(A Guide to Useful Surf Gear & Rituals)
There’s a myth that surfing is all epics:
epic swells, epic trips, epic edits, epic swearing at traffic crowds and tide windows.
But 90% of surfing is small.
Little. Tactile. Ritualistic.
Kind of stupid. Kind of perfect.
It’s the tiny upgrades and micro-decisions that keep the bad days from collapsing and the good days from evaporating too soon. Most of the surf experience happens between sets — not in the highlight reel.
We make wax — Sister Betsy’s Surf Wax — hand-poured in outer Venice by people who don’t need a focus group to know what feels good underfoot. Which means we live in the world of small things: grip, texture, scent, temperature. Details that matter more than we admit. We created the first subscription based surf wax to make sure our fellow surfers are always ready for any swell and never have to stress before!
Here are a few other small things making surfing better lately:
1. Grip You Can Trust - Race-Trac Pads
Traction pads aren’t glamorous, which is exactly why they matter.
If your back foot hesitates, your whole wave hesitates.
Race-Trac Pads don’t peel, slip, or require a deep understanding of glue to install. Our wax handles the front; their pads anchor the back.
Small thing → better surfing
Traction pads improve takeoffs, bottom turns, and board control — especially in cold water and on high-performance boards.
2. Boards That Arrive Alive - FARO Boardbags
The fastest way to ruin a surf trip or session is to unzip a boardbag and discover your favorite board has been reinterpreted as modern sculpture by airline baggage handlers. Equally tragic is losing a board to the slow, boring violence of car trunks and garage corners.
FARO Boardbags protect boards through airports, car stacks, basements, storage, and everything in between. Organic cotton, hemp canvas, and deadstock fabrics — durable without going full military surplus.
Small thing → fewer repairs, more sessions
3. Towels That Don’t Trap the Ocean - Happy Faced Towels
Nobody writes poetry about towels, yet the wrong towel can quietly ruin an epic surf day.
Too heavy → wet blanket
Too sandy → car and bed sabotage
Too slow to dry → mold nation
Happy Faced Towels fix the towel problem with recycled microfiber that’s soft, dries fast, weighs less, shakes off sand, and doesn’t smuggle half the beach home. They are also designed by real independent artists. Real people with bad habits and everything.
Small thing → more comfort
Quick-dry microfiber towels outperform cotton for surf, travel, parking-lot changes, and long drives home.
4. Reef-Safe Armor for Your Hair - KOOK Pre-Swim Hair Mask
Saltwater is fun for the soul and catastrophic for the hair. There’s a difference between surf hair and old rope.
KOOK Pre-Swim Hair Mask protects hair from salt, UV, and breakage without dumping chemicals into the lineup. Reef-safe. Vegan. Dermatologist tested. Up to eight hours of hydration and UV defense, using coconut oil, shea butter, aloe, carnauba wax and a little magic to lock in moisture — without leaving a film on the ocean we claim to love.
It’s one of the few “self-care” moves that doesn’t make you feel like a poser. It just quietly keeps your hair from clocking out before you do.
Small thing → longer sessions + reefs that survive your beauty regimen
5. Apparel Built for the Ocean - Custodians of the Sea
Custodians of the Sea makes garments designed for ocean life: hemp, recycled polyester (including ocean-bound plastics), water-based inks, and ethical manufacturing processes that don’t make you complicit in environmental theater. Hand made in California with love.
Their apparel survives post paddle-out, parking lots, access trails, jetty hangs, taco runs, road miles, and however many washes it takes to get the salt out.
Small thing → longer life cycles + less landfill guilt
The Part Nobody Talks About
Surfing isn’t just surfing. It’s:
pre-surf hustle
mid-surf improvisation
post-surf cleanup
The better those micro-moments go, the more the actual surfing feels like freedom instead of logistics.
Small upgrades → better surf days
Better wax → grip
Better traction → commitment
Better boardbags → protected boards
Better towels → faster reset
Better hair care → longer sessions
Better clothes → fewer replacements
None of these are “epic” on their own.
But they make surfing better where surfing actually lives: in the margins.
The Point (Without Getting Mystical)
If you take care of the small things, the big thing takes care of itself.
We make great wax because grip is a small thing that shapes a big thing: how a wave feels underfoot.
Our friends make small things too. Together, those small things are what surf culture is actually built on — not hashtags, edits, or activism campaigns.
See you out there, probably in the dark, rubbing wax on a deck, checking tide charts and eating breakfast burritos.
— Sister Betsy
