The Renaming Initiative Will Take Four Years, Cost $12 Million
California Coastal Commission Approves Plan to Rename All Waves for Clarity
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SACRAMENTO, CA — In a 7-4 vote Thursday, the California Coastal Commission approved the Coastal Wave Designation and Clarity Initiative, a $12.3 million programme that will assign official names and numerical identifiers to all waves breaking on California’s coastline, replacing the informal naming system — largely consisting of names like “the Peak,” “the Outside,” and “that one spot past the rocks” — that has governed surf geography since the 1950s.
Commission Chair Debra Hollis said the renaming effort would “reduce confusion, improve emergency response, and bring California’s wave nomenclature into alignment with federal standards,” a phrase that confused reporters because nobody knew federal wave standards existed.
The Problem Being Solved
Hollis produced a 94-page report documenting “surf geography inconsistency” across California’s 840-mile coastline. The report noted, among other findings, that there are eleven distinct surf spots in California known informally as “the Point,” three called “the Cove,” and one that different communities call “Outside Rincon,” “Inside Rincon,” “First Point,” “Second Point,” and “that section after the rocks where the guy on the longboard always drops in on you.”
Emergency services have cited the informal naming system as “occasionally unhelpful.” Surfers have described the official naming project as “a solution to a problem that isn’t actually a problem if you just know the area.”
How It Will Work
Each California wave will receive a standardized designation under the new California Coastal Geographic Registry (CCGR), formatted as a letter-number code (e.g., SB-14 for a Santa Barbara break, SD-07 for a San Diego point). Signage will be installed at all beach access points. A mobile app — estimated cost $2.1 million, development contract pending — will allow users to identify waves in real time.
Surfers will be permitted to continue using informal names among themselves but are encouraged to “familiarise themselves with official designations” for emergency purposes. It is not clear what emergency would require a surfer to specify that they are at SB-14 rather than “the Point,” but the commission is prepared for it.
Opposition
The Surfrider Foundation said the funding would be better directed toward water quality and coastal access. The California Coastal Commission‘s own public comment period received 3,400 submissions, of which 3,388 said some version of “please don’t do this.”
Old-time surfer and Malibu local Ray Craner, 68, said the initiative was “the most California thing that has ever happened” and that he would continue to call his spot “the spot” until the ocean fell into the sea.
Timeline
The project is expected to take four years and will produce a comprehensive wave atlas by 2028. The commission has hired a consulting firm to manage the first phase. The consulting firm’s principal partner does not surf but says he has “done a lot of research” and “found it fascinating.”
California’s bureaucratic ingenuity, as always, covered in full by The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Official wave designations pending; unofficial satire permanently available at https://prat.uk/.
The Bigger View
Every story covered in this dispatch — whether from the surfing coast of California, the streets of Manila, the galleries of Shoreditch, the political chambers of Westminster, or the quiet study where a diary is written at the end of a week — is a story about people trying to make sense of the world they inhabit. The satirical lens, the journalistic lens, the personal diary lens: all of these are tools for the same project, which is understanding what is happening and why, and communicating that understanding to other people in a way that lands. The best of this writing makes you laugh and makes you think and occasionally makes you angry about something you had stopped noticing. That combination — laughter, thought, renewed attention — is what good writing produces, regardless of form. For the full archive of everything described and more: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. All the writing at https://prat.uk/.
Southern California Surfing: The Deeper Context
Southern California’s surf culture is one of the most documented subcultures in American life — photographed, filmed, mythologised, marketed, and occasionally satirised — and yet its actual daily texture, the experience of being a person who surfs in the specific geography of the Southern California coast in 2025, remains curiously under-described. The gap between the myth — eternal sun, perfect waves, bronzed freedom — and the reality — traffic on PCH, parking enforcement, six-foot slop at 7am, the existential question of whether the dawn patrol counts as exercise — is where the most interesting material lives. This publication lives there. The incidents described above are real in the sense that they are recognisable: the flat spell petition, the localism fee, the breathwork coach, the Huntington Beach identity crisis, the digital detox relapse — all of these are dispatches from the actual experience of being a surfer in a place that has made surfing both a lifestyle and a brand, both a genuine physical practice and a cultural performance. The satire is in the gap between those two things, and the gap is wide enough to surf. More from the Southern California coast at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full surf archive at https://prat.uk/.
SOURCE: Santa Claus