The Ocean Beach Artist Creating Sidewalk Masterpieces

The sun rises over Pechanga Arena’s parking lot, illuminating a near-endless patchwork of polyester tents, the hundreds of ad hoc storefronts that make up Kobey’s Swap Meet, the largest outdoor marketplace in San Diego.

Deep in the sea of booths, Wali Amin settles comfortably in his abyss of folding tables, crowded with a dizzying array of used doodads: shoes, CDs, a picnic basket. Amin has been buying out storage spaces for the past 12 years—but this is far from his first business venture.

“It’s in my blood,” he says. “My father was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur, and so on. They used to travel the Silk Road.”

Amin’s father was a fur merchant in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amin was a tween when the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979. His family fled to India, where Amin earned a college degree before moving to the US in 1990.

In between shifts at a gas station and as a valet driver in San Diego, Amin slung antiques at small swap meets in El Cajon. Over time, he eventually opened a high-end Italian clothing store. He married in 2000 and started a family. Then, the 2008 recession struck, and he lost everything.

“There were times, after I went bankrupt, [that] I didn’t have the money to buy McDonald’s,” he says. “[But] we have to work, you know? This country is opportunity, and it all depends on how you take it.”

Amin turned to garage sales and storage unit auctions to rebuild his business. “The best thing about doing this is the excitement of what comes out of the box,” he says. “It might be gold, and then there’s times that rats jump out.”

A customer pauses at one of Amin’s tables to pluck a beautiful acoustic guitar—one of the many treasures Amin pulled from obscurity. The drive to make the most from the least seems to be another family trait.

“[My brother] always used to tell me that you have to make good out of your bad,” Amin says.

It’s been a rough couple of decades for competitive bodyboarders. In the ’90s, contests, magazines, and clothing companies fueled a vigorous industry. Stars were born from their prowess belly-riding three-and-a-half-foot foam boards.

Then came hard times. Competitive circuits faded away. Contracts dried up. Bodyboards gathered dust in the garage, even as surfing—which, for the first time this year will become an Olympic sport—hit the mainstream.

There hasn’t been a major contest in California for many years. That will change later this month, though, with a two-day bodyboarding contest and festival at the OB Pier, with professional and amateur divisions. The organizers are using the Bodyboarding US Festival, taking place Nov. 23-24, as a trial run for what they hope will be a North America pro tour with stops in California, the East Coast, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, that could launch as early as next year.

“We believe for the sport to grow and be sustainable it needs events at a national level,” says Washington Teixeira, owner of Bodyboarding US. “We need to create idols through contests like this.”

When Teixeira announced the event earlier this year, competitors flocked to register—a sign of what spongers have always known: Dedicated riders kept the flame alive through lean times. Now a new generation is taking the reins, and maybe leading the sport to another break-out moment.

The father-son duo of Diego and Micah Land, residents of Vista who are both competing in the event this weekend, exemplify this. Now 42, former competitive rider Diego Land has passed the torch to his son, 14, a San Marcos High School student who last year was crowned champ of the California Scholastic Surf Series.

We caught up with the father, a sales manager for an off-road company in North County, on the eve of the upcoming contest.

How did you and your son get into sponging?

I’ve been bodyboarding since I was 10—I basically grew up surfing Oceanside Pier. I competed for a stint. Tried to make a living at it but realized it was a lot harder than I thought. I found free-surfing and traveling to be more enjoyable, so I tried to get exposure that way, shooting photos for magazines.

I introduced Micah to it when he was 6. He latched on to it right away. It allowed us to be closer and for me to share my passion. He loved going out even if it was small. Starting at a young age he progressed really quickly, taking off on bigger waves than I did at his age. Watching him grow into the sport reignited me, and I was like, “Wow, let’s do this together.”

He competed for the first time in middle school. He started getting into the finals consistently and just got better and better. In 8^th Grade he was the state champion for the California Scholastic Surf Series, out of 26 schools.

Are you stoked for this comp?

We’re both really excited. He’s competing at a high school level and to do this on the side will better his ability and competitive skill set. As for me, I’m excited to see what I have left in the gas tank at my age. Everybody I bodyboard with is stoked.

