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Sheryl Crow was bogarting the beach. During the Oahu shoot for her ''Soak Up the Sun'' video last February, her crew ended up in a water fight with the production of ''Blue Crush,'' Universal's movie filming on the same stretch of Hawaiian sand. ''They came in and tried to poach all our locations and surfers and water safety people,'' says ''Crush'' director John Stockwell, ''but we thwarted them.'' That surf-and-turf battle was resolved -- ''We had to figure out where they weren't gonna film and use the leftovers,'' recalls ''Soak'' director Wayne Isham -- but Hollywood is still crowding the beach. And for once, the boys aren't catching all the waves.
After decades of male domination, surfing is turning into a girls club, at least on celluloid. Besides the Aug. 16-slated ''Crush,'' which stars Michelle Rodriguez, 24, and newcomer Kate Bosworth (''The Horse Whisperer''), 19, there are no fewer than three other surfer-chick movies in the pipeline: ''Girl in the Curl'' was written by ''Legally Blonde'' scribes Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith and others; a biopic of pioneering pro Lisa Andersen, who won four consecutive world championships after having a daughter, is in the works; newly minted Quiksilver Entertainment has optioned ''The Tribes of Palos Verdes,'' a coming-of-age novel that reps call a ''girls' 'Catcher in the Rye.''' ''Gidget'' reruns are drawing an average of 463,000 viewers five times a week on TV Land (a 209 percent increase over programming in the same time slot last summer), surf-girl fashion (like striped shorts and hibiscus-print frocks) is cramming boutiques from Prada to Victoria's Secret, and the jiggly E! special ''Women of the Beach'' (with ''Blue Crush'' stars) premiered this month. Others are also hitting the beach, like Disney's Hawaiian ''Lilo & Stitch'' and Lenny Kravitz, who'll feature female surfers in his video for ''If I Could Fall in Love.''
Why the endless summer? Pop-culture purveyors say surfing is a way to tap the youth niche that, among other things, drove ''The Fast and the Furious'' to a $145 million haul. Women's sports have been increasingly popular since soccer star Brandi Chastain doffed her shirt upon winning the 1999 World Cup. And sun-baked surfing has already proven its allure: The number of U.S. surfers has risen 15 percent since 1998, and nearly a million of them are women. That makes females a crucial factor in the reported $9.9 billion boarding industry, according to firms that track the sport.
