Surfing is now California’s official sport

California governor Jerry Brown signs bill into law making surfing the state’s official sport Surfing has been part of California’s culture for more than 100 years.

Los Angeles: “Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how,” the Beach Boys have been telling us in song since 1962. And if you haven't started listening by now — and you live in California — perhaps it's time you did. On Monday surfing became the official sport of California. So grab a board, catch a wave and again as the Beach Boys like to say, find yourself, “sittin’ on top of the world.”

“I am stoked that surfing is now California's official sport,” declared Al Muratsuchi, state assemblyman and a dedicated surfer dude himself, after Gov. Jerry Brown put his signature to the new law Muratsuchi wrote and shepherded through the Legislature.

“No other sport represents the California Dream better than surfing — riding the waves of opportunity and living in harmony with nature," added Muratsuchi, a surfer since high school who represents the city of Torrance, a place not far from the heralded California surf break called Haggerty’s.

While the law acknowledges that surfing, like so much other California stuff, actually came from somewhere else — in this case Hawaii — it also makes the case that California revolutionized the art of shooting the curl and hanging 10.

The Golden State is the heart of the surfboard building industry and the place where the wetsuit was invented, state officials say, and with 1,100 miles ( 1,770 kilometers) of coastline, it provides a surfer's paradise that Muratsuchi estimates generates more than $ 6 billion in annual retail sales.

Michael Scott Moore, author of the acclaimed 2010 surfing history “Sweetness and Blood”, agrees that although Hawaii is the cradle of surfing, California did play a key role in revolutionizing the sport.

“Modern surfing was born in Huntington Beach, Malibu, Manhattan, Redondo,” Moore said.