What impact could this contest have for the sport?

It’s going to be great exposure for bodyboarding in Southern California. There are lots of bodyboarders in SoCal, but we haven’t had a contest or series in such a long time. It could bring some life back into bodyboarding. I have so many friends I’ve met through the sport who would like to see something like this contest come back to California.

It’s been progressing for years, we just don’t have that global attention like surfing. The guys that still do it are a tribe. We have so many close friends and people we’ve met. It’s a great group of individuals to be a part of. This contest means a lot to the guys in SoCal that bodyboard. There are a lot of adults and kids who rip on a bodyboard but don’t get any exposure.

What trajectory has bodyboarding been on since its heyday?

In the ’90s, there was a circuit through Morey Boogie, that’s what really started the whole contest thing for bodyboarding. That fizzled away after several years. I wouldn’t say the sport lost momentum, though. It’s always been here.

What is it you love so much about sponging?

There are so many moves we can do on a boogie board. We can get so much deeper on the wave than surfers, and surf shallower waves, whether that’s shore break or reefs. The experience is totally different from surfing.

Five Questions With Local Bodyboarder Diego Land

Bodyboarder Diego Land (right) and his son Micah | Photo by Tony Prince

Ray’s Tennis doesn’t look like much from the outside. Never has. It’s just a green box with cloudy windows in Hillcrest, just steps away from a McDonald’s on University Avenue. But for nearly 60 years, this place has been the genesis for three generations of San Diego tennis dreams. Head inside, and you enter one of the tennis world’s great cornucopias.

For years, there was a tennis court behind the store, where owner Bob Ray gave countless lessons. It was like a racket-sport speakeasy; most customers didn’t realize the court existed unless Bob or his wife, Hiroko, guided them through the back door of the shop. Eventually they converted it into a half-court indoors—where a patron might take a racket for a few trial thwacks, trying to avoid rounders of tennis clothes that shared the space.

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The shop is an abridged living history. Relics hang from the ceiling: a model of an old metal racket used by fiery lefthander Jimmy Connors in his heyday, and a version of the wooden Donnay that Björn Borg wielded on his way to five consecutive Wimbledon championships from 1976 to 1980.

And just inside the front door is Hiroko eternally stringing new rackets, carefully threading and adjusting the tension of the polyester strings, back and forth, until she has the entire racket head strung.

“I worked seven days a week—five days off in the year,” she says. “My hearing is still good. Physically, I’m as good as I was. Working seven days a week, standing all day. I’m mentally healthier than most people.”

The racket stringing is an operation she does up to 20 times a day—and one that, in some ways, resembles the thread work done by her father decades ago, when he ran a tailor’s shop in Japan.

Hiroko, now 81, was born in the city of Yokosuka at the tail end of the WWII. Her family evacuated to the countryside to escape the bombing raids, and she remembers growing up surrounded by rice fields and mountains. It was in Japan that Hiroko met Bob, a third-generation San Diegan, in the late 1960s, when he was stationed there with the Navy.

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Among his possessions at the time was a tennis racket. Inherited from his father, who died when Bob was 11, this racket changed the trajectory of his life: He played constantly, filling up his school days, afternoons, and evenings on the tennis court. He was one of the highest-ranked teen players in the state, and he dreamed of joining the international tournament circuit after his stint in the Navy. But—speaking plainly—he acknowledges that he wasn’t quite good enough to compete with the best of the best. So, instead, he modified his dreams. He and Hiroko returned to San Diego in 1968, and he took a job as the club pro at Morley Field. By their mid-20s, in lieu of touring the world on the tennis circuit, the couple was running the club’s tennis store.

They spent 11 years at Morley Field, which at the time was one of the city’s tennis epicenters, hosting major tournaments for juniors. When the city handed over the store lease to a wealthier applicant, the Rays took over the property on University Avenue and moved in their tennis gear. They have been there ever since—through the McEnroe and Navratilova and Evert eras; the rise of Agassi and Sampras and Graf; the reign of the Williams sisters; the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic rivalry; and into the Alcaraz era. In the near-half century they have sold tennis gear in Hillcrest, the Rays became beloved anchors of the neighborhood’s business community, symbols of stability in an ever-changing environment.

