Aren Camras and Aleksei Stojanovic each grew up in North County, with the beach as a place for surfing, meeting up with friends, and just a regular part of their lives. They met in high school, but when they reconnected later in business school at Arizona State University, they started a project that would twist its way into a celebration of surf music, art, and culture in the form of the NoSurf Fest.
“Building something that highlights local music, while giving back to conservation and cultural projects, is just not only super fun for us to do, but we really had the same vision of what we wanted this to turn into. Every step of the way, we’ve been able to make and show a lot of growth,” Camras said. “And growing this with Aleks has always been really fun. I think that’s what it comes down to, that we work really well together and it’s very community oriented, highlighting music and art.”
Originally launched as a digital application that connected surfers to resources like instructors or photographers, they pivoted to their first music festival in 2021 with five bands and 300 attendees. Last year, a heavier art focus took them to the Oceanside Museum of Art as the venue with 800 attendees and donating more than $2,000 to the East County Art Association. This year, the festival is from 1 to 10 p.m. Saturday at The Soap Factory in San Diego, and features indie/alternative bands, art, local vendors, and a partnership with the San Diego River Park Foundation to support its conservation work and assist in the festival’s zero-waste efforts. (Tickets are $61, or $93 for VIP.)
Camras and Stojanovic talked about the evolution of the festival, partnering with local nonprofits to support artists and the environment, and why conservation and sustainability are important to them.
Q: What is NoSurf? What does this name mean and what prompted your pivot to a festival?
Stojanovic: “NoSurf” is just kind of a fun play on if there’s no surfing, you got to go to an event. We used to have a lot of community-based events surrounding the surf community when we were running our app company to connect with our users and vendors on the app, which started just gaining a lot of popularity and traction versus the actual app itself. So, since we ran into these issues with this bigger company, we decided to fully change our path and our name to focus on growing the indie music side of things and becoming a festival company over the past two years, which has been scaling a lot more nicely in comparison to what we were doing before.
We used to do events where we were highlighting surf films, surf artists, surfboard shapers, and having bands and DJs play. Then, we did that on a big scale a couple years ago where we had a ton of people doing cool surf art and stuff surrounding the culture come out and set up at our festival. Then, we really turned up the volume with some of the types of bands we were booking and the actual festival experience. That just took off and now we’re just more focused on scaling the festival side of things, but our crowd is still very much that same community. For nonprofits, we’re raising money for ocean conservation with these nonprofits.
Q: Can you talk about the environmental activism and conservation element involved in your work? How did that first come up as something you wanted to incorporate into NoSurf?
Camras: In previous years, we’ve partnered with art organizations to support local artists having a place to perform their art. We’ve also supported local conservation efforts. There’s a lot of ways that trash that makes its way into our ocean and a huge reason for us having a music festival in support of ocean conservation is being able to preserve and share the joy of the lifestyle of the ocean with everybody else for years to come. So, the conservation efforts are focused on finding ways to reduce the amount of garbage that finds its way into our ocean. For the festival, reducing the environmental impact is also very important because while we are able to get recyclable cups and solar-powered generators, we still want to make sure that, outside of the festival, we’re finding ways to give back to the community. We’re able to partner with these organizations outside of the music festival and participate in their conservation efforts.
Stojanovic: We were always doing these beach cleanups and when we were doing the app side of things, just for community outreach awareness and trying to engage with our users and following, we had an event a couple years ago and someone in the bar/restaurant scene here in San Diego said she runs a nonprofit and that she wanted to get involved. She was just very hands on and it just started taking off from there where she started making all these connections for us, getting us involved with the East County Arts Association, Sustainabeat, the Oceanside Museum of Art, which we had an event there last year, and then San Diego River Park Foundation this year.
Q: Talk about how you’ve been thinking about the kind of expansion you want to do in this sustainability and conservation area.
Camras: The larger the festival gets, the more money we’re able to donate to these organizations for larger sustainability efforts, to just be more consistently involved. We currently do one festival a year and being able to participate in local conservation efforts more consistently throughout the year, to partner with these organizations more than just one time throughout the year, that’s what that would look like. The San Diego River Park Foundation does trash pickups near the San Diego River to prevent that trash from going into the ocean, and also ensuring that the local habitats are clean. What that might look like this year is that, after the festival, we’re planning an event where our attendees will have an opportunity to participate and support NoSurf in helping the San Diego River Park Foundation in these conservation efforts.
Stojanovic: Outside of that, we just want to raise more funding to keep our oceans clean because things like microplastics and pollution are just increasing with the lack of care we have surrounding our playground, which is the ocean. So, that’s quite depressing. I want to do my part by raising funding for these efforts and doing cleanups, and anything we can do is just the next step for us.
Q: How did your current partnership with the San Diego River Park Foundation come together?
Stojanovic: I have a friend who does a ton of nonprofit work and she said this was one we should be working with locally if we wanted to step it up because they’re very organized, they’re doing these cleanups all the time, so if we wanted to see a big impact, we should be working with them.
Camras: We let them know what it is we’re looking for, what we want to do. The team at The San Diego River Park Foundation is extremely energetic and great at garnering support and volunteers for their own conservation efforts. The more conversations we had, the more the kinds of people who volunteer for them aligned with the people who attend our festival. Our goal this year, depending on ticket sales, is to donate anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 (to the foundation).
Q: What role do they play in this year’s festival?
Camras: They’re going to help in making sure that all recyclables are disposed of properly because when trash is not disposed of properly, that’s when it starts to enter landfills and enter the river systems, so they’re ensuring that all the trash and recycling is disposed of properly. They’re going to have a community engagement booth where they will be able to talk to festival attendees about the mission, about what it is they’re doing outside of the music festival, and their goals for cleaning up the San Diego ecosystem. We’re going to have on-site volunteers helping out the NoSurf staff and keeping the venue clean because people deserve to walk around and not see trash scattered all over the venue.
Q: Why is this kind of environmental work important to you and what you want to do through NoSurf?
Camras: It’s important because it’s where I live and I want everybody to be able to enjoy clean oceans and environments for years to come. For the festival, it’s important because it gives us more purpose; the better we do, the more money we can donate. It gives us the opportunity to curate a volunteer experience with these nonprofits, which is super special for us because we’re expanding that to our attendee base. The San Diego River Park Foundation probably has a consistent list of volunteers who are able to help out; we’re bringing in a whole new demographic and showing them why this is so important. We’re hosting a music festival in support of ocean and local environment conservation because it is important and it deserves to have more eyes. This is an excellent vessel to be able to give it the attention that it deserves by tying it to our music festival, by having conversations like these, and being able to partner with these local organizations.
Stojanovic: As a surfer, the ocean’s our playground and I want to keep our playground clean. If we can make an impact locally with something we have fun doing, why not tie it in with a good cause?
Originally Published: August 22, 2025 at 5:19 PM PDT