Everything you've heard about Southern California is true: ridiculous crowds, plenty of pollution, appalling congestion, hideous strip malls, hundreds of square miles of houses, freeways, lofty living expenses, image paranoia, bikinis, and ? relatively weak surf. Although Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties each boast a handful of heavy surf spots, the general consensus among those who've surfed SoCal all their lives is that the surf really is quite marginal on the West Coast wave scale.