Surf Related Feature Stories in
Huntington Beach, Calif.
Huntington Beach is undeniably the epicenter of surfing culture and history. It's the place where people come to watch the best wave-riders, buy their surf wear and gear, and pay homage to the sport. Here are just a few of the surfing-related feature stories you can cover in Huntington Beach:
Surf City USA™
International Surfing Museum
Jack's Surfboard & Huntington Surf & Sport
Surfing Walk of Fame
Surfers' Hall of Fame
Surfline Surf Forecasting
HB Cabanas
Surf Theater
Hollister HB Pier Cam
Surf Art
Sugar Shack
HB Lifeguards
All-Girl Surf Shop
Interview Surf Music Legend
If you need help arranging interviews or getting information, please contact the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau:
Genevieve Anton
714-544-6503 or 
“Surf City USA™” Now Trademark Name of Huntington Beach
The Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau has trademarked “Surf City USA™” to promote the City and capitalize on the coastal tourism explosion taking place in Orange County. The global marketing effort includes a trademark, official logo, franchise deals with merchandisers of everything from beach cruisers to furniture and advertising from brochures to magazine ads. It includes a logo design in the shape of a surfboard featuring a silhouette of the hometown pier with various color schemes for different product lines. The Bureau has entered into agreements with Dean Torrence and the estate of Jan Berry – representing the duo who took the song "Surf City" to the number one on the Billboard charts in 1964 - that allows them to utilize the nostalgic likenesses of Jan & Dean in promotional efforts. Global Icons, the Los Angeles company that markets the Beverly Hills and Hollywood signs and numerous other corporate brands, is leading the search for partnerships. The Bureau already has signed a licensing agreement with Felt Bicycles for a Surf City USA beach cruiser, the classic Southern California bicycle with fat tires, full fenders and wide handlebars. For more info, click here.
The International Surfing Museum
The Surf City USA™ experience wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the International Surfing Museum. The museum is home to a collection of some of the most significant artifacts in the history surfing, including the camera Bruce Brown used to film “The Endless Summer,” the 1960s adventure film that launched an entire genre of surf movies. Here you can see displays of surf memorabilia, including one of Duke Kahanamoku’s surfboards, a Dick Dale guitar, a gold record commemorating Jan & Dean’s hit “Surf City,” historic photos, vintage posters and much more. The museum's current exhibit chronicles the history of the ukulele and features vintage ukuleles, Swagerty Ukuleles, vintage photographs, songbooks and more. Location: 411 Olive St. (714) 960-3483. Information: www.surfingmuseum.org. For more info, click here.
Legendary Surf Shops Face Off Over Main Street
Surf Shops: Got nothing cool to wear to the beach? Need to rent a surfboard? Check out the latest surf-inspired fashions or buy that surfboard you have always wanted at two of the most famous surf shops in the world. Jack’s Surfboard and Huntington Surf and Sport (HSS) – both legends in the surfing sport and fashion world - are located on opposite sides of the street where Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway meet. It’s more than a destination for designer surf fashions, it’s a surf extravaganza. Standing sentinel at the intersection is a statue of surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku, and a restaurant named after him is right across the street. Both shops are located on Main Street at Pacific Coast Highway. For more info, click here.
Huntington Beach Takes a Cue from Hollywood to Immortalize Surfing Greats
Taking a cue from Hollywood, the surf stores have adorned the sidewalks outside their doors as tributes to surfing greats. At HSS you’ll find The Surfer’s Hall of Fame with hand and footprints of famous surfers embedded in the concrete. Jack’s Surfboard features the Surfing Walk of Fame, where surfing’s legends are immortalized once a year with engraved plaques. New inductees are added every year during the US Open of Surfing, and the public can attend the ceremonies. For more info, click here.
Revolutionary Surf Forecaster Surfline Marks 20TH Anniversary
Instinct and experience once determined which surfers ruled the waves. Now a revolutionary technique available only at Surf City USA™ beaches has taken the guesswork out of catching the best curl. Surfline, the world’s most popular surf report and forecast service, recently introduced a wave-tracking device so sensitive it can detect an incoming swell, and measure the height and distance between waves. The Surfline Buoy transmits that information instantly to shore, giving surfers a five-minute “heads up” before the waves break off Huntington Beach. Created 20 years ago, Surfline has transformed the surfing world and created a network that supplies both professional and recreational surfers around the world with surf conditions on the Internet, live action surf-cams and mobile phones to track surfing conditions at their local beach. For more info, click here.
Surf City USA™ Cabanas
A New York City-trained pastry chef. A Holy Land tourism expert. A local boy who inherited his father’s visionary business. All three individuals are so different, yet they share the surf’s pull; because on the sand in Huntington Beach, the beach cabana is part nostalgia and part powerful personality. The concession stands along The Huntington Beach Ocean Strand are legendary, as are the people who run them. For more information, click here.
