X-Tremely Girly

Board Betty’s blends surf and skate with feminine ’50s

Located 40 miles north of San Francisco, downtown Petaluma looks perpetually frozen in time, despite the high-tech companies and housing developments that surround it. George Lucas used the town as the backdrop for “American Graffiti,” his bittersweet tale of the twilight of youth and the long, dark night of adult choices that follows.

Targeting girls aged 16 to 22, Petaluma retailer Board Betty’s shows just how far women have come since the 1962 setting of Lucas’ film. Combining action sports with feminine retro styles that are anything but edgy, the store’s merchandise covers the expansive horizon of choices available to the young woman of today.

Doused in buckets of powder-puff pink, Board Betty’s deacute;cor freely juxtaposes ’50s pinup and tiki aesthetics with skate/snow/swim equipment and apparel. The store’s lines follow the same theme, and surf and skate lines such as Split, Hurley and Roxy share shelf space with girly looks from Lucy Love and Agogo.

Opened two years ago by Julie Black, Board Betty’s is the sister store of 8-year-old Board Asylum, the guys’ skate shop located next door. The girls’ store has already eclipsed the guys’, and Black is considering swapping spaces, which would allow her to add a retro beauty salon inside Board Betty’s.

And as evidence that metrosexuality isn’t exclusively metro, guys are shopping at Board Betty’s for colorful accessories they can’t find next door. “I have moms argue with their sons, ’I’m not buying you a pink belt from a girls’ store!’” laughs Black.

So as not to compete with the area’s main malls some 20 miles away, Black buys the more feminine and offbeat items from popular lines such as Hurley and also carries upand- coming designers such as Aikane of Santa Cruz, Calif., and New York–based Beck(y), a new line of handbags made from recycled skateboard decks. Black buys her lines at MAGIC International and the California Rep Show.

Since the store opened two years ago, Board Betty’s customer has shown increasing interest in girly looks, much to Black’s surprise. That hasn’t stopped her from sponsoring a local amateur female race car driver, and she plans to sponsor events combining boardsports and fashion, which she has found go together quite nicely.

Christian M. Chensvold