San Francisco has always been a little bit of everything at once. Beautiful and gritty. Foggy and golden. Postcard and punk rock.
For a long time it was the city on the hill. Painted houses stacked up the slopes, cable cars, the Golden Gate glowing orange through the fog, and a wide-open feeling that anybody could show up with nothing and become something. Poets, musicians, misfits, dreamers. It was a city that took in weirdos and let them be themselves.
Loud, fast and homemade
In the late '70s and '80s, San Francisco had one of the wildest punk scenes anywhere. Bands like the Dead Kennedys came out of it, and places like the Mabuhay Gardens in North Beach were packed with kids in ripped shirts making music that was fast, loud and completely their own. Flyers stapled to telephone poles. Zines cut and pasted at the kitchen table. Do it yourself, because nobody's going to do it for you.
That same spirit is all over our SAN FRANCISCO design: a cut-and-paste, black-and-white collage of a city street with a giant wave curling overhead. A little chaos, a little beauty, and a lot of attitude.
The city on the hill, lately
It's no secret that San Francisco has had a rough few years. Empty storefronts, hard times on the sidewalks, headlines that make people wonder what happened to the place. Some days downtown can feel like a scene out of a dystopian movie.
But cities go through seasons, just like the ocean does. And if you want to see the part of San Francisco that never really changed, head west until you run out of land.
Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach runs for miles along the western edge of the city, from the cliffs at the north end down toward the zoo and Fort Funston. It isn't pretty in the tropical sense. The water is cold all year, the fog sits on the beach for days, and the wind can turn it to mush by lunch.
When it's on, though, it's one of the heaviest beach breaks in the world. Big winter swells stack up on the sandbars, the currents pull hard, and the paddle-out alone can humble very good surfers. You don't really "go for a quick surf" at OB. You earn every wave.
There's more around the edges, too: Fort Point tucked under the Golden Gate Bridge when a big swell wraps in, Pacifica just down the coast for friendlier days, and further south the legends of Half Moon Bay.
The crew is still the same
Here's the part we love. Whatever is going on in the city, the surf crew out at Ocean Beach is still the same.
Same thick wetsuits and hoods. Same dawn patrol in the gray light, checking the sandbars from the seawall with a coffee in hand. Same nods in the parking lot. Same mix of old guys who've been surfing it for decades, kids learning the hard way, and people who ride a bike to work after a session. Nobody out there cares what you do or where you came from. They care whether you can handle the paddle-out and whether you're a good person in the water.
That's the San Francisco we wanted to put on a shirt. Not the headlines. The fog, the cold water, the punk rock attitude and the people who keep showing up, no matter what.
The San Francisco gear
- SAN FRANCISCO Heavyweight Oversized Tee, the full punk collage on the back, built heavy for foggy mornings.
- SAN FRANCISCO Oversized Sweatshirt, because it's always sweatshirt weather at Ocean Beach.
See the rest of the places in our WORLD SERIES collection.
Surfed OB? Grew up going to shows in the city? We'd love to hear your story.
Stay salty, San Francisco.
-The Surf Earth Society