Ways of Seeing. Ways of Being.

“Surfing Cowboys” was something we called ourselves long before it became a store or a brand.

Surfers ride the waves. Cowboys ride the range.

To us, the name described a way of moving through the world — independent, curious, resourceful, open to change, drawn to beauty, and willing to follow an idea wherever it led.

Long before Surfing Cowboys had a name above a door, we were traveling, photographing, collecting, fixing things, designing things, dancing, surfing, and building a life around what interested us.

That life became Surfing Cowboys.

From the Road to Venice

Before opening the store, we worked as fashion photographers, traveling extensively and developing an eye for light, landscape, people, clothing, interiors, and objects with character.

We collected constantly.

Some things came from flea markets and yard sales. Some had been discarded. Furniture was repaired and refinished. Lamps were rewired. Objects other people passed over became interesting again once they were cleaned up, restored, or placed in a different context.

We didn’t have a formula — or much money. What we had was curiosity, imagination, a willingness to work, and an instinct for seeing possibility in things others overlooked.

In the early 1990s, we moved into a live-work building on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. Reception was in front, our photography studio was in the middle, and we lived in the back.

The front began filling with furniture, clothing, art, props, surfboards, road finds, and things we had collected for the California home we didn’t yet have.

We arranged the windows like little worlds.

People began asking to buy what they saw.

In 1995, we transformed the photography studio into a store, painted Surfing Cowboys® on the building, and opened the doors.

Creating a California Point of View

Surfing Cowboys was never simply an antique store, a surf shop, a gallery, or a clothing boutique.

We brought together things that, at the time, generally lived in different worlds — surf culture and the American West, mid-century design and roadside Americana, motorcycles and photography, vintage clothing, furniture, art, music, handmade objects, and the remnants of a California that was already beginning to disappear.

We weren’t following an established California lifestyle formula.

We were following our own eye.

In many ways, we were creating a genre before there was a name for it.

The combinations that felt unexpected in our early Abbot Kinney store would, over time, become increasingly familiar across retail, interiors, hospitality, publishing, and lifestyle brands. Surfboards over mid-century furniture. Western textiles beside modern design. Vintage clothing, motorcycles, art, music, and California history brought together as one world.

Today, that visual language feels almost inevitable. In the 1990s, it wasn’t.

Things that might have looked ordinary, unfashionable, or unrelated somewhere else took on a different meaning when brought together. The store became a place to experiment — part shop, part studio, part installation, and always changing.

Just as important as finding things was helping other people see what we saw in them.

Over time, that way of seeing became the visual language of Surfing Cowboys — and elements of that language traveled far beyond our walls.

More Than a Store

For more than seventeen years on Abbot Kinney, and later for more than five years on Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, Surfing Cowboys became a destination for people looking for something they weren’t finding elsewhere.

They came for furniture, art, vintage clothing, jewelry, surf history, design, and the unexpected.

Sometimes they came simply to look.

And sometimes whatever they found needed to fit in a suitcase.

Our background in fashion made clothing and accessories a natural extension of the world we had created. A hat, jacket, necklace, or T-shirt could carry a little of Surfing Cowboys beyond the store — to another beach, another city, another country.

The San Francisco Chronicle called us “HQ for California Dreaming.”

That still feels about right.

Venice-Born. Malibu-Rooted.

When we moved Surfing Cowboys to Malibu, we brought the larger-format store with us.

For roughly the first three and a half years, the Malibu shop still held the many different departments that had defined Surfing Cowboys for years — furniture, art, vintage clothing, jewelry, surfboards, objects, original goods, and the unexpected things we had always loved bringing together.

It was only when we moved into our current, smaller space that the retail experience became more intimate.

With less room, the emphasis naturally shifted toward the Surfing Cowboys Signature Collection, clothing and accessories, jewelry, art, and exceptional vintage. We still maintain a rotating selection of art, home goods, collectibles, and objects — just in a more edited way, with far less furniture than in our larger stores.

The scale changed, but the point of view did not.

Our original goods are increasingly central to the brand, many designed and produced close to home in Los Angeles and California. Vintage continues to bring history, individuality, discovery, and the unexpected.

We are still following our curiosity.

Still making things.

Still finding things worth keeping.

Still bringing unlikely worlds together.

And still defending the California dream that inspired Surfing Cowboys in the first place.

Thanks for coming along for the ride,

Wayne & Donna
Surfing Cowboys®
Defenders of the California Dream