Before it even got its name, The U.S Open of Surfing found its home in Huntington Beach, California. Since then, Surf City has hosted over half a million people each year for one of the world's largest surf festivals. Famous surf icons such as Kelly Slater, Rob Machado and Julian Wilson have all won championship titles at the Open, and every year outstanding surfers are inducted into the Surfers Hall of Fame.
With such a large number of people traveling to the beautiful beach town every year, incidents have occurred causing local opinion to switch from cherishing the event, to dreading its arrival. Locals steer clear of downtown Huntington Beach for the nine days in July of which the Open is held.With Huntington Beach being a popular tourist beach spot, locals see a large increase of people on their streets every summer season. In previous years, the flood of people that the U.S Open brings has resulted in situations that show disrespect for the cities beach and put the community in danger.
A majority of the people who attend the U.S Open are from out of town. Aside from those who are actually passionate about the sport, people often only go to the U.S Open to get intoxicated with their friends and spray paint tattoos all over their body.
In 2013, the U.S. Open of Surfing experienced riots that not only damaged city property, but also local’s opinion of the festival all together. This is a reason the U.S Open of Surfing agenda has been scaled down over the years in order to create a safer environment for attendees.
The way people treat the beach when they visit has caused the city to remove events that were once some of the Open's highlights. When the U.S Open begun, it was very rich in pop culture and even hosted free concerts on the beach with bands such as Weezer. At one point, the capacity of these concerts were too large for safety regulation and there was a need to put the focus back on the sports so they were removed from the Open completely.
The people who attend the U.S. Open make it less appealing to the people that live there. In return locals are hesitant to welcome the people that once brought violence to their home. Locals have completely gotten over what used to be a very special and respected event.
All and all the U.S Open of surfing is just not the same as it used to be, and year after year it has continued to attract the wrong crowd.
