“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
The popular but misattributed Mark Twain quote can be found inside cabs all over the city. But there’s a nugget of truth to it. The seasoned California traveller knows that June is full of gloom, when the local fog named “Karl” invades the City By The Bay.
San Francisco, in all its glory, is conjured up in the Fall. Winds tend to shift offshore, swell pours in from the Northwest, and heavy barrels peel left and right. It’s proper bluebird conditions.
Ocean Beach, or OB, is a 3-some mile stretch of beach break on San Francisco’s western most frontier. It was the setting for an entire chapter of William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘Barbarian Days’.
Corduroy lines march onto the beach, breaking at the ever-shifting sand bars. On bigger days, the inside bar is a maelstrom separated by a “dead space” that leads to the outside bars. The surf breaks are separated by street, starting at the south end with Sloat, meeting in the middle at Noreiga, and ending at Kelly’s Cove to the North. The current, which ebbs and flows with the emptying waters of the San Francisco Bay, are notoriously strong. Locals call it the “Sloat to Kelly express” because you can literally get in at one end of the beach and end up at the other.
Around the corner at the mouth of the Bay, and underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, lies a novelty wave called Fort Point. Known for its localism, Fort Point is an occasionally serviceable left with an epic backdrop. Mind the current. “I got sucked out past the Bridge on a foggy day,” says local surfer Chris. “The sun cleared, and I turned around to see the Golden Gate behind me. Not a fun paddle in.”
Surfing is not the biggest scene in SF, though many of the town’s local bartenders are twenty-somethings who want to score cold barrels.
The city is better known for its skateboarding. SF is considered a mecca for skaters, especially when it comes to bombing hills. Skaters cut their teeth on one of San Francisco’s 48 hills (though the actual number is a highly contested local debate). One historic hill bomb takes place at the top of Dolores Park. Skaters have bombed the hill for years in an annual event considered holy. “Bombing hills in San Francisco, for skaters, is on the bucket list for sure,” says local skater Joseph. “People travel from all over to do it.”
Inside the walls of the city lies immense culture. From the fabled hippie movement during the summer of love, to the enigmatic Oakland Hyphy rap movement of the late 90s and early 2000s, the Bay Area is full of pleasant surprises.
The Cutty Bang is a homegrown liquor store cocktail popularized by San Francisco rapper TayDaTay in the 1998 song “Cutty Bang.” At select locations, you’ll find ziplock bags filled with unique combinations of spirits. A crowd favorite is the “High Speed” which contains Bacardi Limón, Seagram’s Gin, and a Red Bull. Add a burrito from El Farolito or La Taqueria and you’ve got yourself a classic San Francisco meal.
If hulking triple overhead beach break doesn’t get you out of bed…just over a dozen miles to the south lies the belly of the beast. Surfed alone for over a decade by local legend Jeff Clark, Mavericks is now frequented by a regular crew. Mavs recently roared to life in the December 2024 swell. Gloomy, wind-ripped monsters punished Half Moon Bay. For the brave few, it was the biggest it’s ever been ridden.
SF is certainly no sunlit surfing fantasy. But if you don’t mind pulling on a little rubber and like a city with some sharp edges and curious boroughs, then you can enjoy thick barrels and all night fun. There’s also a sense of excitement that comes from being in close proximity to Silicon Valley, where every coder and tech savvy kid in the US and beyond tries to change the world with a laptop.
