Is a rise in traffic to Huntington Beach-based surf camera Web site Surfline.com a leading economic indicator — of a down economy?
Ventura County Star's Alexandra Wilcox makes that case in a Sunday business report. Surfer Ozzie Osborn, no relation to the bat-head decapitating rocker, says in the story that high fuel prices have him checking out surf conditions online rather than driving out to eyeball the waves himself, as the 57-year-old used to do.
It's apparently a trend. As Wilcox reports, Surfline, with cameras at 135 surfing locations worldwide, has reported a 10 percent jump in traffic to the site as oil prices have soared, according to marketing veep Mike Matey.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.