Jed Noll Finds the Right Alchemy on a San Clemente Corner

The first surf shops began as extensions of shaping rooms. Out of the 1940s and into the 1950s, guys like Matt Kivlin, Joe Quigg, Bob Simmons, Jack O'Neill and Dale Velzy - then Hobie and Greg Noll and etc - who were busy as bees shaping surfboards in garages and small workshops, found that as demand grew, it was a good idea to hang a shingle and sell surfboards from the front of the store, at the same time they mowed balsa (then foam) and sanded and polished in the back.

Business was slow in the early days, so slow it was possible for a surfer to work the back and the front - working with hand tools and planers and focusing on curves and surfaces, all the while keeping an ear out for a tinkling bell or some other warning that a customer had walked into the shop with cold, hard cash.

From those easy beginnings, the surf shop began to evolve. During the surfin' sensation of the 1960s. Greg Noll bought a building the size of a city block, and set up a Rube Goldberg/Henry Ford operation which blew foam on one end and set up an assembly line with produced as many as 175 surfboards a week.

Surf retail also evolved, you might have noticed, into a multi-billion dollar industry. The tinkling bell is now drowned out by the sound of kachinging cash registers, as surf shops are now the size of Gimbals, employing thousands of sometimes vacant eyed personnel, selling everything from wax pickles to $3000 carbon fiber standup paddleboards.

Jed Noll Surfboards is a return to the roots of surf shops, where one man puts his heart and soul and sweat equity into carving surfboards from foam (and hardwoods) and proudly puts his name on a label, and a shingle out front, and toils in the back, while keeping a weather ear on the front, in case some civilian wanders in with eyes full of wonder and fists full of dollars.

Opening a retail store of any kind is a tough hustle these days, and surf shops are even a little tougher. Jed Noll Surfboards is in a town that has maybe a dozen other surf shops large and small, Rip Curl and Icon. All of San Clemente's retail stores come and go from year to year - except for The Outrigger. But Jed Noll Surfboards but this one is a little off the beaten path, on the corner of El Camino Real and Pico. Situated between the Knuckleheads biker bar (Sorry: We Are Open) and an Asian antique shop, Jed Noll Surfboards is across the street from the strangely still deceased Miramar Theater. Forty years ago, this building was the location for the Surfer Poll - where guys like Greg Noll would get drunk as a Lord and try to get Pat Curren to fight - or at least speak an entire sentence.

Surf retail - and all retail - is all about location, location, location - and when you check out Jed's location - and if you know Jed, and his lovely parents Greg and Laura, and you like them and/or have a history with them - then maybe you worry about Jed a little bit, and wonder if a small surf shop on that corner and in this economy during a time when retail is slowly dying can survive and thrive.

But closer examination is encouraging, and finds that Jed Noll has gone back to the old formula of shaper in the back, seller in the front, but the unique catalyst in his operation are those beautiful, hardwood replicas which take months and years to produce and sell for thousands of dollars. With Jed plowing out the hardwood replicas in the back (along with more the familiar plastic-based short and longboards of today) and his loyal shop manager watching the front, he's hit on a forgotten combination that looks like it's going to work.

Jed is the ultimate tribute to a time when people were honest and hard working and proud of the skills and heritage handed down from their own fathers. In Jed's case, Greg Noll was not just the Henry Ford of surfing in the 1960s, but also the Chuck Yeager, Cecil B. DeMille and P.T. Barnum. Jed is quieter than his dad, but also quietly proud of the Noll legacy and one of the attractions of Jed Noll Surfboards is that it preserves many of the great facets of Noll Pere, and packages it and preserves it in a modern way that is proud but not pretentious.