City Council Approves Licensing Framework Under Which Businesses, Residents, and Visiting Surfers May Pay to Use the Surf City Brand in Personal and Commercial Contexts
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA — The City of Huntington Beach voted six to one Wednesday to adopt a new governance framework under which the city’s informal designation as “Surf City USA” will be formally incorporated as a limited liability company, Surf City LLC, and all commercial, residential, and recreational use of the Surf City brand, identity, or associated imagery will be subject to a licensing structure administered by a newly formed Brand Management Division staffed by three full-time brand executives, two junior brand coordinators, and a Director of Vibe Assets whose annual salary the council approved at $147,000 after forty minutes of debate that several attendees described as “the most surreal municipal meeting in the recorded history of Orange County.”
What Surf City LLC Will Actually Control
Under the new framework, commercial entities operating within city limits that use the phrase “Surf City” in their branding, signage, or marketing will require a Tier One Commercial Licence, priced at $2,400 annually with a $600 renewal fee. Residents who use the phrase in personal social media posts with commercial characteristics — defined in the ordinance as any post with embedded product promotion, affiliate links, or more than 10,000 followers on any single platform — will require a Tier Two Personal Use Licence at $150 per year. Visiting surfers and tourists who use the phrase in non-commercial personal content will not be charged but will be asked, via QR code signs installed at beach entry points, to “acknowledge and appreciate” the brand, the precise legal meaning of which the city’s attorney confirmed had not yet been fully established but would be “worked out in a subsequent ordinance.”
Director of Vibe Assets Brandon Caulfield, who was appointed to the role after a career in lifestyle brand consulting that included work for a beverage company, two apparel labels, and what his LinkedIn describes as “a premium outdoor experience platform,” said the incorporation of the Surf City identity represented “the logical extension of what Huntington Beach already does naturally, which is be the global headquarters of surf culture, into a framework that allows the city to participate financially in the value it generates.” He described the Director of Vibe Assets position as “part brand strategy, part cultural stewardship, part vibe architecture,” and confirmed he did not know exactly what vibe architecture meant yet but was “very excited to define it.”
The History of a Name and Why It Is Legally Complicated
The “Surf City” designation has been the subject of dispute between Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz, California, for decades, with both cities claiming the title on the basis of different historical and cultural arguments, a dispute that was partially resolved when Huntington Beach trademarked the phrase “Surf City USA” in 2004 and Santa Cruz declined to contest it on the grounds that Santa Cruz does not really do things like trademark phrases, which is, observers noted, essentially Santa Cruz’s entire argument about everything. The incorporation of Surf City LLC adds a new dimension to this history, since it means a civic identity that emerged organically from beach culture is now a registered corporate entity with licensing revenue targets, a brand strategy document, and a Director of Vibe Assets who went to business school.
The World Surf League, which has historically used Huntington Beach as a tour stop and whose annual event contributes significantly to the city’s tourism economy, said it was “reviewing the new framework” and would have more to say “in due course,” which brand lawyers described as language that usually precedes a negotiation about licence fees. The Surf Research organisation noted in a statement that surf culture has historically resisted commercialisation as a matter of cultural identity and that incorporating that culture as an LLC represented “either a bold innovation or a profound category error, and possibly both simultaneously.”
Surfers and Residents React
Reaction among Huntington Beach’s surfing community was mixed in the specific way that reactions in Huntington Beach tend to be mixed, which is to say loudly divided between people who think the city has been giving away commercial value for years and should capitalise on it aggressively, and people who think the entire concept of charging for a vibe is the most comprehensively un-surf thing they have ever heard and who used several words in their response that city officials said they would not be repeating at the press conference.
Longtime local Carla Brindisi, 46, who has surfed Huntington since her twenties and whose grandmother surfed the same break before her, said she was “genuinely unsure what to feel” and that she had spent the morning after the vote sitting in the parking lot trying to work it out. “My grandmother did not surf Surf City LLC,” Brindisi said. “She surfed a beach. The beach is still there. The waves are still there. But now there is an LLC. I do not know what the LLC means for the waves. I do not think the waves know about the LLC. I think the LLC is probably fine and also probably slightly sad at the same time. That is the best I have.”
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Vibe assets not included. NewsThump is applying for a licence to cover the story.