Chasing the cold coast

I'm from Canada. Inland, cold, landlocked, a long way from any ocean. I grew up skating and snowboarding, and I first saw the Pacific — and Northern California — when I was twelve. It changed how I saw everything.

I'd charge the waves and scramble through the storm-torn headlands. The rugged coast, the brisk cold water, the sunsets that ran on forever. It never gets old.

I moved to California in 2007, sold the snow gear, and doubled down on the water. I could never get away from the coast — it kept pulling me back. Pacifica, Santa Cruz, Fort Bragg. I explored the small towns and found new places to surf. In 2020 I quit visiting Pacifica and moved there.

Somewhere in all that I was lucky enough to find another drifting soul. I won't forget our first sunset at Mori Point. We'd been through a lot of the same things, and we said so. We've gone up and down the coastline together since, always racing to a promising peak or racing home to squeeze in one more surf before dark. Now, with our little grom and our dog Jett, the adventure continues.

Most people in the water out here weren't born into it either. They found it, kept coming back, and some of us stayed for good. That's who this is for.

No plastic — but not for the reason you'd guess

Plastic isn't a moral failing. It's just cheap. It cracks, it goes brittle in the sun, it snaps in the cold, and eventually it ends up in the sand behind your house.

Wood, steel, canvas, glass, cork, rubber. Materials that can be repaired instead of replaced, and that get better looking as they wear. If a thing can't last ten years, we're not interested in making it.

The same standard reaches past hardware. Where there's fiber, it's natural fiber, not a synthetic blend dressed up to sound like it. Where there's an ingredient list, it's short enough to read in one breath, and every word on it is something you'd recognize — nothing added to stretch shelf life or cut a corner.

Buy it once. Fix it when it breaks. Hand it down.

Worth stopping for

We're not the only ones out here.

The northern coast is full of small towns and people quietly making very good things. Part of what this is for is putting them in front of more people. We write about the work, then send you to their shop — not ours. No commission, no middleman, nothing of theirs for sale here.

If you make something on a cold coast and you'd rather be building than posting, get in touch. We'll help with the online side and teach you to run it yourself.

One email, when there's something to see

Not a newsletter. No weekly dispatch about the ocean. One message when there's a real thing to look at, and nothing in between.