The small, unincorporated coastal berg of Bolinas, CA can be hard to locate, as residents are infamous for tearing down road signs that would help visitors find it. But for those who live there, and those who know how to navigate the winding backroads of Marin County, it has become a Bay Area surfer haven. And one of the focal points of the tight-knit surf community is the 2 Mile Surf Shop. Owned by Drew Reinstein, the shop employs several surf instructors lead by Lessons Manager Nick Kreiger, and an in-house surfboard maker, John Moore. Its name refers to that troublesome sign: legend holds that the very first one to be torn down read "Bolinas, 2 Miles."  

Photographer Joseph Schell documented a typical workday at 2 Mile Surf Shop.

Just after 9 a.m. on a mid-June morning, the door to the 2 Mile Surf Shop stands open, framed by an assortment of beach wood and a chalkboard covered in scrawl announcing surf and ride information. Anna Baker prepares to go out for her last class of a weeklong surf school offered throughout the summer.

Dwarfed by racks of surfboards, a shop customer runs his hand over the rails of the variety of boards available at the 2 Mile Shop. A trail of sand sprinkled over the pavement leads from the shop’s door to nearby beach access. This time of year, the foot traffic between the shop and the ocean is plentiful.

Reggae plays in the background as Baker sits in a beam of morning light coming through the doorway and pulls on her booties to get ready for her surf school outing. Kids come from all around Marin County to attend the school. According to shop staff, most return at least one week per year to surf the Bolinas break.

Pairs of surf booties sit in a row on the roof of the surf shop, drying in the morning sun. “My business here depends on the weather,” said shop owner, Drew Reinstein. “The past couple years have been hard to predict. It’s hard on a small business.”

Anna Baker, Lauren Guerin, Olivia Fisher-Smith and Sasha Dierauf (left to right) listen intently to their instructor as they prepare to get in the water. Ona Seney, the instructor, is teaching her apt pupils about what to do (and not to do) when caught in a rip current.

San Francisco is a distant blur behind the surf school at the south end of Bolinas Beach next to the Bolinas Channel and its well-known estuary break. Another well-known landmark on the beach: the “groin” sign. A groin is a wall designed to preserve the beach and prevent it from any further erosion. (It is also, unsurprisingly, the frequent subject of off-color jokes.)

John Moore, the in-house board shaper and designer, eyes several boards on the racks in the 2 Mile Surf Shop. Board shapers are a dying breed of artist, and much of the work in the surf board manufactuering industry has moved on to mass factory production. But Moore has been shaping and glassing his own boards under the label Mystic Surfboards since the early 90’s. After moving from the East Coast in search of warmer winters, Moore settled in the Bay Area. Since Moore’s workshop in located in Santa Cruz, he spends plenty of time traveling from there to Marin County, shaping boards in Santa Cruz and selling them in both locations. 

 

Fins play a crucial role in the design of a surfboard as they dictate everything from the turning radius of the board to how the board holds on the face of the wave. They are essentially the engines that keep the board moving forward. The board that Moore is working on has four fins (called a quad). Typical setups will have one to four fins—rarely five.

The surf shop, which attracts most of its business by word-of-mouth, is located in the back of an unassuming building fronted by a funky bookstore with no attendant, tucked behind a Post Office and liquor store. A coiled hose to wash off salt water flanks one side of the wood-sided one-story with low-hanging roof, and several locally drawn murals cover the opposite wall. 

Owner Drew Reinstein (left) and upstairs neighbor Nathan Gist chat over a board catalogue. Gist said his newly inked shark tattoo has a story behind it and recounted a day he spent surfing at Dillon Beach (a beach 35 miles to the north) in a “sharky” spot known as the Shark Pit. When he came face to face with a shark, it didn’t harm him. Since the incident occurred near the time of his father’s passing, he said, in the end, the tattoo just, “seemed like the right thing to do.”