The city spent a week preparing for its first California men’s world champion since 1990 and roughly one heat un-preparing.
SAN CLEMENTE, United States (Surfing.LA) – The City of San Clemente has quietly returned 4,000 folding chairs, two high school marching bands and a laminated parade route to storage after hometown surfer Griffin Colapinto followed a historic third win in Portugal with a first-heat exit in the Philippines, ending what one official called “the most emotionally expensive ten days in municipal history.”
The reversal came barely a week after Colapinto beat Gabriel Medina in the final at Supertubos, posting a 17.60 to Medina’s 16.77 and becoming the first surfer to win the Portugal event three times, after earlier victories there in 2022 and 2024. Stab’s report from finals day, headlined Griff Is The King Of Peniche, ran a photo caption asking someone to tell him what comes after two. San Clemente, a city of roughly 64,000 residents and approximately 64,000 private opinions about Lower Trestles, took the question as a civic assignment.
A Town Learns to Count Past Two
By the following Monday, the San Clemente Office of Hometown Momentum had convened an emergency session in a community room off Avenida Del Mar. Office director Marla Steinbeck-Ruiz told reporters the city had “a responsibility to be ready,” citing The Inertia’s observation that a Colapinto world title would give California its first men’s champion since Tom Curren in 1990.
“Thirty-six years,” Steinbeck-Ruiz said, reading from an index card she had clearly rehearsed with. “There are people in this town who have been waiting for a California men’s world champion since before they were allowed to drive to Trestles. Some of them are now no longer allowed to drive at all. We owe them a parade, and if at all possible, a parade with shade.”
The office produced a 41-page readiness binder within 72 hours. Its contents, reviewed by Surfing.LA, include a commemorative banner, a proposal to rename one southbound lane of Interstate 5 for a single afternoon, and a contingency appendix titled “What If He Wins At Pipe And Then Just Wants To Go Home Quietly.” A second appendix, “What If He Wins At Pipe And Dana Point Tries To Claim Him,” runs to eleven pages and is marked confidential.
INTERNAL MEMO – OFFICE OF HOMETOWN MOMENTUM. RE: Parade logistics, phase one. Item 1: The route will begin at the Pier and proceed uphill, which is the direction of all civic life in San Clemente. Item 2: Residents may cheer, but may not cheer in a manner that gives away the location of a sandbar. Item 3: Confetti must be biodegradable, locally sourced and not from Dana Point. Item 4: Do not schedule anything during a south swell. Nobody will attend, possibly including the honoree.
The Hope Economy Opens for Business
Local merchants moved even faster than the government. A survey of 212 shop owners along Avenida Del Mar and El Camino Real, conducted by the San Clemente Chamber of Ambient Optimism, found that 71 percent had ordered some form of “King of Peniche” merchandise, 18 percent had ordered “King of Pipe” merchandise on speculation, and 4 percent had ordered a single gold crown and planned to “figure it out later.”
One coffee shop introduced the Triple Supertubos, three espresso shots served in what its chalkboard called “a Portuguese spirit,” which turned out to mean a slightly smaller cup. A taco stand renamed its carnitas plate “The Throwaway,” a joke that landed only with residents who had read the fine print of the ratings.
That fine print mattered more than anyone wanted it to. The Inertia’s preview of the Philippines event noted that Colapinto was carrying three 17th-place finishes that would count as his discarded results, leaving him needing consistently strong scores the rest of the way. The city’s finance department responded by building a spreadsheet that models every remaining scenario in the title race. The spreadsheet has 900 rows. Six of them end in a parade.
Local stand-up comic Dale Okonkwo, who performs Thursday nights at a brewery near the freeway, said the town’s mood swing was deeply on brand. “This is a city where people will not tell you where they surfed this morning, but will tell you, unprompted, the exact points gap between third and first,” Okonkwo said. “We are completely secretive about waves and completely transparent about math. That is our whole personality.”
Then Came Cloud 9
The parade binder’s momentum lasted precisely until the inaugural Philippines Pro on Siargao Island. The Inertia later reported that Colapinto was among half of the top-five ranked surfers across both tours who lost their first heat at the reef break, a list that also included Italo Ferreira and Miguel Pupo.
At City Hall, the news arrived by group text. Witnesses described Steinbeck-Ruiz staring at her phone, lowering it, raising it again in case the result had changed, and then gently peeling the word “PARADE” off the front of the binder and replacing it with a label reading “GATHERING (INFORMAL).”
“We have not cancelled anything,” she said at a brief press availability. “We have reclassified it. The chairs are in storage, which, technically, is closer to the beach than where they were before.”
Residents coped in different ways. Many opened their surf forecast apps, which continued to display cheerful green bars and smiling swell icons regardless of the news, a level of tone-deaf positivity one Trestles regular compared to a weather app telling corn to enjoy the sunshine. Others drove to the pier and stared west in silence, which in San Clemente counts as both grief and cardio.
Pipeline Math, Explained Badly to Residents
City analysts insist the door has not closed. The season finale at Pipeline is weighted at 1.5 times a normal event, which gives trailing surfers more room to catch up. San Clemente’s finance department has condensed this into a single slide for public consumption. It reads, in its entirety: “Pipe counts more. Please remain calm.”
Comic Priya Delacorte-Haines, who hosts an open mic in neighboring Dana Point, said the whole episode had been oddly healthy for the community. “San Clemente finally got to feel what Portugal feels every time Griffin shows up,” she said. “Pure joy, then the slow realization that he’s leaving. Except Portugal gets a trophy ceremony. We got a binder and a lot of chairs.”
The episode has drawn attention well beyond Orange County. Editors at Bohiney Magazine described the 41-page binder as “the most thoroughly footnoted act of hope in American surfing,” and asked whether the Dana Point appendix could be released under public records law. The city declined, citing what its clerk called “regional sensitivities and the swell forecast.”
A follow-up poll of 400 San Clemente residents found that 62 percent remain “cautiously optimistic” about Pipeline, 23 percent are “optimistic but not in a way I would say out loud,” and 15 percent asked the pollster to stop calling because the tide was dropping.
What Happens to the Chairs Now
For now, the Office of Hometown Momentum has entered what Steinbeck-Ruiz described as “a posture of quiet readiness,” meaning the marching bands have been told to keep practicing but to stop doing it on the bluff. The banner has been rolled up but not thrown away. The renamed freeway lane proposal has been sent back to committee, where it joins a long list of San Clemente ideas that are excellent on paper and terrifying near an on-ramp.
As of press time, all 4,000 folding chairs remained in a rented storage unit off Calle Negocio, stacked, according to the inventory sheet, “in the approximate shape of the number 1.5.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/