Tuesday, September 1, 2009

North County surf shop Exposed!

I woke up yesterday morning and was buzzing about my little abode pulling my usual not enough time for breakfast scramble for surf gear, work clothes, coffee, fruit and toast when I realized it was Monday! This enlightenment would allow me about eight extra minutes to get my arse together, the motorcycle shop next door is closed on mondays so we can park in front of their shop which is uniform with our parking lot. This means no parking in the nieghborhood out back and unloading boards and carrying all my mess of morningness from car to shop ( bout 8 minutes). The shop opens at 10:15 to make it real easy for us to be on time if we slide in the morning. Get outa the water at ten and you should be able to make it to work on time right? Mmmmmmm.... the shop usually opens between 10:18 and 10:23 a.m. heheheh... The boss doesn't seem to be too chapped though as she usually rips into the parking lot about the same time. Lucky for us we get to work for the sweetest lady I can think of. Morning usually unravels pretty quickly as there's a grip of used boards to put out on the racks and about fifteen padlocks and doors to open with a king ring full of unlabeled keys bigger than your high school janitor's. Around eleven or so we get the trickle of the regular blank picker upper guys (shapers) rollin in. Blanks be our bidness I guess, Ernie the US Blanks guy shows up twice a week to drop off heaps of assorted foam, more often then not just about the time we get lunch in front of our face. Mind you the lunch indecision and confusion paralizes progress toward any hope of a unified phone order for about an hour. This usually makes for grumpy, hungry poeple by the time it's actual feeding time, this does not make Ernie's call to say he's out back with a truckload of blanks to unload a good call at all. Post lunch food coma usually cripples us for a good hour, meager groans and sighs can be heard as aimless zombie wanderers parooze the shop trying to work. Most days our UPS man will drop off some boxes o stuff in the afternoon for us to dismantle and go through. On the best days one of our shapers will drop off new boards, these times are fun, I like when we get new sticks. As the day rolls on sometimes we'll sell a board or two or maybe some wetsuits, if we're lucky we'll get a crazy rude, arrogant on a rampage customer who yells at us and storms out as though we've ruined thier life. This is a good time for us as we get to laugh try to guess what thier real problems are. Alright this day in life is taking up your whole life. At day end we put all the used boards away, water the garden, yell at our shaping machine guy that it's time to go home, hit the lights and contemplate where to go surf.
Creamsickle Kookbox twinpin floaty boat mush killer and a Jeff McKallum Greenough kneeboard replica.
THis here is one of the sickest colorbursting tiger stripes i've seen in a decade of shopness.
9'4 Bing Silver spoon, ride the rainbow man....yeah.....
9'2" Bing NR-2 two tone color dip will help you rip!
9'4" NR-2 Coffee w/ Cream
uhhhhh??? Like, what that says eh.......
We have a huge blank account here, come make a withdraw.
R2D2 spent the past decade hangin with surfsters, now he lives here and programs surf shapes.
Jim Swarthow's mad science workshop of robotic computerized foam mowing intelligence.
Jim Tell's R2 to tell this thing to do stuff and this thing has to do it!
Damn Jim you got mind control over these machines.
Our trusty, crusty, quiver of lunch getters.....
It's safe to say skateboarding and surfing go hand in hand...one in the left, one in the right. Surf to the beach, surf, surf home, surf to the store, shoot surf in yer living room. Roll your bones. We have a fine selection of sidewalk surfers.
We hatched our little vegetable growery at the beginning of summer and have been able to harvest nice rewards from this little plot of dirt. Everytime I walk by it i think crack a little smile, who get's to have an organic garden at their surfshop? Green thumbs abound!
The bosses car and the shop, our shop got smoked out a couple years ago from a fire the motorcycle shop next door had one night. We lost most of our clothing and accessory inventory to smoke damage and were forced to do an entire remodel inside which ultimately ended up being a good thing but the times were definitely rough there for a little while.
These neat people have been doing this thing for a long time now. There is quite a bit of San Diego heritage behind these walls, lots of great minds and faces stroll in and out of here everyday.