At 84, Bob is still lean and, in his Lacoste tracksuit and Adidas cap, remains every bit the club pro. Like Hiroko, he comes to the store every day—though sometimes, if he is playing tennis in the morning, he might arrive a little later.

But time has started to take its toll. His hearing isn’t what it used to be, and the aging process is revealing itself to be true. And much to the disappointment of their loyal clientele, San Diego’s “First Couple of Tennis” is retiring, a milestone that marks the end of an extraordinarily long chapter in the city’s tennis history.

But Ray and Hiroko didn’t sell the building to a developer for condos or to a big-box retailer looking to open a boutique outpost. Determined that Ray’s should remain a tennis temple, they have negotiated a sale to a former employee who wants to continue the Rays’ legacy.

As of this writing, Hiroko and Bob remain in charge, Hiroko stringing rackets, Bob sharing his expertise about new gear. As much as they love what they’ve built, their hope is to move on soon.

For Hiroko, the prospect of retirement is bittersweet. “What am I going to do?” she asks. “Am I going to be ok? I never had a boring life. Always busy. Business first. I’m so involved in the business—because I didn’t want to fail.”

She looks around her store as she continues stringing. For her, the gladiatorial nature of tennis has always been a metaphor for how to succeed in life. “People have to have a drive,” she says. “You can’t just quit because you lose to so-and-so. Tennis players have that mindset.”

She pauses to talk about all the people who have come through the store’s door over the decades, and the relationships she has built with them. “It’s wonderful to have a great customer. That’s probably the reason I lasted this long.”

At the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, Dane Chapin had a problem. He found himself in possession of tens of thousands of excess Monopoly games, with no plan on how to sell them. What he didn’t know at the time is that this Herculean task would shape the future of his business.

In 1994, Chapin and his sisters started their Carlsbad company, USAopoly, with a two-year license from Hasbro to make city editions of the popular Monopoly board game. “The game is a great canvas,” Chapin remarks. While some aspects of the game are “sacrosanct,” according to Chapin—the four corners, for example—many of the details can be customized to fit a theme.

USAopoly appealed to local customers by including San Diego and La Jolla editions in the original six games it created (alongside New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta versions). The tokens of the San Diego board included a surfer, a beach cruiser, and a copy of the Union-Tribune. Instead of Park Place or Reading Railroad, players land on the Gaslamp Quarter or the San Diego trolley. But after two years of city-specific boards, the siblings were ready to branch out.

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In 1996, Hasbro gave them license to create an Olympic edition of Monopoly to commemorate the Atlanta games. The Olympic Committee had agreed to purchase 20,000 copies, a huge number for USAopoly in those days. They decided to manufacture 35,000, figuring they could sell the extra 15,000 on their own. The games went into production, but the Olympic Committee hadn’t actually sent over a purchase order.

“I finally get the buyer on the phone,” Chapin recounts. “And she says, ‘We’re going to order 90 games.’ Nine-zero. Not 900, not 9,000, not 90,000. Ninety.”

When he reminded her of the initial request for 20,000, she said that the team had changed their mind. “There was no point for me to get angry or get mad at her,” he adds, laughing. “I just had to figure out what I was going to do.”

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Chapin landed in Atlanta for press coverage the week before the opening ceremony. “The Olympics are a white-hot deal, and then it’s done,” Chapin explains. “And once it’s done, there’s really no market for all those goods.” So, he shipped 20,000 games to the city. If nothing else, he’d have them on hand to replenish the stock for local stores. But, while Chapin was walking to an interview with an Olympic Monopoly board under his arm, a man stopped him on the street and asked where he bought it. Chapin sold it to him for 20 bucks. A lightbulb went off.

“We’re sitting with a warehouse of 20,000-plus games that need to find a home,” he recalls. Why not get them directly into consumers’ hands? He rented a van, bought a dolly, and got to work. “I spent the next two weeks on the streets of Atlanta, schlepping games,” he says. At the end of those two weeks, all the boards had been sold at $20 apiece.

