They disagree “on the value of booze in a writer’s life and sometimes politics but mostly agree,” says Chas

Home to some of the best surfers, skaters, and snowboarders in the world, North County coastal is one of the epicenters of the action sports industry, along with San Clemente and Huntington Beach.

Some of them, like pro surfer Caitlin Simmers (Oceanside) and skater Tom Schaar (Encinitas), S-REPORTER has covered.

But North County coastal is also home to people who work on the business and media side of this growing industry. And some of them, like husband-wife team Charles “Chas” Smith and Circe Wallace, tend to be more interesting than the athletes themselves.  

Smith, a surf journalist, filmmaker, novelist, and podcaster, co-founded the popular surf blog, “Beach Grit.” He is perhaps the closest thing San Diego has to a punk rock-surfer-renaissance-man.

“Beach Grit” and “The Grit” podcast provide a mix of satire and analysis of professional surfing contests. Surfers aren’t exactly known as deep thinkers or for their appreciation of the written word. But “Beach Grit” is different. Smith has managed to create a blog that attracts thousands of smart, satirical, cynical, cerebral, and political surfers from around the world who enjoy posting and commenting not only about surfing but also about the world around them.

Girl Power

The lean, tattooed surfer’s better half, Circe Wallace, is a pro snowboarder-turned-agent for action sports agency Wasserman. She represents top-tier athletes including Olympians, and is one of the few female agents in a male-dominated industry. The mother of two is widely regarded as a role model for young girls.

The strong-willed Wallace, who started skateboarding in the streets of her hometown Eugene, Oregon (Smith also hails from OR), currently represents snowboarders Travis Rice, Jared Elston, and Zoi Sadowski Synott, as well as Olympic skateboarder Jagger Eaton and skier/model/actress Sierra Quitiquit. Wallace previously represented surfer Bethany Hamilton, whose experience of being attacked by a shark and losing her arm became the basis for the movie Soul Surfer.

How credible and competent is Wallace? A couple years ago, her name was bandied about as a possible replacement for the CEO of the World Surf League after Erik Logan was terminated. Though flattered, Wallace wasn’t interested in the position.

Surf together, stay together

This family surfs together, though sometimes it’s just mom and dad. Smith says the ocean has become crammed with so many “kooks who can’t control their boards,” as he told The San Diego Reader. His daughter will be “on the inside, catching a little bowl. And there’ll be people on big boards dropping in on her. They’re just so unaware that they don’t see her coming down the line.” Smith is close to and protective of his daughter – not in a helicopter parent sort of way, just that her safety and happiness come first.

If the kooks are on one extreme, then on the other are the elite action sports competitors. Smith estimates that there are in the ballpark of 2,500 pro surfers, skaters, snowboarders, and bikers who live in or are otherwise connected to the North County coastal area. They are the elite, or aspire to be.

They include Olympian skateboarders Jagger Eaton and Tom Schaar in addition to Simmers, the #1-rated women’s surfer in the world, AKA, “Oceanside’s pride and joy.” And then there’s the older guys, the trailblazers like Tony Hawk, Rob Machado (Cardiff by the Sea) and Benji Weatherley, whose “Breakers” restaurant and bar is expected to open any day now.

Chas Smith is a unique character, and he’s far from a Spicoli, Sean Penn’s only-slightly exaggerated version of a 1980s surfer in Cameron Crow’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

He has no interest in Spicoli—unless Spicoli is a new Italian bistro opening on PCH.     

For one, Smith, the writer that he is, has a vocabulary. Unlike Spicoli’s two-word outburst, though beautiful in its own right:

In addition to co-founding Beach Grit, a niche blog that covers the professional surfing tour and surf culture with sarcasm and satire, he has covered wars in the Middle East and authored several novels including “Cocaine + Surfing: a Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair” and “Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell: A True Story of Violence, Corruption, and the Soul of Surfing.” His 2022 novel, “Blessed Are the Bank Robbers: The True Adventures of an Evangelical Outlaw,” received rave reviews in the New York Times. He just finished his latest book, “Diamond Head Detective Club,” a young adult series. “Think Nancy Drew meets Hawaii Five-O,” he says.

Chas the provocateur

Smith is hard to stereotype: A surfer-writer sophisticate who reads books and has plenty of both controversial and reasonable takes. And he’s an old school, get-off-my-lawn traditionalist nostalgic for the good old days of surfing. He takes pleasure in roasting pro surfers like Kelly Slater and Filipe Toledo with his pen, and bashing and mocking the World Surf League for providing what he sees as a lackluster product put out by corporate types that don’t speak for or understand core surfers. He argues that professional surfing has become commercialized and polite and sterile and boring. Not just a grump for the sake of it, Smith contends he’s serving a higher purpose by providing surf criticism for an industry that sorely lacks it.

Wallace tells me, that’s Charlie, “trying to stir things up.” Chas the provocateur is a character that he plays, she insists. The man she knows, loves and respects is Charlie. His penchant for cheekiness notwithstanding, Smith reveres his wife, especially her “dogged commitment to her values while navigating an extremely complex landscape.”

It may not go with the stereotype, but Smith is also a committed ballet dad who “does everything he can to put his daughter first,” she says. A couple of years ago, he accompanied their daughter, ten at the time, to Manhattan while she participated in the junior summer intensive with the prestigious George Balanchine-founded School of American Ballet. He routinely boasts about his ballet dancing daughter and has made interesting comparisons between ballet and the art/sport of surfing.

But it’s all so positive. Is this husband-wife surfing couple really so perfect? No disagreements, raised voices? Smith quips, “We disagree on the value of booze in a writer’s life and sometimes politics, but mostly agree.”

In some ways, however, they are different. Smith describes his wife as “ultra progressive” while he’s slightly more sympathetic to the conservative cause. He’s also the more religious one. But they also complement each other well. “We are very much aligned on the important stuff, how we want to raise our children, how to be a good parent.”

Local Motion

They also agree without reservation about their affection for the quaint (or once-quaint) surf towns that make up North County coastal. It’s their home turf, and when possible, they choose to stay put. It has practically everything they need.

And yet they’re far from provincial. Traveling is inherent to surfing, and they have friends around the world and place value on experiencing different countries and cultures.

But increasingly, it’s the simple pleasures that Smith and Wallace value: home and family and community and the ocean and friends and good, local restaurants.

At the end of the day, what makes it all work?

“Radical honesty, collaboration and co-parenting, and a commitment to family,” says Wallace.

5 Essential Questions for Circe and Chas

1. Favorite dive bar

Chas: The Office

2. Favorite place to enjoy a breakfast burrito

Circe: Good on Ya

Chas: El Pueblo at the Valero in Cardiff

3. Best Mexican food in San Diego

Chas: El Pueblo; Circe: Especial Norte

4. Favorite restaurant

Says Wallace: “Birdseye Kitchen hands down. We also like Market for fancy and Carl is such a great chef and then we are excited to try Leu Leu in Leucadia if we can get a resi!”

5. Favorite restaurant outside of North County coastal

We don’t leave North County coastal. 

Editor’s Note: Follow Circe Wallace @circesnow and Chas Smith at @TrashProse