A 100$ will buy you:

A totally unnecessary addition to my quiver! At least until next winter. I finally finished putting up the gutters at my house too, so we are guaranteed not to get anymore big storms.

What was I supposed to do, not buy it? It came with a bag! And a leach!

BillMinard California FunGun. 8'6 x 22 x 2 7/8

Yall got anymore them Winter Storms?





Big guy short board my arse. My shortbort is 6'2

 

These are from two spots about 10 minutes down the road from my local beach break. They are considered B waves by San Diego standards, but I like them. Nothing serious.









Kind of mushburgers, with lots of SUPs and longboards, even on bigger days. So we have the Fun Gun. They're longer, have more rocker, and are thinner in the nose and tail than a funboard, but they're not a longboard and they're definitely not semi-guns/legit big wave guns. Popular shape at the Del Mar reefs, Swami's, Sunset Cliffs, TJ Sloughs. Basically anywhere where the waves are kinda mushy when you take off, but you still want some speed to make it past that section crumbling in front of you, we got a lot of those around here. The Rusty Desert Island is a perfect example. I think the Stretch Buzz Gun kind of fits the bill too. I've seen some Frye Double Eagles out on days like that too.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if or when I'll use it. 9 out of 10, I'm on a shortboard, but variety is the spice of life and I'll ride whatever.

I grew up surfing waist high windslop, still do : )

 

It's a great place to visit and I love living out here, I got it dialed; but I wouldn't recommend it. We did just have the worst winter surf-wise that I can remember and I think I have a sinus infection from surfing small waves in poo water this week otherwise I'd be out there now; but that's not why. Mo' waves come.

Cost of living is insane. On average, homeowners in SoCal carry 3 times the mortgage debt than the rest of the country. Commute is terrible for most people too. Every job I've ever had out here, half the people there had a commute over an hour. Some way more than that. We have special blend California gasamoline too, and to make it worse you can't really mod your car unless it was made prior to 1975 or you want to jump through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops. The 2nd Amendment is considered anathema to a free society. There's a ton of narcissistic assholes, my kind of people. Depending on your industry, wages aren't that much higher or are even less. Sure you can make 15$ an hour working entry level jobs; but engineers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and other professions don't make significantly more here than they do elsewhere. Skilled craftsman command high wages, but they are also competing against large numbers of undocumented. Why pay someone who's licensed 3 times more? And, 3-6% higher salary than the national average doesn't mean bupkis when the median home price is $500k. To top it off, it's a rare wave/day that it's not crowded as fûćk.

But, if you can make good money, don't mind bumper-to-bumper traffic and shoulder-to-shoulder lineups, and have about a 130K$ to throw on a down payment and closing, do it.

Like I said, I love it

But I live 10 minutes from work, 5 minutes from the beach, get more than my fair share of waves, and my mortgage is less than the avg. 1 bedroom apartment in this town

Thank you prop 13. That's the one good thing, property taxes don't go up appreciably from when you purchased the home. It does however create massive inequality in what you or your neighbors pay. For instance, my neighbor who's in his 80s, gleefully likes to tell me about how he only paid $11,000 for his house in '61. His annual property taxes are probably less than a trip to the grocery store.

The lady across the street, in her 70s paid over $400k for her place.

Timing is everything

 

What most days in SoCal look like, my local right now


You're not missing much

 

Just don't wipe out.

And if you do Don't Panic.

Usually the hardest part is getting out