A huge crowd gathered to attend the final day at the 2013 US Open of Surfing. It's estimated that over 750,000 attended in 2012. This was the scene a few hours before riots broke out on Main Street. Photo: Llallande
The Crowd Effect at the US Open
Kelly Slater
Keeping It Classy in Huntington Beach
Zach Weisberg
HB Riots: Never Again
Brett SimpsonI’m not sure a large percentage of that crowd were surfers in the first place so it’s hard to blame surfers for what happened. It’s just people, but I don’t know any details of what happened or why so I can’t make much of an opinion. There was a lot of energy in that crowd, and when a fight busts out in a situation like that, people think they can hide in the crowd and get away with things that they can blame on others or claim they know nothing about.
There are a lot of people lost in that crowd, and they want to do something they’ve never done or be cool somehow. When you have underage girls in bikinis walking around with unacceptable things written all over their bodies and throw alcohol in the mix after a long week, weird things, inappropriate things, happen. There’s some great stuff happening at the US Open but there’s also some really weird things that come with it.
