If you are looking for a new spot to surf, Encinitas might be the ticket. We are all looking for those quaint places where sand and surf are perfect and the town has a lot to offer. Encinitas, California might be the answer. Not only do surfers abound, but the town itself has a lot of hip little spots to hang out. If you are in the market for a new surf destination, consider this charming town.
BEST SURF TOWNS IN AMERICA 2017, NO. 7: ENCINITAS, CA
THE BEST PLACES IN THE U.S. TO EAT, SLEEP, WORK, AND SHRED
BY SURFER
If, as Leo Tolstoy once wrote in Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike…," then all happy surf towns are, too. Certainly, in every happy surf town there are the same old salty surf dawgs on giant longboards who'll cut off the groms and never look back. There are the underground legends who could've gone pro, but never left. There's a robust amateur comp circuit and a local shaper who seems to make every other guy's board. There's a particular breakfast spot where every surfer in town eventually eats after a dawn patrol, hair still dripping wet, with the menus promoting various combinations of eggs all named after local surf spots, as if the "T-Street" is any better than the "Riviera." Most importantly, in all happy surf towns, every real local believes the same unanimous lie that sometimes, just sometimes, their homebreak can get as good as the best break on the entire planet.
Indeed, there are many of these surf towns all over America, but what, precisely, makes one better than the other? Wave quality? Quaintness? Seclusion? Proximity to a city with culture? Price of a "T-Street" with a side of bacon?
We've compiled this list, primarily considering quality of life and quality of surf, but also taking into account other variables such as climate, consistency and variety of waves, cost of living, culture, and availability of work. After consulting, researching, and heavy debate, we narrowed the expansive list of towns down to 10—our ranking of the 10 best American surf towns.
No. 7: Encinitas, CA
Bear with us on this metaphor…If surf towns were the beds in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, then in all of Southern California, Encinitas is the bed that feels juuuust right. San Clemente? Wave-rich, but too sleepy. Oceanside? Too gritty. La Jolla? Too snobby. Pacific Beach? Too fratty. But Encinitas? Why, that's a place with a variety of year-round surf, a rootsy bike-rideable town, and a community of ocean-minded families and individuals. In striking distance of more consistent surf spots up or down the coast (Not to mention Baja, Mexico is less than an hour south), lovely Encinitas, perhaps, is the surf town that the bear in the state flag is wandering toward.
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