Surf City Is Living Up to Its Name

The invasion has begun.

Stand anywhere near the Huntington Beach Pier and the signs are everywhere: the lines of tanned bodies sprawled on multicolored towels, the gleaming surfboards staked into the sand, the coconut-tinged whiff of suntan lotion filling the salty air, the blare of the air horn announcing the end of another contest.

The U.S. Open of Surfing is underway and the crowds are flocking to Huntington Beach. The annual event is a one of the biggest surfing competitions in the country, bringing together hundreds of athletes and thousands of spectators.

“The community really does embrace this event,” said Naida Osline, the city’s specific events supervisor. “The 12- to 24-year-old group brings that community to the beach for the sports competition and the surfing part adds a lot of elegance and history to the event.”

Surfing competitions have been filling Surf City’s shores since the 1960s. In the 1980s, it was the now-defunct Ocean Pacific Pro and by the mid-1990s it took on its newest form, as the U.S. Open. In the last few years, the event also has been home to other action sports, such as skateboarding and BMX; more than 100 athletes will be competing in these sports this year.

The competition is expected to bring 500 surfers and more than 200,000 visitors to the city. The 10-day event usually crests during the last four days, Thursday through Sunday, when the surfers enter the final rounds of competition in pursuit of more than $150,000 in prize money. This year there will also be 70 vendors lining the beach, selling everything from T-shirts to tattoos, as well as two concert stages with music and nighttime parties.

The field of surfing contestants includes reigning world champion Andy Irons of Hawaii; Kalani Robb, also of Hawaii, who won the event last year; and Tom Curren of Santa Barbara, a perennial favorite who received a wild-card berth.

The U.S. Open also is an opportunity for the public to see legends such as filmmaker Bruce Brown, who produced “Endless Summer”; wetsuit pioneer Jack O’Neill; and surfing greats Corky Carroll and Curren, who will be helping celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Surfing Walk of Fame, across from the pier on Pacific Coast Highway and Main Street.

Doug Traub, president and CEO of the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau, said events such as the Open bring in tourism dollars. This year, for the first time, Osline said, city officials will be tracking to see exactly how much the event boosts the city’s bank account.

The event has grown into a family-friendly outing for many in Orange County.

“They’re organizing it very well and making it safe for everyone,” said Karen Devine, 47, who has been coming to surfing competitions at Huntington Beach since she was a teenager. “It’s a lot of fun for the whole family.”

That hasn’t always been the case. In years past, Huntington Beach was home to some of the most raucous surf contests in the country, with less emphasis on competition and more on wild parties.

The debauchery culminated in 1986, when a group of drunk beachgoers incited a riot during the competition.

“This used to be a hedonist mecca,” said James Leitz, a vice president of IMG, which runs the event. “But surfing is becoming a generational sport. You’ll see four generations of swimmers in the water here.”

This is true for Devine, who has three sons and a husband who are competitive surfers. The Open is top priority every year and she and son Cole, 11, arrived at the beach at 7:30 a.m. Monday to watch and get in some surfing time of their own.

Like his two older brothers, Cole, freckle-faced and holding tightly onto a board not much smaller than the length of his body, has been riding the waves off Huntington Beach since he was 5. Surfing champ Rob Machado made his day when he signed an autograph for him.

“It would be really nice thing if they were to compete here one day,” she said with a wink to her youngest son. “And it would be even nicer if they were to win and take care of their mother.”

The family atmosphere at the competition is helping to bring surfing into mainstream sports, Leitz said.

“This is the new baseball game,” Leitz said. “Kids and their parents come out to see the Carl Yastrzemskis, the Barry Bonds of surfing. People used to think it was all tattoos and piercings and it’s not.”

It also means bigger bucks for vendors. There are 30% more businesses lining the beach at this year’s event compared with last year’s. “This is Orange County,” Leitz said. “Kids influence a lot of spending and their parents have money.”

That spending trickles across the sands and onto the businesses that line PCH. Hotels have been booked for months and restaurants can barely keep up.

“It’s a huge shot in the arm during the busiest month of the year,” said Aaron Pai, owner of Huntington Surf and Sport, across the street from the pier.

Pai said he had expected the first few days of the event to be slow, and was taken aback by the large numbers flowing through his store. Although he usually increases staffing by 15% to 20% during the final weekend, he found he had to suddenly readjust his crew to keep up.

This year, the sport of surfing is also being bolstered by shows such as the WB’s “Boarding House” and MTV’s “Surf Girls,” bringing even more of the curious down to the shore to take a look. It has prompted people to rent boards and try it out for themselves, Pai said.

The event draws both the traditional surfer who grew up with one foot in the ocean and brave newcomers who are just now dipping in their toes. Many arrive with surfboards in tow, eager to try their luck on the water.

“It’s pretty good, but the waves are kind of sucky,” said Colbie Corrales, 20, who with his girlfriend drove down from Vancouver, Wash., to watch his first U.S. Open. Corrales just started surfing a year ago and is eager to see firsthand how the legends do it. “I’ve never seen them surf live, so I just wanted to come down and see.”

Frances White, in her late 60s, also was viewing the competition for the first time. She comes out to California from Wisconsin every year to visit her son and granddaughters in Tustin. This year though, she found herself at the beach, and now plans to spend the week watching the surfers.

“I’ve always liked to watch surfers,” she said. “They have such grace and these are the best of the best.”

She said she has never surfed, but that if she were younger, she’d be trying to ride the waves.

“It’s the freedom of not being weighted down by your body,” she said. “I think we would all like to be surfers.”

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Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this report.