Kern River Surf Co.
Adventure Doesn't Wait For A Beach!
Latest from the Riverbed
Kern River Surf Co is the surf shop Bakersfield turns to for apparel and local surf gear. Rooted in Kern County, built on river life, and driven by authentic California surf culture.
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Pan Am World Tour of Surfing – Oildale 1977 Tee | Kern River Surf Co Vintage Canal Surf Shirt
$35.00 -
Lil’ Sparky Youth T-Shirt – Kern River Surf Co Future Legend Tee
$25.00 -
FFTP Drilling Co. “Can’t Gitt’r – Can’t Stay” Oilfield Tribute Tee
$30.00 -
Kern River Surf Co Collegiate Youth T-Shirt – Retro California Kids Surf Tee
$25.00 -
Boudreaux’s Bayou Petting Zoo Youth Tee – Kern River Surf Co
$25.00 -
Kern River Surf Co. Youth Retro Sun Tee
$35.00 -
Mudflap Surf Girls Zip-Up Hoodie – Kern River Surf Co.
$55.00 -
“Boudreaux’s Bayou Petting Zoo” – Sponsored by Kern River Surf Co
$35.00 -
Not Quite Endless Summer Tee – Kern River Surf Co
$35.00 -
Super Soft Super Exclusive Black Tee
$40.00 -
Bakersfield’s Own- Polynesian Boom Boom Room unisex T
$35.00 -
Kern River Surf Co. Retro ’69–’82 Throwback Tee — “The Rediscovered Classic”
$35.00 -
Kern River Surf Co Handsome Devil Surf T- black
$30.00 -
World Tour (Featuring Bakersfield) – Women’s Tee
$30.00 -
Rig Up- Short Sleeve Tee
$30.00 -
Truxtun Lakes Yacht Club Signal Flag Shirt
$40.00
Circa 1986.
Still waiting on the San Andreas tidal wave to turn Rosedale into the beachfront capital of SoCal. Probably the first time someone tried surfing a canal with a garage door panel. Kern River Surf Co wasn’t founded then—but the attitude was. Officially “established” in 1991 (give or take), KRSCo has evolved into a nebulous surf brand with real merch, unapologetically repping Bakersfield’s landlocked wave riders and Truxtun Lakes Yacht Club dreamers as the best surf shop Bakersfield locals can claim their own.
Locally Designed. Kern-Born.
Back in the 80’s when lawn darts were legal, our friends started drawing stuff and we never told them to stop.
Pick Your Poison
The Glasnost Skate Exchange
The Glasnost Skate Exchange Moscow ↔ Bakersfield, 1991 When concrete diplomacy rolled on four wheels In the final, uncertain years of the Cold War, when borders were softening but nerves were still tight, few people imagined that a skateboard would become an...
May 5, 1987. Who remembers?
Is This the Origin of the Truxtun Lakes Monster? Every legend has a photograph. This one surfaced quietly—an old, grainy black-and-white image showing a massive, armor-plated fish hauled onto a dock at Greater Truxtun Lake. Men stand around it in stunned silence. No...
A Storied Harbor: The History of the Truxtun Lakes Yacht Club
The Story Perched elegantly above the sun-struck waters of Greater Truxtun Lake, its long pier stretching confidently into the blue, the Truxtun Lakes Yacht Club (TLYC) stands as a monument to a vision of Central Valley nautical life that is both improbable...
Pan-Am, Pismo and the Kern River: A Non-Stop Bakersfield Legend
There was a time—maybe real, maybe just whispered about over campfires and canal banks—when the world's most glamorous airline, Pan Am, charted a course not just to Havana or Honolulu, but non-stop to Bakersfield and Pismo Beach. This was the age of jet-set optimism,...
The Forgotten Voyage: Rolf Thiegurdsen and the Coconut Raft to Kernville
By C. M. Halloran, Pacific Ethnohistory Quarterly, Spring 1979 In the spring of 1950, amid Cold War tension and California’s golden postwar optimism, a little-known Norwegian ethnographer named Rolf Thiegurdsen launched one of the most bizarre and forgotten...
Not the Devil: Old Sparky
Old Sparky: The Devilish Summer Spirit of Kern County Skate Culture There’s a certain time of year in the south end of the San Joaquin Valley when the sun turns the asphalt into a griddle, the air stands completely still, and even the shade feels like it’s given up....
Kern River Tiki
Myth Mystery, and Modern Style In the heart of California’s Central Valley, where the sun scorches the hills and the Kern River rushes with wild abandon, a legend has quietly endured—passed down in whispers, campfire stories,...
How Kern River Surf Co Was Founded on Freedom
The Founding Wave and Patriotic Origin of Kern River Surf Co. Long before Bakersfield bore orchards or oil fields, before the freeways ran like veins through California’s Central Valley, the banks of the Kern River whispered legends—some real, some ridiculous, and...
Gordon’s Ferry-Tail & Kern River Surf Co
CROSSING OVER: GORDON’S FERRY, CHARON RIVER INDUSTRIES & THE BATTLE FOR OUR SOULS (AND BOARDS)By the Kern River Surf Co Field Department of Regional Myths and Transportation Logistics Before the dam, before the bridge, and long before the Oildale meth gators...
Friday Night Bakersfield Drag Racing and Tacos
My friends and I argue about which was the more popular destination for weekend high school Bakersfield drag racing. Was it out in the north side of town. Zerker Road, or was it out in the south end past Pacheco and towards...