California dreaming: A swell time ogling Ocean Beach oddballs

Just minutes from San Diego, this stunning beach town is hiding in plain sight.

In California no-one "scores" weed any more. Since November 2016, anyone can buy marijuana legally in retail shops all over the state - just like you'd pick up a six-pack of beer. But, if someone did prefer to go retro and "score" weed on the street, OB might be the place to do it.

Ocean Beach, that is (call it OB, or you're a tourist). They've been calling this place the Haight-Ashbury of southern California ever since Haight-Ashbury became the headquarters for 1967's counter-cultural Summer of Love. I can feel the anti-establishment oozing out of the asphalt even before I park in OB's main street.

OB is barely 20 minutes from downtown San Diego and yet it's a secret; hidden from almost every international tourist's San Diego itineraries. I only knew to come because I'm a surfer and it was here in 1966 that Australian Nat Young won the World Championship of Surfing in front of 15,000 spectators; making OB, for a time, the surfing capital of the universe.

"The committee studied hundreds of miles of Californian coastline before deciding that (OB) offered the best surf," US Surfing Association Chairman Brennan McClelland declared at the time.

While it's just five kilometres away from San Diego's International Airport, I arrive here from LAX (two hours' drive north), which gives me perspective. I pass by a bunch of cookie-cutter Southern Californian beach towns - they're full of tourists and have pretty downtowns with the right amount of cafes, designer boutiques, restaurants and surf shops. OB looks nothing like them. It's part of a 20-or-so-kilometre strip of coastline that's about as diverse a representation of Southern California as it gets. Be warned though: it can get gritty, but the gritty bits make the pretty bits ... prettier.

I'm staying right next door to OB in PB, or Pacific Beach (if you're a tourist). I'm staying at a retro motel called The Wayfarer that's so close to the beach that when the swell's up (and the waves get damn big in this part of California), my windows get so salted up that I can barely watch them break.

It has a heated pool and spa on the ground floor - guests sneak in their own booze and socialise in the lounge area and no-one seems to mind. There's a five-kilometre-long boardwalk right below my oceanfront suite that connects me to Mission Beach next door (oddly, this is not MB), which is home to a 2000-hectare aquatic park - the largest of its kind on Earth.

PB is almost as rough-around-the-edges as OB, but there's a boho quality about it that makes you happy just being here. There are funky surf shops up and down the boardwalk offering learn-to-surf classes for every shape and size of surfer. There are cafes painted in every primary colour and beach bars with beer-gardens full of sand selling Margaritas with four times the amount of tequila in them as back home.

There are more taco stands here than coffee shops, not surprising when you consider the border with Mexico is barely 30 kilometres south.

My motel has cruiser bikes. I ditch my car and hit the boardwalk for a people show only Southern Californian can assemble. Every kind of odd-ball is present: Rastas in dreadlocks, roller-bladers in Barbie gear, cyclists with speakers which barely fit in their bike's baskets. Just off the boardwalk, residents lounge in the front yards of their tiny seaside bungalows watching pelicans flying so close to the waves it looks like they might be surfing (and surfers thread their way between the pier). Homes are painted in garish shades of marine green, hot pink and canary yellow - they're a world away from the $20 million mansions seven minutes up the road in La Jolla, one of California's richest coastal towns.

OB is an eight-minute drive south, across the San Diego River. In the 1960s, property owners fought a war against hippie surfers, accusing them of drunken debauchery, indecent exposure, even peeing in bushes. Anti-surf laws were proposed, and laws to license surfboards. Drive through town and you'll see: the surfers won the fight.

Just beyond OB at Sunset Cliffs, surfers battle the Pacific at the bottom of spectacular, crumbly cliff formations, which run south to a 30-hectare recreational area. People gather along the cliff tops to watch surfers ride waves till long after dark.

Then they scramble up cliffsides like mountain goats all around us. The main street is full of antique and vintage shops, artist studios, alcoholic kombucha bars, weed dispensaries and independent clothing stores.

I've never seen this much tie-dye, and I grew up in Byron Bay. The Farmers' Market is still going strong after sunset, it's been held every Wednesday afternoon for 30 years and is the best place to observe the flotsam jetsam of this odd little seaside community.

I find the surf break Nat Young tamed on his way to victory. It's straight out in front of the main street, beside the longest concrete pier on Earth, built in time for the championships in 1966. There's a historic district of homes near the beach from the late 19th Century, but to sense the history of this place I opt instead to take a seat overlooking the greatest waves I've seen in California at the Wonderland Ocean Pub with OB's old-timers. At 6pm each day someone rings a bell and proposes a toast, to anything. I've stayed in prettier Californian seaside towns, but it's warm and fuzzy in here and it reeks of community spirit. And I like that.

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Getting there: Fly to LA from Australia's east coast with Delta Air Lines (delta.com), Qantas (qantas.com.au) or United Airlines (united.com), then rent a car from LAX.

Staying there: Sleep metres from the waves at PB in a hotel with a funky cafe in its lobby and a huge heated pool, sun loungers and a lounge at The Wayfarer Hotel. See wayfarersd.com

Eating there: You won't find better Italian in California than at Elvira (ciaoelvira.com). Eat the freshest seafood beside the ocean at Blue Water Seafood (bluewaterseafoodsandiego.com), fuel up with a heck of a brekkie at OB Surf Lodge (obsurflodge.com) and enjoy great pub grub at Wonderland Ocean Pub (wonderlandob.com).

Playing there: Try surfing some of California's best waves even if you don't know how to. Pacific Surf School (pacificsurf.com) offers lessons right beside The Wayfarer Hotel in PB.

Explore more: visitcalifornia.com/ocean-beach-san-diego; sandiego.org

The writer travelled courtesy of Visit California and San Diego Tourism Authority.