything else tries to speed past it.
Founded by surfers who saw retail as a responsibility, Icons of Surf honors what the craft used to be — and what it still can be when done right. They champion the handmade, the authentic, the soulful. Every board that hangs in their racks is a reminder that surfing was never meant to be mass-produced; it was meant to be lived.
At sunrise, when the first sets roll across the reef, the shapers and locals who built this town are already out there — tracing the same lines their boards once traced in the dust of this very floor. And somewhere, back in the shop, the next icon waits to be discovered.
Icons of Surf
710 N El Camino Real, San Clemente, CA 92672
(949) 361-5488
