The California Surf Museum on Pier View Way is the best surfing museum in the state. It traces the history of surfing from ancient Hawaiian practice through the Gidget era, the shortboard revolution of the late 1960s, and into the modern professional circuit — with boards, photographs, film footage, and equipment from every period.
The collection includes boards used by legendary surfers, vintage wetsuits, surf culture memorabilia, and a rotating series of special exhibitions. It's a compact museum that manages to be genuinely interesting even if you're not a surfer — the story of how surfing spread from Hawaii to California and then to the world is well-told here.