Insights · South Bay Creators Series
10 South Bay surf voices worth following.
An editorial look at the surfers, shapers, photographers, and shop owners telling the South Bay surf story online — from El Porto to the Palos Verdes Peninsula — plus six shops and shapers worth knowing.
By Breakwater Editorial · April 12, 2026 · 9 min read
Part of The South Bay Creators Series.
TL;DR
South Bay surf runs on four legs: the historic Hermosa shops (E.T. Surf, Spyder, Dive N' Surf), the shapers (Tyler Hatzikian, Dennis Jarvis, the El Porto shaper scene), the media (Mike Balzer, Chas Smith / BeachGrit, Brad Jacobson), and the community (South Bay Boardriders Club, El Porto Surf Shop, and big-wave pro Alex Gray's work off the board). This list is editorial, not sponsored, and tries to represent all four legs.
How we built this list
Four legs, one scene.
South Bay surf doesn't map cleanly to a single category. It's the people who ride the waves, the people who shape the boards, the people who photograph and write about the scene, and the people who organize the contests that keep the community coherent. A list that only picks from one of those legs would be misleading.
So this one pulls from all four — pro surfers, shapers, photographers and writers, and shop owners / organizers. Geographically we tried to represent El Porto (which dominates South Bay surf media), Hermosa Beach (which dominates South Bay surf retail), Redondo Beach (the Body Glove origin), El Segundo, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Nothing on this page is sponsored. No one on this list was contacted for approval, and no one paid to appear. Verifiable facts — sponsors, brands, induction dates, contest results — are linked to the source. Everything else is editorial judgment.
The list
Ten South Bay surf voices worth following.
Ordered, but loosely — each person on this list plays a different role in how the scene works. Read it as a map, not a leaderboard.
Alex Gray
@a_gray · Big-wave pro surfer + AGray Surf Therapy
Palos VerdesTorranceRancho Palos VerdesThe most internationally recognized South Bay surfer working today, and the one with the most substantive off-the-board project — a sibling-grief surf therapy group run out of Torrance Beach.
Gray grew up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, surfed Bluff Cove and Torrance as a kid, picked up his first Volcom and Body Glove sponsorships at twelve, and left the World Qualifying Series in his early twenties to chase waves of consequence. Since then: Surfer Magazine covers (four of them), an Eddie Aikau invite, a Nelscott Reef Big Wave Tour win, a Surfer Poll Barrel-of-the-Year for his 2011 Teahupoo wave, and two GoPro of the Year wins out of Fiji and Africa.
The bigger story in 2026 is AGray Surf Therapy. After his older brother Chris died of an overdose when Alex was 17, Gray built a sibling grief group that meets on the sand at Torrance. He's spoken at more than two dozen South Bay high schools. The feed reflects both sides — serious waves, serious community — without feeling cynical about either.
alexgraysurf.com ↗Instagram: @a_grayTyler Hatzikian
Tyler Surfboards · Shaper + surfer · South Bay Legend
El SegundoEl PortoManhattan BeachJust inducted as an official South Bay Legend at the Hermosa Beach Surfing Walk of Fame (April 27, 2026). Runs Tyler Surfboards out of an El Segundo warehouse.
Born in El Segundo in 1972, Hatzikian grew up skating Grand Avenue down to The Strand and surfing El Porto back when "Northside" — the jetty wave in front of the Chevron refinery — was still unnamed. Photographer Mike Balzer put him on Surfer Magazine's "15 Hellmen You Should Know" in 1991.
He founded Tyler Surfboards out of an El Segundo warehouse with a half-page Longboard Magazine ad reading "Finally." Three decades later, his boards are the South Bay's most specific answer to Orange County dominance of California surf culture. His team is all under 21. As fellow shaper Shawn O'Brien puts it: "In the grand scheme of the entire surf world, Tyler is the most influential surfer out of South Bay."
Dennis Jarvis
Spyder Surf · Founder + shaper · Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame
Hermosa BeachManhattan BeachBuilt one of the South Bay's two defining surf retail brands from a 1970s pro-surfing career. Three locations, one of them on the Hermosa Pier Plaza.
Jarvis was on the cover of Surfer Magazine in 1982 as a young pro on the International Professional Surfers tour. He opened the first Spyder shop in 1983 on the corner of PCH and Artesia in Hermosa, shaping boards in the back while selling trunks in the front. Forty-plus years later that same location is a 6,000-square-foot standalone. He personally shaped every board used in the original Point Break (1991).
