SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S iconic Huntington Beach Pier is essentially a boardwalk peninsula, an ambling parade extending a third of a mile into the Pacific: fishermen, seal watchers, teenagers swinging shopping bags, retirees taking measure of a distant oil rig, boyfriends informing girlfriends they could totally dive into the water if they wanted to. Then, every so often, they all stop talking and look over the side.
That’s where the heart of this Orange County city resides, an ever-present pod of surfers bobbing patiently on either side of the huge wooden structure. The surfing never stops, but periodically an especially fine wave is met by an especially fine rider, and everyone admires the show. As well they should — these wet-suited specks in the water are what sunny Huntington Beach, incorporated a century ago this year, has built its latest identity around.
What was once simply a surf city in the U.S.A. has rebranded itself Surf City USA , after a heated legal battle with Santa Cruz over the coveted title. With the reinvention has come a flurry of development, designed to capitalize on the city’s reputation as a surf capital. May saw the opening of the Shorebreak, a chic 157-room boutique hotel with a surfing theme, just across the road from the postcard-perfect waves themselves.
The Shorebreak is the cornerstone of a larger commercial development, jamming stores into two blocks near the city’s most vibrant intersection: Main Street and the beach itself, an eight-and-a-half-mile stretch of gleaming, “Baywatch”-caliber sand.
The city is trying something tricky: to build a four-season travel destination around an activity that mostly involves floating on molded foam. Of course it’s the lifestyle associated with surfing that defined the place for so long.
For years this was a community of little bungalows with wet suits drying on the railings, of jobs at the drugstore and summers spent barefoot. To visit Huntington was to witness another take on life itself, where the pace was slower, where professional aspirations were often eschewed for simply hanging 10 as much as possible.
It wouldn’t last. Bob Bolen, a local resident, said he started surfing here 50 years ago. From 1960 until 1980 he ran a popular surf shop in what was then a sleepy beach town. Finally he saw the writing in the sand.
“There started to be more money in real estate than surfboards,” he said.
Mr. Bolen now runs Huntington Beach Realty. The walls of its casual office on Main Street are crowded with surfboards and mementos of surf competitions past. (A customer can exit with either a new board or a new home.)
But beneath the laid-back décor is a deeper truth about this midsize city: It’s seen wave after wave of transformation.
“This place is a chameleon,” said Mr. Bolen, who also designs and shapes boards. He said he remembered a time when town officials tried hard to discourage surfing, keeping boarders off crowded beaches or requiring that surfboards be made shorter and shorter. Some officials thought surfing “brought the wrong element,” Mr. Bolen said. “Now we’re ‘Surf City USA.’ ”
The element brought today is the kind you might have thought existed only on TV. The young people drifting in and out of the stylish clothing stores and coffee shops around Main Street make for fine gawking, with their plentiful hair product and impossible tans.
A perfectly good afternoon can be spent copying their moves: volleyball on the sand (the nets are set up), picture-taking on the pier, a stroll at the restored Bolsa Chica Wetlands a few miles north, casual dinner, a beach fire at one of the countless fire pits and finally shouting to be heard at Sharkeez, one of the rowdier bars in the area, where every other person looks as if he could have starred on “The O.C.”
Those who come to Surf City for the surfing will find it astonishingly easy — at least the setup part. Boards and wet suits can be rented on the beach at reasonable rates, and surf lessons are offered there, too. (If you’re staying at the Shorebreak, “surf butlers” will attend to these needs for you.)
When you’re done shredding, pay homage to your forebears at the nearby International Surfing Museum . The action shots are wild, but even better are the memorabilia documenting the very beginnings of the sport, in a dramatically different America. (For more local history, stop in at M. E. Helme Antiques, in a historic building first owned by one of the city founders.)
By CHRIS COLIN