Surfers don't really care what nickname you give their city. Just give them good waves, room to move and a couple of exhilarating hours of freedom.
But to the business-suit crowd, reputation is everything. And so for the last 15 years, a pair of California beach towns have been kicking sand at each other, both claiming the boasting rights of being the one and true Surf City.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 02, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
Surf City -- An article in Monday's Section A about the competition between Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz credited the duo Jan and Dean with writing the hit song "Surf City." The article omitted the fact that it was co-written by Brian Wilson. The article also said that surf wear manufacturer O'Neill is headquartered in Orange County. O'Neill Inc. is based in Santa Cruz; its licensee, O'Neill Clothing, is in Irvine.
In Huntington Beach, tourism officials struck first, in November, by getting the trademark "Surf City, USA." That pinched a nerve up north in Santa Cruz, which this month directed its city attorney to seek a federal trademark of its own. "Original Surf City, USA" sounded good.
Deciding who really deserves the title is like trying to broker a peace agreement between SoCal and NoCal, the Dodgers and the Giants, the conservatives and the liberals.
Arguably, each city can claim a piece of surf glory. Each is on the ocean, and each has deep roots in the sport.
But that's about where the similarities end.
In Huntington Beach, surfers stroll across a wide, sandy beach, paddle out and catch waves breaking off a sandbar. In Santa Cruz, they leap off a rocky cliff into the frigid water, ride ridiculously long waves, hoist their boards up a few flights of concrete stairs and trek half a mile back to do it all over again.
In Huntington Beach, surfers all seem trim and sun-kissed, so alluring that trendy clothier Abercrombie & Fitch has a camera piping live video from the pier into its stores. Santa Cruz surfers embrace the motto "Keep Santa Cruz Weird" and pride themselves on hitting the beach without stopping to look in the mirror.
There is one other major difference. For Huntington Beach, the moniker is about more than bragging rights; it's about money. The "Surf City, USA" trademark -- approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a $335 filing fee -- is part of a high-octane marketing effort to exploit the city along the increasingly lavish Orange County coastline.
With a fancy new Hyatt, and another 500 hotel rooms on the drawing board, the city's ambitions are to mature from "a sleepy beachfront community to a world-class overnight resort," said Doug Traub, director of the visitors bureau.
That couldn't contrast more with slow-growing Santa Cruz, a city that circled itself with a greenbelt to knock out suburban sprawl. Indeed, the gritty surfers exaggerate the risk of their shark-infested, icy waters just to scare away outsiders.
Still, word of Huntington Beach's trademark traveled up the coast, where Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin said he fielded about 30 calls from disgruntled residents.
So Rotkin teases that there's really no competition between the two cities and invited the "wimps" of Huntington Beach to a surf-off. He went on local TV, singing his own rendition of Jan and Dean's famous "Surf City:"
"You think your pier compares to Steamers?
(Surf City's Santa Cruz)
Just give it up and go drive your Beemers.
(Surf City's Santa Cruz)."
The officials down south just smile, gleefully slapping "Surf City, USA" all over their tourist brochures and adding a warning note on their website to anyone who dares tread on their trademark.
Even Dean Torrence, of Jan and Dean fame, got in on the act. When the duo wrote their famous anthem "Surf City" -- which topped the Billboard charts in 1963 -- "none of us," he said, "had Santa Cruz in mind."
Torrence, by the way, lives in Huntington Beach and spent many of his teenage years surfing in the city. "I'm flattered that [Santa Cruz] is so uptight about it," he said.
Neither city was actually mentioned as that fantasy land where there are "two girls for every boy," though both are mentioned in Beach Boys songs: Huntington Beach in "Surfin' Safari" and Santa Cruz in "Surfin' USA."
"Real surfers don't care," said Santa Cruz surfer Brian MacDonald, a 46-year-old retired dot-commer. "Or, if anything, they don't want the name Surf City because it sounds kind of cheesy."
Still, Santa Cruz boosters are proud of what they have.
"We've got more surf around here than they have in their little thumb," boasted Harry Mayo, 81, a retired firefighter and one of the original members of the Santa Cruz Surfing Club.
Indeed, Santa Cruz's Steamer Lane and Pleasure Point are considered world-class surf sites, where up-and-coming pros cut their teeth before packing their boards for Hawaii. They also claim proximity to Maverick's, about an hour north in Half Moon Bay, a big-wave spot referred to by surfline.com as "one of the seven natural wonders of the world."
The northern surfers shop at the local chain of organic New Leaf markets and attend UC Santa Cruz ("home of the Banana Slugs"). They include old-timers, teenagers and wealthy, middle-aged imports from the Silicon Valley.
