Chasing the same feeling
I Didn't Realize I Was Still Chasing the Same Feeling
There's a phrase that used to show up everywhere in surf culture back in the day. Only a surfer knows the feeling. I wasn't even a surfer — I was a kid with a bodyboard, running down to the beach whenever I could. But that line stuck with me anyway.
I didn't fully understand why at the time. I just knew I wanted to feel like I understood something other people didn't.
It Was Never Really About the Waves
Looking back, the bodyboard was almost beside the point. What I was actually chasing was something harder to name — that feeling of being part of something real, something that hadn't been packaged and sold to everyone yet.
That's why I spent so much time flipping through surf magazines, past the big names, straight to the back pages. That's where the small logos lived — brands nobody in my town had heard of. I'd tear out a page, fold it up, and spend the next few weekends trying to track down the one shop that might carry it.
At 15, I couldn't have explained what I was actually looking for. I just knew that finding something before everyone else did made it mean more.
The Feeling Doesn't Go Away — It Just Goes Quiet
Life moves. The bodyboard ends up in a closet. The magazines stop showing up. You grow up, and that search fades into the background of things you used to care about.
I didn't think about any of it again for a long time.
Then I ended up living in Ericeira, Portugal — Europe's only World Surfing Reserve — completely by circumstance, not by plan. And somehow, watching the same ritual play out every morning on that beach, the feeling came back. Not the waves. The other thing. The one that phrase had been pointing at the whole time.
Coastline America Isn't Nostalgia. It's the Same Search, Still Running.
I used to think building this brand was about looking back — 90s aesthetics, vintage caps, a tribute to a decade. But that's not quite right either.
It's the same thing I was doing at 15. Still searching for something that feels real instead of manufactured. Still more interested in what's in the back pages than what everyone already knows.
The only difference is I stopped waiting to find it and started making it instead.
Built on coastlines. Born in the 90s. For those who find us first.