Welcome to the Westernmost Record Store on Planet Earth

​​Ramble on out to the western edge of San Francisco, away from the theatrics of its tech and finance molten core, and eventually you will arrive at the Great Ocean Highway. This storied 4-mile dragway divides humanity from the bone-chilling, windblown dunes that form Ocean Beach. Daily witnesses of the gonzo weather patterns and untamed Pacific colliding upon sand are the salt-encrusted communities that make up the city’s Outer Sunset and Parkside districts: tight-knit composites of working-class family homes, single-origin-coffee shops, bustling Chinese storefronts, and, secretly, some of the area’s best restaurants. 

Taraval Street, an unassuming east-west artery connecting these outer lands to SF’s City Center via public transit, is at the heart of this zone. Here, one block from OB, you’ll find Tunnel Records, or, as it has been proudly dubbed by local surfer and founder Ben Wintroub, “the Westernmost Record Store on Planet Earth.”

Opened in 2017, Tunnel is a surf shop disguised as a record store. Its choice wares include a heady mix of rare-groove, soul, jazz, and international sounds. Tunnel’s customers are an eclectic bunch: still-thawing surfers looking to warm up, hard-core vinyl fiends down to spend coin, and hipster parents pushing their strollers with a cuppa while browsing the selection of graphic posters, stickers, and apparel. You’ll also find an assortment of locals who like to hang out. 

“It blew my mind that [Tunnel] was right at the beach—this treasure chest,” says Mark “Doc” Renneker, Sunset resident and local surfing institution. “There’s a natural overlap between the individualistic, expression-session side of surfing and the improvisational aspects of jazz. With Tunnel Records, Ben has brought the two together.” 

“When the waves are good,” Wintroub says, “we’ll get guys with no shoes and wet hair coming in. They’ll sift through records, and we’ll chat about the session. When the waves are bad, guys will naturally come in to complain about it.” 

He cracks up at how his customer base skews toward the surf-obsessed, like himself. Often, he’ll pop out front to check the Taraval zone’s surf by climbing aboard a nearby boulder. In Tunnel Records’ embryonic days, he would close shop to sneak in a session, heading back to work only when the tide fattened out the waves. 

You won’t find a more amicable record-store owner when Wintroub’s behind the counter. He welcomes any and all inside to sample records, discuss the finer points of Caribbean jump-up, or shoot the bull. “It’s sort of a free education,” says Renneker. “As you’re talking, Ben will pull a record and play it. It’s what you would hope for in a surf shop, where [the person behind the counter] would walk you through where to paddle out or where to go surf nearby that day.” In other words, Jack Black’s Barry Judd from High Fidelity this guy ain’t.

“Opening a record shop on Taraval is a risk,” says Renneker. “There’s nothing safe about it. [If you] succeed, it’s purely because of knowledge and cunning.” Yet Wintroub’s dedication to his all-encompassing vision has allowed the business to set anchor despite its unassuming location. “I try to make it a place I’m excited to come into every day,” he says, “Like, ‘Holy shit, this is mine. I still can’t believe it.’” 

He named his shop after the long, dark pedestrian tunnels that used to run beneath the Great Highway at the terminus of Taraval and other nearby streets. These tunnels, built in the 1920s, “were how you got to the beach,” he says. “They were nasty, man.” 

Today, there’s little trace of their existence—the city demolished them in the 1980s after erosion caused the Great Highway to partly collapse. “The older surfers would have to run through them because there were a lot of drugs in those tunnels. Bad things were always happening,” Wintroub says. “They were a refuge from weather and police. You can imagine what went on down there.” The nearly lost mythos of these sordid pathways would become a vital source of inspiration for Wintroub in later birthing Tunnel’s visual aesthetic. 

The final touch in Tunnel Records’ creation was coining a phrase capturing San Francisco’s—and all of California’s—spirit that resonated with the city’s surf crew. Hence, we return to the shop tagline: “The Westernmost Record Store on Planet Earth.” Wintroub’s inspo came while visiting Portugal. “There was this café that claimed to be the westernmost spot in Europe, and it just kind of stuck with me,” he says. Whether Tunnel’s claim is geographically factual or not, Wintroub knows one thing: “If you take 50 steps that way, your feet are in the ocean.”

No shirt, no shoes, no problem: Steps from San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, Tunnel Records is a surf shop disguised as a record store, where the day’s conditions are discussed between needle drops.