Steepwater Surf Shop — Local services in Westport

Tried so hard to write something positive and even gave it a few days to see if time tempered my experience, but no.

Booked a surfing lesson for my brother and I (his first, my second). Matt awkwardly spent the first 30 min telling us about what we would need to do in the water in years when we were advanced surfers (none of which was remotely applicable for first or second time surfers) then finally took the hint and let us go in the water, at which point he spent 40 min only “teaching” me by criticizing everything I did, telling me I would be better off just going to the beach rather than continuing to try, and reminding me oddly of critiques from my mother rather than someone who loved surfering and helping others discover that joy. Thankfully, we finally convinced him to just leave us alone and let us fall repeatedly off of waves in the joy that is beginning surfing. I’m going to hope he was having a bad day, because if not, I definitely wouldn’t recommend another beginning lesson because he seems to not like teaching, people, fun, etc.

So glad I had surfed (and fallen in love with it) before, because if this was my first experience, I’d probably never try again.

Equipment provided for transporting boards was good, so that’s...

Stopped by a few weeks ago because I had gone out to buy a board from The Surf Shop but they closed early and figured I’d check this place out. The sign on the door said they were at lunch and they’d be back shortly or to call the number listed. I called after waiting 15 minutes to let the guy know I saw the sign and was at the shop, the guy didn’t seem happy about my call (I wasn’t trying to rush him - just find out when he’d be back). He assumed I wanted a rental and when I asked if they had any boards for sale he didn’t even seem interested in selling one and was incredibly rude. He showed me the boards and none looked very good, plus there was only like 7 and he still wasn’t coming off very friendly. The shop across the street is great, the owner is incredibly nice and helpful. I’ll take my business there any day - and never...

Please don’t come to this shop. We were extremely mistreated as we were asking for information. It’s super smoky and we were trying to rent boards before the evening came to go in the early morning at sunrise and the guy wasn’t able to politely give us responses, we said we had to pay for a two day rental and when we tried to ask if we could pick up the birds earlier or find some kind of agreement that would work (we were willing to pay more for it) he was extremely rude and treated us sooo badly. We called another shop called LOGE and they were SO KIND and took our offer without even charging us extra, letting us pick up the boards after closing time. So if you need rentals, go there. You’ll be treated like a human, which wasn’t the case with this...