Innovative locales

My take is that there are some regions of the surf world where there’s a lot of innovation going on and some where surfboards all seem to be the same. As much as I like my hometown builders, all the shapes -long, medium, and short-seem pretty regular. In the Santa Barbara/Ventura area though, I see retro eggs, bumps, foils, steps, spoons, concaves, fish, wierdness, etc. Is the SB/V area the think-tank of surf design?

Swaylock’s website is the ultimate think tank for surfboard design.