Editor’s Note: Los Angeles is a gnarly place to live when it’s not 70 degrees and sunny. The rumors about everybody forgetting to drive the second a little water hits the road are spot on. And for surfers, jumping in the ocean after a good run of storms is a serious gamble. But on the flip side when it’s good it can be pretty damn good – at least here in the Southbay. While Malibu gets all the LA cred in the surf scene the Southbay is its own little “hidden gem,” if it’s even possible to hide within view of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world.
There are barrels to be had in this town if you don’t default to the same handful of waves everybody else runs for when there’s swell. And by the looks of it, with the first El Niño swell of 2016, life is going to be pretty good this winter. We may have traffic, and we definitely have dirty water, but days like these make being a surfer in Los Angeles worth it all.
