Java Point – Surfers’ Café

Surfers Get Caffeine Jolt at Java Point

Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to the following copyrighted material. For permission to reprint or excerpt it and/or link it to another website, contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Just ask the surfers in Huntington Beach. The popular surf shop Huntington Surf and Sport (HSS) opens its Java Point Café at 6:00 a.m., or even earlier, to serve them.

 

When SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel stopped by the café early on a Saturday people were already lined up to get their morning coffee.  

You wouldn’t expect to see a café-bakery in a surf shop, but you do at HSS, located at 300 Pacific Coast Highway on the corner of PCH and Main Street, a stone’s throw from the Huntington Beach Pier. By opening early and providing food, too, the HSS team is showing surfers that "We’re here for you.”

 

Picking out surf gear, sandals or sun glasses, while enjoying a fresh-brewed latte and a tempting pastry, is hard to beat. 

Two regulars, Lauren and Charlotte, stopped in to get some coffee before going for a walk on the beach. “I love this place,” Lauren told SurfWriter Girls. “If I’m in town I come here every morning. The best thing is I can walk in at 6:00 a.m. and they know what I want. I don’t even have to speak.” Since she brings her own cup the coffee costs just a dollar. Refills are a dollar, too.

When James Holsinger shows up with his dog Hutch, a Rottweiler-mix, the dog gets a friendly greeting and a dog biscuit treat.

“Usually on a weekend we’ll come down here and have a bagel for breakfast,” said Holsinger, as he and Hutch watched passersby from a table outside.

Fernando, who was also at one of the five outdoor tables, said his favorite breakfast is The Works – a bagel with tomatoes, avocado, peppers, and cream cheese. 

  

Jerry, another regular, who rode his bike to the café, said he likes The Sunrise breakfast – egg and cheese on a bagel with optional hot sauce. The café’s local vibe keeps him coming back…and, of course, the coffee. Locals say it’s the best coffee in town.

Java Point is the kind of place where friends run into each other. Throughout the morning there’s a steady stream of visitors stopping in to jumpstart their day. Couples out for a walk stroll in lazily, workers in trucks park in front to get coffee to go, and cyclists take a break to refuel before heading down PCH.

 

Since there are so many competing surf shops to choose from, HSS feels that Java Point is a great way to set itself apart from the rest. Tucked into the front corner of the HSS surf shop, Java Point draws surfers and shoppers alike - both locals and tourists - with a wide menu of breakfast and lunch items.

There are lots of different kinds of bagels to choose from, muffins, assorted pastries, yogurts and desserts, coffees, juices, sandwiches and soups.

And Amy and JoJo, working behind the counter, deliver the orders and greet everyone with a smile.  

 

Browsers and serious shoppers, who stop for a bite to eat, can check out a full selection of surfboards from Channel Islands, Rusty, Surftech, and more and get the latest in sports apparel from Hurley, Billabong, Roxy, Quiksilver, or a host of other top brands.

 

The Surfers’ Hall of Fame – a unique Huntington Beach attraction – is located right in Java Point’s entry.  A concrete walkway, it’s embedded with the autographs and hand and foot imprints of some of the world’s most renowned surfers.

 

Some of the familiar names you’ll see are:  multiple ASP World Champion Kelly Slater; Women’s World Champion Joyce Hoffman... 

legendary surfer Rabbit Kekai, who learned to surf in Hawaii from Duke Kahanamoku himself, and Ian Cairns, Head Coach of the PacSun USA Surf Team, who was inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame in 2010.

  

You may wonder, “Why put a café in a surf shop?” But, it makes perfect sense to the folks at HSS, a family business that was conceived in 1978 to be a shop “owned by surfers and operated by surfers.” 

 
The café reflects the shop’s commitment to service. The surfers always need to pick up last minute things they’ve forgotten or run out of. With the Java Point Café right there they can get their morning coffee or breakfast, too.

For many locals stopping at Java Point is a daily ritual, providing them an opportunity to catch up on local news.

Mark Reeder, who manages the HSS Surf Team, said, “Java Point is a place to hang out. It’s a social environment. We even get people from around the world… Japanese, Brazilians.” Reeder gestured around him to people drinking coffee and talking or reaching for board wax and sunscreen, “It’s a pit stop for everyone.”

“It’s real family here,” Reeder said to SurfWriter Girls Sunny and Patti. “At HSS we want you to feel part of the shop. Java Point helps us to do that.”

Andrew Niemann, a new member on the HSS Surf team, is a big fan of Java Point. He had just come by to get his favorite drink – ice-blended mocha – before heading out to surf.

Once you grab your coffee you can sit at one of the tables outside or go upstairs to a crow’s nest-like hideaway above Main Street and enjoy the view.

With its wooden floor, stacked surfboards and Island artifacts – photographs, tikis, hula girl figurines, and mounted fish – this is the perfect place to meet a friend or to pause and reflect.

When the weather is nice Java Point can get crowded, but no one seems to mind. Everyone’s willing to share a table. Besides, ocean-front seating is just across the street on the Huntington Beach Pier.

A variation of this SurfWriter Girls story is in the June 2012 premiere issue of the Orange County Breeze magazine. Congratulations to the OC Breeze on this new print edition!

www.surfwritergirls.blogspot.com

Please post your comment below. It will appear in the blog the next day.