Pacific Beach Sports, San Diego

PB Sports’s facilities extend beyond the walls of its pastel-yellow shop and into the glistening waves of the nearby Pacific Ocean. The full-service store’s seasoned crew outfits aquatic adventurers with the equipment and skills necessary to conquer the picturesque waterscapes, renting out diving gear, paddleboards, and boogie boards that allow riders to glide along the shores as swiftly as a jet-powered starfish. They also harness their in-depth knowledge of the area to pilot guided snorkel tours and shore dives through naturally beautiful locales such as La Jolla Cove, where seals, fish, and other wildlife frolic past swimmers. Back inside the shop, staffers line shelves with new and refurbished surfboards, and they train nascent underwater explorers how to feed peanut butter to jellyfish during scuba-certification courses.