Surf Cat

They’re the places surfers would go to drool over new boards and to find the latest fashions.

It’s where they would gather to “talk story” about the morning’s waves.

Early surf shops dotting the California coastline are remembered fondly in the new exhibit “Temples of Stoke: A Celebration of Surf Shop Culture,” at the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.

“Temples of Stoke” opened Aug. 9 and will remain up until Oct. 29.

“We would not have surfing without the surf shop,” said SHACC Executive Director Glenn Brumage. “The surf shops were the shapers who then opened their surf shops, who then sold us the trunks, who then told us where to surf, how to surf, what to surf on. It was absolutely the place you got your information.”

They were the place surfers would scramble to get the latest issues of surf magazines so they could see exotic, far-away waves before subscriptions were available.

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“You found out where to surf, you met people who surfed,” Brumage said. “There was no other place to get the information needed.”

Each of the 22 exhibit display areas was handed over to a surf shop to curate with its own historical images, products and stories.

They are set up geographically, starting in Northern California with O’Neill, creator of the original surf shop; then moving to Santa Barbara and Ventura, and on down the coast through the South Bay, Orange County and San Diego.

“There is so much insane depth of information and history in their spaces,” Brumage said. “Each of these is a shrine to their history.”

Peter “PT” Townend, surfing’s first world champion, called the surf shops of decades ago the original social media.

“You went surfing, everyone went to the shop, hung up their wetsuits and had breakfast and talked about who got the best wave,” he said. “That’s where the social media happened, in the surf shops. Really, that doesn’t happen in the surf shop like it used to.”

Today’s surf shops are more retail and sales driven than they are gathering places for surfers to talk shop with the shapers and hang out with friends who rode the same boards and had a similar love for waves, though some of those still exist today.

Mark Richards, who created Val Surf in North Hollywood, talked about opening one of the country’s first inland surf shops in 1962.

“It’s a long ride,” said Richards, who at 72 is still surfing. “We caught a lot of flack at first — inland and all that. We got a lot of resistance from the beach residents. But that’s behind us.”

Tom Morey stopped by the exhibit to check out the space dedicated to his Morey Pope & Co. shop in Ventura, which he and college friend Karl Pope opened long before Morey’s Boogie Board invention.

Products and ideas from the inventor — including Slip Check, a spray paint that helped with the board grip — are set up in the exhibit space. “We sold hundreds of thousands of cans of that,” Morey said.

The South Bay is well represented, with originals such as Velzy and Hap Jacobs, along with E.T. Surf and Dive N’ Surf, a tribute to Body Glove founders Bill and Bob Meistrell that showcases the “first neoprene wetsuit for surfing” created in 1953.

TK’s Froghouse in Newport Beach has an area adorned with a shark and showcasing images from the small shop. Hobie Surf Shop has a section that tells the history of how Dick Metz started the retail operation in Dana Point, along with historic photos and other memorabilia.

Denny Michael, an SHACC board member, recalled being outside the Hobie Shop in his younger days and placing his nose against the window so he could see in.

“I’d go across Coast Highway as a little kid, because there was no traffic, and go down to Hobie to see the boards and skateboards,” he said. “There was always someplace to go.”

Don Craig, who grew up in the South Bay and helped bring RIP Curl to the U.S., remembers heading up and down the coast to visit all the shops in those early years.

He saw many familiar faces in the exhibit, dating back to when he worked for Harbour Surfboards in Seal Beach and later Russell in Newport Beach, scheduling sales calls so they wouldn’t conflict with incoming swells.

“I think the exhibit is amazing, there’s so many different characters that have come together,” Craig said. “Everyone has their stories to tell. This is a fantastic representation of the whole West Coast and the culture of surfing and how it grew.”

With Internet sales posing a challenge to traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores, stories of the original surf shops need to be creatively told.

“If we don’t curate these stories, these histories and this information, they will be lost forever,” Brumage said.

For more information, go to shacc.org