Tell me you couldn't get whipped out on this thing!
Earlier in the week, it was announced the German wavepool company City Wave had hired Shane Beschen to help sell a bunch of pools in Florida.
A former world number two, you might remember Shane Beschen as the occasional foil to Kelly Slater in the nineties and as the only surfer to score three perfect tens in a heat. Lately, he’s been orbiting the globe with his two dazzling boys, Noah and Koda.
For the past three years, the gang have been hitting the Surf Style event in Munich, Germany, to ride that country’s own kinda wavepool, one that was built on the same principals that drives the Eisbach river wave in the same town.
Right now, there are lot of wave pool companies hawking their wares to investors and various governments. We got, Wavegarden. Kelly Slater Wave Co. Greg Webber Wave pools. American Wave Machines.
If you’re in Orlando, Florida, in September, and wavepools turn you on, visit the second annual Surf Summit. Listen to the president of the International Surfing Association Fernando Aguerre, the WSL’s Graham Stapelberg, former world number two Brad Gerlach and a dozen or so pivotal names in the pool game “discuss the opportunities and challenges related to the development of man-made surf destinations.”
Did you ever think, when all these tubs come to life, what’s the experience going to be like?
Are we going to be standing in lines of longboarders and pool jocks waiting for our one shot every twenty minutes, the idea of perfecting a manoeuvre on these identical waves moot as we strive to maximise our spend?
Will the surfer lose his sense of identity as suburban kids with season passes surf the pools with the slickness of eels, dropping multiples of shuv-its and whatever else?
I’ve ridden a few pools, and I like the pool here, the City Wave, for a few reasons.
One, it’s small so it ain’t a reach for a park to actually buy one, not just talk about it.
Two, it’s a stationary wave deep enough to ride boards with fins, unlike the classic Wave Lochs that demanded little finless discs.
Three? The intensity of the experience. Everything is right…
there.
Tell me this wouldn’t be fun.