We just enabled public events as a preliminary feature on the forum! We don’t have a location feature for posts on the forum, so for a local event you’d need to spell out the location in the title and the post. It’s just an option to get started and we’ll remove it as soon as it’s available on the app!
Read about Publishing a public event and give it a try 
About surfing, @womxn already published the very first Couchers.org success story with @anon46748786 and @tieflow! So we can certainly find hosts and surfers on the forum already! After all, we should have a group of most dedicated people on here 
You can actually see both a member’s location (if they set it) and contact them right from their user cards… try clicking @Nolo. I promise to host you if you’e stranded in the Atlantic!