Spyder now runs three South Bay locations (Hermosa PCH, Hermosa Pier Plaza, Manhattan Beach), still family-owned, still building their own surfboards. Jarvis was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame in 2015. Between Spyder and Tyler Surfboards, the two most influential South Bay surf brands working today are both owned by actual shapers.
spydersurf.com ↗Instagram: @spydersurfEddie Talbot
E.T. Surf · Founder + shop owner · 45+ years
Hermosa BeachThe other pillar of Hermosa surf retail. Opened in 1972 after managing Greg Noll's shop; still family-feel, still at 904 Aviation Blvd.
Talbot came up on the Greg Noll Surf Team alongside his best friend Pat "Gumby" Ryan, then managed Noll's shop in its final years before the bankruptcy. He opened E.T. Surf with savings from selling board-building materials to the backyard shaping community Noll had left behind.
E.T. was the first South Bay surf shop to carry surf-and-skate crossover clothing in the early '70s, and one of Burton's first two snowboard accounts in California. The feel of the place hasn't really changed — Easy Reader calls it a "classic surf shop that still smells like wax and resin." Talbot was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame in 2003.
Mike Balzer
@balzerphoto · Surf photographer · Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame (2024)
Hermosa BeachEl PortoManhattan BeachThe photographer of record for modern South Bay surfing. Three Surfer Magazine covers shot from the Manhattan Pier alone.
Balzer bridged the contest-vs-freestyle divide in the early '90s when nobody else saw it coming, organizing the freestyle sessions in the South Bay that ended up on the cover of Surfer and Surfing. His New School images from the 1993 North Shore trip defined the moment. He put a then-13-year-old Greg Browning on the cover of Surfer from the north side of the Manhattan Pier.
He was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame in 2024, and still works out of 621 25th Street in Hermosa. If you're trying to understand what South Bay surfing actually looks like — the angles, the crowds, the light — his feed is the best single archive.
mike-balzer.com ↗Instagram: @balzerphotoChas Smith
BeachGrit · Journalist + founder · author, The WSL Is Stupid And Other Essential Truths
El PortoManhattan BeachThe most-read — and most-argued-with — voice in surf media, publishing out of El Porto. If you want to understand how El Porto is talked about outside El Porto, this is the source.
Smith co-founded BeachGrit with Derek Rielly and has published five books, including Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell and Reports from Hell. He's an invited guest at the El Porto Surf Contest every year and writes about the neighborhood with the same irreverent voice he aims at the World Surf League.
You can disagree with his takes on competitive surfing and still acknowledge that no one else is writing about South Bay surf culture with this kind of reach or rhythm. For better or worse, BeachGrit is the closest thing El Porto has to a house organ.
Erik Logan
Surfer, writer, former CEO (WSL + OWN)
El PortoManhattan BeachA genuinely unusual résumé in surf — former CEO of the World Surf League and former president of the Oprah Winfrey Network — who still surfs El Porto and writes about it as a local.
Logan ran the WSL through the post-Dirk-Ziff transition and spent years running OWN before that. After stepping away from the league, he's settled into being one of El Porto's more thoughtful writer-surfers, writing about the neighborhood, the sport, and the habits of high performers.
His perspective is useful specifically because it's not a pro surfer's perspective or a journalist's perspective — it's an operator's. If you run a business and also surf, his newsletter and social posts read like a rare combination of both worlds.
eriklogan.com ↗Instagram: @erikloganPack Landfair
El Porto Surf Shop · Shop owner + writer · El Porto Surf Contest organizer
El PortoManhattan BeachBought the El Porto Surf Shop in 2017 and in 2022 co-launched the El Porto Surf Contest. Five years in, it's one of the South Bay's defining annual events.
Landfair — novelist, actor, College World Series champion, and now surf-shop owner — fell for El Porto the first time he visited and built himself into the neighborhood. The El Porto Surf Contest he co-launched with the South Bay Boardriders Club now features invited local pros, artists, shapers, and community fixtures, and is structured explicitly to preserve El Porto's small-town identity against the creep of generic beach-city branding.
If you want a single account that represents what El Porto actually is culturally — not its Instagram-aestheticized version — his is the one.
South Bay Boardriders Club
@southbayboardriders · Nonprofit surf club · Subaru Pacific Surf Series presenter
El PortoManhattan BeachHermosa BeachTorranceThe organizing body behind the eight-event Surf Series, the Queen of the South Bay contest, Grom-O-Rama, and the 2026 World Club Championship team that just finished 25th out of 40 in Coolangatta, Australia.
Started in 2010 by a committee that included Mike Balzer, Matt Walls, Wright Adaza, Shaun Burrell, Charlie Carver, Mark Theodore, and Doug Somers, the SBBC has become the connective tissue of competitive South Bay surf. The Subaru Pacific Surf Series runs El Porto, Torrance, Hermosa Pier, and Manhattan Pier stops from December through May, with divisions from Micro Grom Assist (9 and under, coach-pushed) to Legends (55+).
