Linda Mar:
Ever see the movie Harold and Maude? At the end, when Harold drives his hearse off the cliff, that’s the north end of Linda Mar. Cool little factoid.
Linda Mar is a mile-long stretch of beach between the north point and Pedro Point. Because this place is somewhat protected from swell and wind, it is a mostly beginner to intermediate wave that has become staggeringly popular with the gentry.
Pedro Point has had a thriving surf scene since the ’40s, but things have changed since the balsa days. There was a time when the only surfers in the parking lot at Linda Mar were a couple of guys in cut-off Levis with their boards strapped the wrong way to the roof of a GTO or a Camaro, or going further back, to the roof of a Woody. These days, the parking lot at Linda Mar seems to be full of SUVs and people with surfboards. Many of those people are women. Linda Mar has its epic days, but for the most part, the surf ranges from poor to so-so, and the water is crowded with beginners and intermediate surfers. “It’s the poor man’s Cowell’s,” as one local surfer described it.
Linda Mar has a reputation for being gray and gloomy, but even in the thick of the region’s summer fog season, there’s often an inexplicable donut of sunshine beating down on the place. In the fall and winter and into the spring, it can be a very pretty place: green hills, offshore winds, blue water, nice surf. Linda Mar is at the end of a big valley that funnels south and southwest winds into offshores, and the surf can be cranking there during the winter, when the rest of the coast is blown out. The same condition can exist in the summer, when that valley will turn the onshore fog winds into offshores. Linda Mar can be sunny and nice when Ocean Beach is like Moscow in winter.
From north to south, the first spot at Linda Mar is called Round House. Next is Wander Inn, named for a bar that thrived in the ’60s and introduced a lot of young surfers to the evils of drink. South of Wander Inn, there is a parking lot and showers and some of the funkiest toilets in California. This area is called State Park or the Pump House. South of that is the best-looking Taco Bell you’ll ever find, then The Creek, where a small, possibly toxic creek comes out to sea. At the south end of Linda Mar, The Boatdocks are lefts that break along the point in front of Dick Keating’s house.
Pedro Point:
At the south end of Linda Mar, Pedro Point is a cool little beach community built into the side of a hill, overlooking all of Linda Mar and off toward San Francisco. This is the Palos Verdes of Pacifica, where an ostrich and llama ranch stands next to million-dollar Silicon Valley homes overlooking $50 fishing shacks. Pedro Point is a former fishing community that is slowly being yuppified, but the soul of the place is still there.
Doc Ball’s first edition of Surfing in California listed four surf spots: Windansea, San Onofre, Malibu and Pedro Point. The Keating brothers and some other Ocean Beach guys started surfing Pedro Point in the late ’30s and early ’40s after Dick Keating got turned on to surfing by the Kahanamoku brothers while in the Islands for a swimming contest. Talking about Ocean Beach back in the ’40s, Fred Van Dyke said that most of the real board surfing was done at Pedro Point and Santa Cruz because those places were less exposed than Ocean Beach and easier to handle on clunky equipment.
Standing on the cliffs at Pedro Point during the winter and spring, looking north, you’d swear you were in Cornwall, England or Ireland. The rugged hills and cliffs look exactly like southwest England, and the fishing shacks on docks on the water are closer to Ireland or Scotland.
There are fun waves breaking along the Boatdock and onto the beach. Outside, there is a big left that breaks off Little Pedro Point, mostly in the winter. This is one of the bigger ridable waves on the North Central California coast. Approach with caution.
There is a thriving surf community here, and they protect their spot. When a surfing web site installed one of its surf reporting cameras overlooking Linda Mar (perish the thought!), the locals took it to City Hall and convinced the city council to have the cameras taken down. The cameras came down. There is a bit of a local hillbilly vibe up in Pedro Point. This place is in danger of being overrun by outsiders, and the locals don’t like their parking spots taken up by strangers, or people cutting through their property. Check it from up here, but park down below if you’re going surfing.
Rockaway:
Back in the ’80s, one of the surf magazines ran a black and white Don Montgomery photo of an unidentified hellman bottom-turning on an unidentified hellwave, somewhere in Northern California. This was all pre-Maverick’s, but that wave gave some indication of what was to come in this neck of the woods.
The surfer, it turns out, was a guy from the Delta named Brian Zelles. And the wave was at Rockaway Beach. This rocky little cove is the first accessible stretch of coast after Sharp Park. The main break at Rockaway is a right that breaks on the south end of a beach, into a deep channel along the point. That channel makes it possible to get out on the biggest days, and Rockaway Beach definitely has some big days.
On west and southwest swells there is also a left at the south end of the beach. There are beachbreaks from the south point to the north point and then that big right at the north end. This is a bit of a mysto spot that doesn’t get surfed much. When it’s big enough for this place to be breaking, there are other places to go.
When the ocean is moving, Rockaway fills up with a lot of moving water, all of it looking for somewhere to escape. This place can be treacherous on a big swell and an outgoing tide, so use caution.
There are lots of places to eat down here, and Rockaway is always worth a look, but only sometimes worth a surf.
Sharp Park:
There is a long stretch of open beach running south from Sloat Street and along the Daly City headland. There is surf all along there but few surfers, as access takes a bit of effort.
Pacifica begins at Mussel Rock, which is near the Daly City/Pacifica border. You can get there by taking the Manor Drive exit, and weaving north through the residential streets. There is a parking lot which has a view north to all that inaccessible coast below the Daly City cliffs.
From Mussel Rock all the way south to Mori’s Point, there are around three miles of beach and reefbreaks, fronting the lovely coastal hamlet of Pacifica.
Did we say “lovely?” Well, that’s going a little far. Pacifica can be lovely on the right clear, blue offshore day in fall, winter or spring. But generally, Pacifica is most often associated with gray gloominess, onshore winds and crummy surf.
Think of northern Pacifica as the NorCal version of Oceanside: miles of ungroomed beach, beachbreaks and reefbreaks overlooked by apartments, mobile homes and RV parks. There’s a concrete pier down at the south end, like Oceanside, then the road ends at the Sharp Park Golf Course.
Pacifica is mostly a local scene, as the conditions are fickle and you have to be on top of it to get it. If you’re driving north to south, you’ll get an overview of the whole beach from up on top of the hill. If it looks like something is happening down there, take one of the exits and check it out.