Hasbro never knew the full story. But the company did notice how successful the Olympic board had been—and it was all the proof it needed to increase USAopoly’s licenses. “That was the inflection point for USAopoly,” Chapin says. “After that, [Hasbro] expanded our purview, our grants, well beyond city editions.”

Chapin and his sisters started to create pop-culture versions of Hasbro games, producing tributes to everything from Harley-Davidson to Metallica to The Simpsons. Now, three decades later, USAopoly (also known as The Op) is on track to sell over seven million games this year. It’s grown into an international family entertainment company that designs original best-sellers like Telestrations and Flip 7 in addition to twists on the Hasbro classics.

Peek in the archives at the Carlsbad offices, and you find shelves jam-packed with a copy of each game the company has produced since its inception, from the Atlanta Olympics Monopoly that changed USAopoly’s fate to Dragon Ball Z chessboards and RuPaul’s Drag Race Clue.

Chapin shows off the original San Diego Monopoly, still sealed in its packaging. “Think about some of your fondest memories in life,” he instructs. “My fondest memories include going to my grandparents’ house with my brother when I was 10 years old—we’d have a sleepover and play canasta for hours. Talk about joy, laughter, and lifetime memories.” He smiles. “So, that’s my job—to create games that will do that, that will bring people together and get them to put their phones away. It’s pure, and people can be present. That’s more important than ever.”

Fifty of San Diego’s top women founders, CEOs, and CFOs gathered on the lawn at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar on Thursday, March 27 for an evening of wine, local food, and unfiltered conversation about leadership, mentorship, and the messier parts of ambition. 

Hosted with J.P. Morgan for International Women’s Month, the event featured locally sourced bites by chef Flor Franco and pours from three woman-owned Baja vineyards, curated by Michelle Martain, owner of La Mision Wines and Cavas Valmar. The cocktails were cheeky, the sunset did its thing, and the energy was unmistakably electric.

“Stop asking yourself if you should be there—you’re already there,” advised Desi Swanson, CFO of Vuori and one of the evening’s speakers, when discussing young women facing imposter syndrome. When asked about the moment she knew she “made it,” she referenced a pre-Vuori memory from her 20s of paying off credit card debt and proudly walking into a boutique to buy herself a bee-shaped necklace she had wanted for months. That moment—vulnerable, personal, triumphant—set the tone. Success doesn’t happen in one moment; it’s the culmination of hundreds of victories throughout your life. 

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Curie founder and mom to a new 10-week-old Sarah Moret discussed building her brand while challenging the myth that entrepreneurship is a man’s game. She also relived a time when businesswoman and investor Barbara Corcoran sniffed her armpits on national TV. (Yes, really.)

The conversation that followed felt real and unscripted. The panel shared their thoughts about what success looks like now, how mentorship shapes growth, and how to lead without losing yourself in the process.

My husband and I acquired San Diego Magazine three years ago because we wanted to invest in our local community, and create a platform for people and businesses to tell their stories. Events like this continue to prove that for all the stories that have been told, San Diego is full of thousands who haven’t… yet. 

During the networking hour, Nancy Schmall, CFO of Southern Pride Trucking, talked about the rise of women and married couples in the industry and how it’s reshaping truck stop culture across the country. Later, I spoke with Abby Blunt, co-founder and CEO of MeBe, an organization that offers personalized, evidence-based therapy for neurodivergent kids and families.

I even swapped parenting stories with Kerri Kapich, COO of the San Diego Tourism Authority, and told her about my dream of producing a fashion show in this city. Our photographer shared a hack she discovered with the CFO of the Aloha Collection to transform one of their staple bags into the perfect diaper bag. 

These women collectively manage thousands of people, steer massive budgets, and help define what work, leadership, and balance look like in San Diego right now. They’re building businesses, raising families, mentoring the next wave—and they’re doing it on their own terms. The story of a city should be told by the people living and breathing it every day. Each woman on that lawn owns a piece of San Diego’s story. And thousands more are out there, quietly building what’s next. 

Stay tuned for more events like these.