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# Saving Horizons is first step
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/saving-horizons-is-first-step/
- Published: 2007-04-18T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T00:35:32.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Pier, #archive-import

*in salvaging skater culture*

Sometimes, the simplest of answers are the most difficult to reach. In the case of Horizons West and Zephyr, the compromise being struck to save the surf and skate shops should have been as obvious as an inward heelflip.

Regardless, the decision to maintain the storefront at Main and Bay streets — which formerly housed Zephyr and Jeff Ho Productions — and develop the rear of the property is a sound one. By maintaining the historic, if unexceptional, storefront, developers can continue pioneering in the field of green architecture even as they nod to the city’s beach town roots.

Landmarks Commissioner Roger Genser recently labeled the new proposal a “win-win-win-win” situation. While it remains unclear who all the wins represent, Genser hit the nail on the head.

Still, it’s going to take more than an outdated storefront to retain Santa Monica’s cultural history. Lest the Dogtown nostalgia go the way of Muscle Beach — originally located just south of the Santa Monica Pier, but since synonymous with neighboring Venice Beach — city planners, tourism officials and promoters need to embrace the radical lifestyle that made Santa Monica, well, a rad place to be.

Skateboarding — as the ensuing 30-plus years since the Z-Boys made their mark has shown — is much more than just a novel pastime, it is a definable lifestyle, due in large part to Santa Monicans. The problem is that skateboarders, sometimes referred to as “skate rats,” aren’t a money-generating demographic from which the city can cash in, hence, the initial nonchalance that greeted plans to tear down the Main Street mainstay. It was only after community members rallied to remind us all that our booming city by the sea was once an accessible beach town that the building was spared.

While saving the Horizons West Surf Shop building at 2001-2011 Main St. is a solid first glide down the drained pool wall, the city can do more to celebrate its ’70s era cultural gift to the world. The handful of skateparks around town tend to attract a younger crowd, leaving older ’boarders scrambling. A few years ago, rather than place the current Cove Skatepark along the Santa Monica Beach, it was located adjacent to the Police Activities League on Olympic Boulevard, hardly representative of the rebellious nature of the Z-Boys.

It would seem appropriate that Santa Monica as a whole serve as a Mecca for skateboarders the world over, but throughout the city, benches, railings, steps and building walls are designed in a manner so as to keep them away. By regulating the skaters right off the streets and attempting to confine them to allotted areas we are only going to send them elsewhere, like Venice Beach.

But we’ll always have a storefront.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 18, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/041807.pdf?ref=smdp.com)