Surf Theatre Lives Again in Huntington Beach
Decades ago, during the earlier days of surfing, there was a downtown movie house in Huntington Beach dedicated to showing hot surf films such as "Pacific Vibrations," "Endless Summer," and "Five Summer Stories." Most of the old theatres that catered to the surf crowd in California closed or shifted to more mainstream fare. But Huntington Beach native Dave Carlos and his wife, Leslie, are trying to stage a revival of the surf movie experience. Three years ago they founded Big Red Productions, which specializes in the promotion of surfing and other action sports videos. The videos are aired right across the street from the Huntington Beach Pier at the Mann Theatres off Main Street, and people in the audience are likely to be wearing board shorts with sand still clinging to their flip-flops. Big Red Productions sponsored a hugely successful International Surf Film Festival during the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach. During the World Junior Surfing Championships, the surf theater presents Wave of Compassion, a film to raise funds for Surf Aid International, a non-profit organization that relieves suffering of indigenous people in areas connecting to us by surfing, plus the neuvo surfing classic- "September Sessions" on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The following night will be State of S, a documentary by Brian Taylor on the innovative George Greenough on Thursday, October 14th, Mann's Pierside Pavilion 6 Theatres in Huntington Beach with a live musical performance by Chris Mueller. For more information, contact Leslie Carlos at Big Red Productions, at (714) 842-4338 or visit www.bigredprod.org. For more info, click here.
Smile When You’re in HB. You May Be On Camera
The image of Huntington Beach as a first-class beach community is now beamed around the world to millions of teenagers through a new partnership with Hollister, an upstart surfwear retailer with 170+ stores nationwide. The city allowed Hollister to install web cams on the HB pier to transmit live images of the shoreline into its classic cabana-like shops at 50 of its high-profile stores nationwide. Customers can take in “real time” ocean views through what appear to be windows to the outside, but are actually monitors aimed at Surf City USA™ beaches - the first of their kind in digital retail signage. For more info, click here.
Public "Surf" Art Adorns New Lifeguard Headquarters
In a city known for its outdoor recreation and pleasures, even the art goes outside. A vibrant panorama of mosaics and sculpture adorns the new marine safety headquarter in Huntington Beach on a masterful, half-mile display of public artistry. The new Vincent G. Moorhouse Lifeguard Headquarters and Marine Safety Education Center is command central for the radio communication between the city’s 22 lifeguard towers and includes training rooms for ongoing lifeguard instruction, as well as community education in CPR and other safety issues. It also serves as home to the city’s famous Junior Lifeguards. For more info, click here.
Where Surfers Go When They're Hungry
Action starts here at the crack of dawn, when surfers stumble in for coffee and short stacks before hitting the waves. Later on, crowds line up for omelets, sandwiches, daily blue plate specials, Wednesday's turkey dinner, and all the other home-style fare that owner Michele Turner - one of HB's first female surfers - has been serving for the past three decades. Not only is the food delicious and cheap, but the service is the best in town, according to local polls. The saying around Huntington Beach is that you're not even a surfer till you've clocked some hours at this place. Featured on the Food Channel's Best Late Night/Early Morning Eats. For more info, click here.
The Best Job in Southern California: HB Lifeguard
Talk to one of Huntington Beach's full-time lifeguards and find out what it's like to report to work in red nylon shorts, a white t-shirt and flip-flops. While most people take a lunch break, these year-round lifesavers ride the Surf City USA™ waves, run for 3.5 miles along a sandy shoreline or works out at the gym in the new lifeguard headquarters by the pier. The city's permanent staff of 10 year-round staff is bolstered with 130 seasonal lifeguards, with no less than two marine safety personnel are on duty during the early morning and late evening hours in any season of the year—even on cold, rainy days. Each spring the city sponsors a demanding round of lifeguard tryouts that draw hundreds of competitors from across the country. Only those with the best ocean smarts, physical strength and mental endurance are selected, and usually they are last year's lifeguards, water polo players or members of a swim team. To request interviews, For more info, click here.
All-Girl Surf Shop Encourages Women to Get on Board
HB Wahine (Hawaiian for girl, pronounced wa-hee-nee) was Huntington Beach's first all-girl surf shop, a female-friendly place to shop for authentic boarding gear. Everything in the store, from surfboards to backpacks, is in hues from hot and baby pinks to teal and sky blues. Graphic hibiscus and plumeria flowers in bright colors splash about on much of the merchandise, making the sporting equipment all seem more feminine. HB Wahine also has evolved into a local home base for women who surf. Besides all-girl surfing lessons, HB Wahine provides in-store product demonstrations, surfwear fashion shows and all-girl surf film nights where boarders can bring a beach chair and watch their favorite professional athletes on the store's drop-down screen. HB Wahine is located at 301 Main Street, Suite 102, Huntington Beach, CA 92648, 714-969-9369 shop, 714-596-2696 surf school. For more info, click here.
Interview Surf Music Legend Dean Torrence
Surfing was once seen as a fringe sport for young beach bums. Today it's a multi-billion-dollar industry with its own line of radical clothes, major box office movies and reality-based television shows. This phenomenal resurgence of surf culture and attitude has its roots in the 1960's, and who better to talk about it than one of the men who created the movement and still lives it today. Dean Torrence, lead singer in '60s pop group Jan & Dean, helped create "Surf City" - the first authentic surf song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1964. The light-hearted lyrics promising "two girls for every boy" became part of the urban legend that lured those seeking fun, sun and fame to California. The song even inspired the official nickname for Huntington Beach, Calif. which is known worldwide as "Surf City" thanks to Torrence, who now lives here. To request an interview with Dean, contact the HBCVB at 714-969-3492. For more info, click here.
