"Surfing Cowboys" began as a phrase before it became a place.

We coined it in the early 1990s to describe a way of living we recognized in ourselves, and in California. Surfers ride the waves. Cowboys ride the range. Both prepare, read the conditions, trust their instincts, and know how to improvise.

From the Road to Venice

Before we opened the store, we were fashion photographers traveling across the country, chasing light, landscapes, people, and objects that carried a story. Those years on the road sharpened our eye and gave shape to the world that would become Surfing Cowboys.

In the early 1990s, Venice’s Abbot Kinney Blvd had not yet become the polished destination people know today. To us, it offered possibility: low rent, creative freedom, and a live/work building just a short walk from the beach.

We built a life around the space: reception up front, photo studio in the middle, living quarters in the back. The front room held props, road finds, vintage pieces, and objects we were collecting for the California home we did not yet have. We staged the windows like little worlds — part installation, part invitation.

People noticed.

Clients, neighbors, artists, and passersby started asking to buy what they saw. The objects had their own gravity and the mix made sense before we had language for it. In 1995, we turned the Venice Beach photo studio into a store, painted Surfing Cowboys® on the building, and opened the doors.

Not an antique store. Not a surf shop. Not a gallery. Not a clothing boutique. Something looser, warmer, stranger, and more California than that.

At the time, there was no California lifestyle formula to follow. The category people recognize now had not yet been packaged, branded, or turned into retail shorthand. What began as an experiment became a language others would follow.

In effect, the shop became a creative studio retail experience — a shape-shifting department store for the California imagination. The mix was loose but intentional, irreverent but deeply considered. We were not just selling things. We were sharing what we loved and bringing attention to the beauty, character, and value we saw in the pieces.

A Place People Came to Find the Unexpected

Over the course of more than 17 years on Abbot Kinney and another five-plus years on Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, the store became a local favorite, a hangout, a design source, and a place people came to find the unexpected.

Some came for furniture. Some came for inspiration. Some came because they wanted to take home a piece of the California dream.

And sometimes that piece needed to fit in a suitcase.

With our fashion photography background, clothing and accessories became a natural extension of the story. People wanted something they could carry with them — a hat, a jacket, a necklace, a tee, a piece of the feeling. Something that could leave Venice, cross an ocean, show up at a party, on a beach, in a city, on the road.

“HQ for California Dreaming.”
— San Francisco Chronicle

Writers, editors, designers, and travelers found their way in too — and called the shop everything from “HQ for California Dreaming” to “a monument to California Culture.”

The Malibu Chapter

When the Malibu chapter began, we moved across from the Pacific with the same point of view and a wider horizon.

Our current Malibu shop is more intimate than the early Venice spaces, with a focus on clothing, accessories, jewelry, vintage wearables, and our own Signature Collection — California-crafted goods made in small runs with the same spirit that started it all. Around that core, you’ll still find the objects that keep the larger world alive.

We continue to evolve with a wonderful team of compadres working alongside us, cultivating and sharing the pieces that make up our world.

The same things still guide us — the coast, the lure of the West, the beauty we see, and the dream that is California.

Thanks for coming along for the ride,

Wayne & Donna
Surfing Cowboys®
Defenders of the California Dream