Black surfers ready for another ‘Great Day’ in Huntington Beach

In the film, Keanu Reaves plays an FBI agent who infiltrates a group of surfers. Fluellen, who is Black, was intrigued.

“I was like, that looks cool, because I wasn’t afraid of water,” he recalled. “But I didn’t see anybody that looked like me, so I didn’t ask my mother to put me in surf camp. I wanted to be like Mike [Michael Jordan], so I asked her to put me in basketball camp.”

Fluellen eventually learned to surf decades later, in Venice Beach in 2017. That same year, he came to the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach with his cousin.

Surfers from Pacific Beach, San Diego, from left, Joel Oviedo, Anwar Luckman, and Adriel Mendes, check out the waves on Friday. (James Carbone) Now he hosts his own surfing event on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier. “A Great Day in the Stoke,” which celebrates Black surfing culture, turns five this year and runs all day Saturday.

Fluellen calls the free event, which will be held between lifeguard towers 3 and 5, the largest gathering of Black surfers in the world. There are 65 entries into the competition this year from around the globe.

A 5K run/walk, beach yoga, and free surf lessons are all on tap. But how many surf contests also feature a double-dutch jump rope contest?

“It’s an awesome mix of energy, of experience, of skill level,” said Julian Williams, 26, a professional surfer from Hawaii. “Everybody comes together just to support each other. As much as it’s a contest and we want to beat each other, we want to see the next person do well, too. It’s really rad.”

Julian Williams, a professional surfer from Hawaii, will be competing at the “A Great Day in the Stoke” event for the fifth straight year. (James Carbone) Williams made history last year as the first Black and native Hawaiian shortboarder to compete for the World Surf League, earning a wildcard spot into the U.S. Open last year. At “A Great Day in the Stoke,” he’s won the men’s longboard contest each of the first four years.

“For the community of Huntington Beach, it’s very normal to see a surf contest here at the pier,” he said. “But to see a surf contest where there’s people coming from New York, me from Hawaii, people from Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, all over the diaspora and the world? We look different, and we kind of do a surf contest different.

“A normal surf contest, there will be judges and the commentators are just calling out scores. We’ll be calling out dance parties, when the next song is going to come on, when the double dutch contest is going to come on. It’s a very different vibe from a normal surf contest, and I think it’s important to be able to integrate into what we experience on the normal day to day or month to month for the events.”

Some of the participants in “A Great Day in the Stoke,” a Black surfing competition, pose for a photo Friday in Huntington Beach. (James Carbone) Maizy Gordon is a rising 15-year-old surfer from Oceanside who will be competing at the event for the second year.

“It’s very fun to have this sense of community, especially when it’s not typical for Black people to surf,” she said. “To have this event, it’s sharing to everybody that we can do anything and we can go in the water. We get to support and help people get out there in the ocean and do anything they want to do. They don’t have to follow some certain stereotype or anything like that.”

Not everyone in the event has professional aspirations. Anwar Tripp, originally from New Jersey, started surfing about four years ago and credits it for helping him lose nearly 70 pounds.

“Just get in the water, come join us, talk to us,” said Tripp, 42, who now lives in West Torrance. “Be a part of the collective. And have fun doing it … When we have this type of community, it’s very empowering to us.”

Fluellen, a Los Angeles-based travel influencer and TV host also known as “World Wide Nate,” said “A Great Day in the Stoke” was born out of paddle outs and remembrances of people killed by police violence during the coronavirus pandemic.

Travel influencer Nathan Fluellen founded “A Great Day in the Stoke” in 2022. (James Carbone) “People were coming together, but it was a reaction to a tragedy,” he said. “Because I’m a graduate of Tennessee State University, which is an HBCU, homecoming culture is super-big … I wanted to be able to inject that energy and spirit of coming together and celebrating life, our love for the surfing, our love for the ocean, using that to bring people together.”

In turn, kids will see Black people and people from the African diaspora dancing on waves and surfing, which will lead them to want to surf.

“Then, their parents will get them in swim lessons,” said Fluellen, who has been swimming since he was less than a year old. “We can reduce drowning rates, improve water safety, and people can enjoy the full human experience of being able to navigate pools safely, rivers, oceans, seas. That can lead to careers in marine biology, people being captains of ships.”

Events for “A Great Day in the Stoke” run from around 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier. For a full schedule and more information, visit agreatdayinthestoke.com or the event’s Instagram page.

Matt Szabo covers the city of Huntington Beach and sports for the Daily Pilot. A Southern California native and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate, he has been working for L.A. Times Community News since 2006 and still loves talking to people about their hopes and dreams.