Surf City Days welcomes Huntington Beach residents back to their beaches

With Labor Day in the rearview mirror and many of the summer tourists headed home, Huntington Beach has something special planned this weekend for locals: Surf City Days, organized by the Huntington Beach Downtown Business Improvement District.

The annual event is hosted by the BID, a nonprofit responsible for overseeing and programming events like Surf City Days for the downtown district. The event includes some staple activities year in and year out, though executive director Jaime Strong said some come and go while others make themselves a permanent feature.

Returning on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. is the Rockin’ Fig Vintage Surf Festival, which joined the lineup last year.

Strong said the vintage surf festival was originally an idea between her and local legend Rick “Rockin’ Fig” Fignetti, who died in 2021 but owned Rockin’ Fig Surf Headquarters on Main Street for decades. With the family’s blessing, the festival will ride again, and Strong said there are plans to showcase some of Fignetti’s boards, trophies and merchandise that they’ve created for the festival.

Saturday’s schedule is packed with the Kowabunga Van Klan VW Bus Show and the demo day at Huntington Surf and Sport. Also taking place Saturday, and continuing into Sunday, is the city’s annual surf contest, the CBVA Volleyball Tournament and the He’e Nalu Aloha Pier Festival.

A few of Rick “Rockin’ Fig” Fignetti’s surfboards on display at the 2022 Surf City Days event. The vintage surf festival is continuing this year.

(Courtesy of the Huntington Beach Downtown Business Improvement District)

Main Street will be closed on Saturday and reopened on Sunday, according to Strong.

“Surf City Days is a culmination of events. Essentially what it is is that it’s a theme of a beach day out and celebrating the Huntington Beach lifestyle — it’s beach volleyball and surfing and a way to come and try out new things over at HSS, which is a big ... pillar of Huntington Beach,” Strong said. “It’s a day for us to get together and the weather’s supposed to be beautiful this weekend.”

Surf City Days began in 2012 with current Huntington Beach Downtown Business Improvement District president Brett Barnes. Barnes, a partner in Duke’s Huntington Beach restaurant, said he saw lots of locals come through on the Fourth of July weekend. They’d joke that they’d come back to the beach again in September when the sands weren’t as impacted by the summer wave of tourists and other large events like the U.S. Open of Surfing.

“That’s what got me thinking. Maybe we can do something fun for the locals. There’s an annual city surf contest every year; maybe we can do something around that,” Barnes said.

“We love our tourists. Tourists are the heartbeat of our local economy, but it’s kind of nice when a lot of them go away and we get the beaches back to ourselves in the best time of the year — September and October. It’s nice to have the beach a little emptier,” Barnes said. “It started with the city surf festival, then volleyball and all the other stuff around this weekend to have locals come down to the beach and enjoy it unfettered ... it’s kind of become a staple of what’s happening in September.”

The event is inspired by the Duke Kahanamoku Ocean Festival on Oahu and the Ocean Festival in San Clemente.

For more information on the events and entertainment, visit hbdowntown.com/signature-events.