The Surf Issue -- latimes.com

SAND & STYLE

Pro surfer Erica Hosseini breaks the waves, dresses with style

ERICA HOSSEINI is shy about showing off the surfing awards, trophies and oversized faux checks stashed all over her colorful bedroom. But she jumps at the chance to talk about her gadgets -- the desktop PC with a huge flat screen, the MacBook Pro laptop and iPod -- that crowd her neatly kept desk. More...

SHOP TALK

Surfing the stores along the Orange County coast

MORE THAN 400,000 people are expected to flock to the beaches near Huntington Beach Pier for the U.S. Open of Surfing. When you're ready for a break from the sun, there's always shopping. For surfers and those who just want to look the part, the O.C. coast is the place to find board shorts, beach totes, tie-dye coverups, shell picture frames and more flip-flops than you can shake a sandy towel at. From Main Street in Huntington Beach to Forest Avenue in Laguna, here's a guide to some of the hot spots: More...

BEAUTY

Women surfers share sun-protection secrets

SAGE ERICKSON'S day begins before 8 a.m., when she rolls out of bed and stretches for an hour. Then it's off to the C Street beach in Ventura to surf for two hours. After that, there's school, lunch, a five-minute abs workout -- then it's headlong back into the surf where she rips gnarly waves until sundown. More...

STYLE PROFILE

Designer Heidi Merrick's clothing line takes shape

HEIDI MERRICK may not be a globe-trotting socialite from a high-profile family, but she is royalty. Surf royalty. More...

THE ESSENTIALS

Board shorts get a bit shorter

IN A 1978 photo, Sean Collins strides out of the Pacific, a shaggy-bearded Poseidon with a surfboard -- and a pair of red Adidas surf trunks so short they're approaching Speedo territory. More...

L.A. LOOKBACK

In 1946, fame was in the future for several new Santa Monica lifeguards

IT WAS a moment of beginnings: 14 fresh-faced young men, still wet from the surf, standing ramrod straight at the end of the Santa Monica Pier. It was the start of the summer of '46 and of careers that would make many of them legendary watermen. Surf culture was in its infancy -- the global exportation of the carefree California lifestyle was a wave decades away from cresting, the Beach Boys were still little boys, and the woodie wagon was still just a car. More...

THE MANNERIST

Surfing etiquette

AH, SURFING. The sport of sinewy iconoclasts. No pesky umpires, no foul lines, no rules. Easy there, Kerouac. There is, in fact, an unspoken etiquette of the ocean. Here are the Top 10 rules of the reef: More...

SHOPPING

Some wetsuits fail the green test

ECO-FRIENDLY wetsuits are already the next wave among surfers. Patagonia was the first to jump into the green waters, with a zip-up made of neoprene derived from limestone instead of petroleum. When the suit debuted in April 2006, Patagonia couldn't meet the high demand. More...