If you want to know who actually rides waves in the South Bay — not who posts about it — this is the place to watch. The 2026 World Club Championship team in Australia included Shaun Burrell, Max Hoshino, London and Teagan Meza, Kai Kushner, Cole Saffel, Jonny Herrouin, and Dylan Morrisoe.
Brad Jacobson
Surf videographer + YouTuber
El PortoManhattan BeachThe working video voice of El Porto. Published on The Inertia; invited to every El Porto Surf Contest; documents the lineup the way Balzer documents the frame.
Jacobson's YouTube edits of El Porto during heavy swells — most recently following pro surfer Kei Kobayashi into a closed-out session that a lot of the lineup watched from the sand — do what almost no other SB surf creator is doing: putting the neighborhood's best days on video in a way that reads for viewers who've never been.
If the top of this list captures how South Bay surf gets written about and photographed, Jacobson captures how it gets filmed. Follow him if you want to know what El Porto actually looked like last week.
Also worth knowing
Six shops and shapers worth knowing.
Not voices in the follow-on-Instagram sense, but operators you should know if you care about South Bay surf — especially for boards, wetsuits, and community touchpoints.
Dive N' Surf / Body Glove
Shop + brand · Meistrell family · Redondo Beach
Founded in 1953 on a $1,800 loan from the Meistrell twins' mother, and the birthplace of the commercially viable neoprene wetsuit. Still family-owned, still on North Broadway in Redondo. The foundation story of South Bay surf retail.
Visit ↗
Barahona Surfboards
Shaper · Jose Barahona · El Porto
One of the most respected working El Porto shapers. Known for experimentation and a specifically-local read on how South Bay waves break. Boards regularly on the water at Porto on any given swell.
Visit ↗
Ry Harris Surfboards
Shaper · sustainable · El Porto
Pioneering environmentally sustainable boards made from recycled and upcycled materials out of El Porto. The clearest answer to the surf-industry sustainability question in the South Bay.
Visit ↗
Matt Pagan Surfboards
Shaper · El Porto
El Porto-based shaper known for functional, wave-driven designs for the working surfer rather than the trophy case. A regular on the El Porto Surf Contest shaper list.
Visit ↗
Wave Rave LA
Retail · El Segundo / El Porto
A newer South Bay surf retailer that sponsors a stop on the Surf Series. Worth knowing if you want to understand what the next retail generation in the South Bay looks like.
Visit ↗
Bark Boards (Joe Bark)
Shaper · paddleboards + surfboards · Redondo Beach
Redondo Beach firefighter and long-time shaper; mentored Alex Gray as a kid. One of the most respected paddleboard builders in California, and a living link between the Body Glove-era Redondo and the current scene.
Visit ↗
If you're reading this for a reason
How we'd actually use this list.
If you're a surfer new to the South Bay
Start with the South Bay Boardriders Club calendar and a local shop visit — either E.T. Surf in Hermosa or Dive N' Surf in Redondo. The Surf Series schedule alone will tell you more about the local lineup than any algorithm. For follow-along content, Mike Balzer, Brad Jacobson, and the SBBC feed are the best combined signal.
If you run a surf brand, shop, or shaper business
Notice what the working voices on this list have in common: craftsmanship, neighborhood-specific content, and an actual point of view about what the South Bay is. Notice what isn't here: generic product reels, paid influencer partnerships, and aspirational lifestyle b-roll that could be anywhere. The surf economy rewards realness more than most verticals, and this list shows who's getting that right.
If you're a local business adjacent to the ocean economy
Fitness studios, cafés, wetsuit-adjacent wellness services, gear rental, home-services in the beach cities — the surf audience is not the Instagram-aesthetic beach audience. Partnerships with any of the voices above, or sponsorships on the Surf Series, reach that audience with far more credibility than general paid social of equivalent spend.
Frequently asked
About this list.
Questions we hear a lot
Frequently asked
Is this a paid or sponsored list?
How did you decide who made the list?
Why isn't every legendary South Bay shaper on this list?
El Porto isn't a city. Why is it listed separately?
We're a South Bay surf brand or creator. How do we get considered?
Will Breakwater Digital work with surf brands?
For South Bay surf businesses
Want to grow a real audience without going generic?
Breakwater Digital is based in Redondo Beach. We work with local operators — including surf and ocean-economy brands — on the Grow track: local SEO, AI search, content, paid media, and the websites those efforts actually need to work.
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