If you found yourself surfing in California today, you may have inadvertently celebrated a statewide holiday. Photo: Pixabay
Did you wake up this morning, as you often do, with a desire to slip into some neoprene for your morning saline baptism? Did you check the webcam or turn up at a parking lot sipping coffee thinking, “Looks fun. I’m out there?” Are you also in California? Well, congratulations. Perhaps unbeknownst to you, your regularly scheduled surf session was a celebration of California’s newest statewide holiday: California Surfing Day.
The move by state legislators to create California Surfing Day was officially announced on the Huntington Beach Pier back in July but was quickly overshadowed by another legislative move – California adopting surfing as the official state sport.
Unlike the unofficial International Surfing Day established by Surfing magazine and the Surfrider Foundation in 2005, California Surfing Day was established earlier this year to “celebrate the California surfing lifestyle, [and] commend all those who honor the history, culture, and future of surfing.”
The effort was led by Diana Dehm, director of Huntington Beach’s International Surfing Museum. In recent years, Dehm’s been a force, mobilizing Huntington Beach’s surf community to participate in setting a Guinness World Record for the largest paddle out and setting a record for the most surfers on a single surfboard.
Both California Surfing Day and California’s establishment of surfing as the state sport are rich with Olympic subtext. As surfing is set to make its Olympic debut in the summer of 2020 in Tokyo, the International Olympic Committee has already given Paris the nod to host the Summer Games in 2024 and the torch will come to Los Angeles in 2028. In ten years, Olympic surfing may well be taking place in a wave pool. Still, it’s impossible to ignore that efforts to tie the sport to the cultural fabric of certain Southern California coastal cities like Huntington Beach and Hermosa Beach are at least in part efforts to cement a bid to host Olympic surfing when the Games come to LA in 2028.
The language on the official California Surfing Day website echoes as much. “On Sept. 20, ‘California Surfing Day‘ will be a special day up and down the California Coast as it will bring together thousands of ocean and beach lovers, surfers, and millions of visitors who travel to California to experience the positive vibes of surfing history, culture, and the future,” explains the website. “Especially as we head towards surfing in the 2020, 2024, and 2028 Olympic Summer Games, with a focus on our healthy surfing playgrounds – our oceans, and highlight our iconic legends and pros while supporting our local surfing industry leaders, and all the fun that comes along with the sport.”
California Surfing Day will be celebrated now and forever more on September 20th – the official slogan being “Stop, drop and surf.” If you didn’t manage to celebrate already, maybe now is the time to get in the water.
