On the final day of competition at Bells Beach, Rip Curl announced that its annual rotating event, the Rip Curl Pro Search, will take place at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California.
The addition of the event in San Francisco (and Quiksilver’s new event in New York City) means the 2011 ASP World Tour will include more stops in mainland America than any ASP Tour in recent history. In fact, the event may represent Rip Curl’s Western answer to Quiksilver’s million-dollar contest in Long Island.
“If you look at the six different locations over the last six years, there’s such a variety of different types of waves,” Rip Curl Marketing Manager Dylan Slater told Surfline. San Francisco brings a whole new dimension to the Search: The World’s Best Surfers vs. the Elements — cold water, sizable surf, beachbreak. And that time of year gives you a good chance for offshore winds. Plus, the unique energy that the city brings will make this event a very distinct part of the Rip Curl Pro Search legacy.”
The event will take place between November 1 and 11th, and despite the notoriously torturous paddle-out there will be no jet-ski assistance.
While the news has met mixed responses from the local surf community, it’s hard to deny that the thirteenth most populated city in America is not exactly a difficult find.
