Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainA downtown San Luis Obispo surf and skate shop, formerly Law's Hobby, where staff have reported basement oddities
855 Marsh St, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Working retail shop; no admission charge. Basement is staff-only and not part of any tour.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat downtown sidewalk on Marsh Street; street-level retail floor.
Equipment
Photos OK
San Luis Obispo Downtown History · Former Law's Hobby Store
Central Coast Surfboards is a long-running surf and skate retailer on Marsh Street in downtown San Luis Obispo, a few doors from the city's Masonic building at 859 Marsh. Before the surf shop, the same storefront was home to Law's Hobby, a fixture remembered by longtime locals.
Visit SLO CAL's roundup of downtown ghost lore, the main source for this entry, situates the shop on what it describes as an earlier Masonic temple site, consistent with its position on the block. Beyond that placement, the building's specific construction history is not well documented in the sources available; like much of the Marsh and Higuera commercial core, it is an older downtown structure that has cycled through tenants.
What keeps the location on ghost-walk lists is not its architecture but the basement stories told by people who have worked there. Those accounts, recorded by the local tourism guide, are the substance of the entry, and they rest on staff recollection rather than on any investigated or independently verified record.
Sources
The activity attributed to Central Coast Surfboards is centered on the basement and comes from the people who work in the building, as collected in Visit SLO CAL's downtown ghost feature.
According to that account, staff have found the basement unsettling: merchandise that fell from shelves without an obvious cause, and movement glimpsed at the corner of the eye while working downstairs. One vendor going through boxes in the basement reported the distinct sense that someone was standing near her and watching as she worked, though no one else was there.
The reports are low-key and anecdotal — the kind of staff stories that attach to many older downtown buildings — and they have not been independently investigated or corroborated beyond this one tourism source. We record them as employee accounts rather than as established phenomena.
Central Coast Surfboards is an operating surf and skate shop at 855 Marsh Street in downtown San Luis Obispo, in a storefront that previously housed Law's Hobby. You can shop the sales floor during business hours. The basement, where staff describe the odd activity, is not open to customers, and there is no ghost tour of the building.
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