Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
Tourists come here from all over the world to see the shop," says Ryan Titilah, shop manager. "It's like they're walking into the Sistine Chapel. It's the Sistine Chapel of skateboarding."
For much of the 1970s, the store was known as the Zephyr Surf Shop. The 2002 documentary "Dogtown and Z-boys" chronicled the achievements of a rag-tag group of teenagers who collected at the shop when the surfing was bad and went on to reinvent the sport of skateboarding as members of the Zephyr team, or Z-boys.
"[Our families] really didn't care where we went. Where we ended up was this building," says former Z-boy Paul Hoffman. "This was our home. This was where we hung out. Skip Engblom and Jeff Ho were our dads."
Shop owners Ho, Engblom, and Craig Stycek gave the boys odd jobs and helped them build skateboards. New polyurethane wheels allowed the boys to adapt their surfing moves to the cement, and the partners encouraged them to practice and to invent new moves. In 1975 they sponsored a team of 11 boys and one girl to compete in the Del Mar Nationals, where the Z-boys blew away the competition with their aggressive surf-skate style.
In May, the Santa Monica Landmarks Commission officially landmarked the portion of the 1922 building that houses the surf shop based on its cultural, rather than architectural, significance. The commission first reviewed the building in October after the owner filed for a demolition permit as part of a plan to build a "green" 14-unit apartment building with underground parking and retail space.