I'm taking a trip to San Diego soon and am going to be staying in Pacific Beach. I want to buy a used board or maybe rent a real board (no softboards) but I dont know where to go to do so! Any help would be really cool!
Check out Clairemont surfshop. It's about 5 miles inland of pacific beach (Balboa ave), but you can "demo" a board for free i believe. Just leave your CC and bring the board back and you're good. They have a lot of shapes from Jay Novak (AKA Shaper, but has a clairmont surfshop logo on the board) . Pretty decent - or you can always go for a firewire. They demo them as well.
Craigslist to score a cheap board, fast. But if you want a quality stick for a decent price that you can take home and shred, you gotta visit Bird's Surf Shed. It's very close to PB and Bird is a San Diego legend.
I live 2 blocks down the street from that place. Ive only seen people coming out of there with yellow softies. Always a line of kooks... visitors, I'm sorry
When I've taken trips out there I've always just bought beater boards from Play-it-again sports. You can get boards for $100/200 which is probably the just a little more than you'd pay for a crappy rental. You may even be able to sell the board back (I'm not sure about that though). It's right now the main street in PB (garnet I think). Have fun!
