In five fundamental ways! Let's count… 

Earlier today, this website posted a story with the title, Wavepools: “Investors Gonna Lose Their Asses!” It is an energetic piece that takes aim at a New York Times story on the on-again-off-again Wavegarden in Austin, Texas.

It’s author, the knuckle-duster-in-the-face Rory Parker, also recorded his doubts about the long-term viability of such operations.

I hear it. If you put a twenty-million dollar tank somewhere y’gonna need tens of thousands of pool jockeys, beginners, intermediates, studs, jamming this way and that, to cut any sort of profit.

A while back, I put the economic proposition of wavepools to Greg Webber, the shaper who’s been promising a pool that’ll shadow Kelly’s. And Greg says Wavegarden is doomed.

“They’re hamstrung by the dynamic of a low wave-rate, which makes it viable on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “An industry is on the cusp of happening. But it’s only going to happen if each of these pools makes a lot of money. Not just a little, tiny turnover. And that’s directly linked to the number of people going through the gates. One hundred and twenty waves an hour is 12 dudes getting 10 waves an hour. No one spends 30 million dollars or more building a pool on the hope that’s going to turn a profit. Because it can’t. You can’t change $10,000 per session. I wouldn’t go down that path, ever. And they’ll end up being redundant.”

So maybe Rory and Greg are right. Pools’ll appear and, eventually, crumble into their dirty brown water.

But what if, once we get a taste, we don’t want, or need, the ocean?

I’ve ridden a couple, one a piece of shit, and yeah if they were still like that, close the door. But the other was so sublime it still operates as a fulcrum for conversation between its participants. Therefore I believe that even a vaguely good pool is better than the ocean in five fundamental ways.

1. You’ll never be dropped-in on again: You pay your five or ten bucks, and that wave is yours to destroy or to butcher. There’s no one to paddle up the face as you take aim at a lip. No one swinging around on the inside. You sit. You hear the whomp. The show’s yours.
2. The concept of practice is real: We ran a little interview with our pals at What Youth a few weeks ago and there was a disappointment expressed at the lack of any sorta of surf-performance progression, at least in line with skate or snow. But, goddamn. How long does it take to get a cutback just right, or learn even the most basic process of an air? It’s such a battle to catch a wave and veer around the crowd to find that one inviting section, that most of the time we stick to what we know. Imagine a season pass at a pool, Wavegarden, American Wave Machines, KSWaveCo, whatever. Your world would…open.
3. Disappointment isn’t even an option: In this big nasty world, we all gotta work. So most of us can only sling a few hours a week at the ocean. And if we get there and the tide’s wrong or Jesus ain’t delivering a promised swell? There’s not  a damn thing you can do. Unless a pool breaks, and yeah they do (but you’ll know about breakdowns before you get into your car), you’re gonna get waves. You’re gonna surf not matter what.
4. You’ll actually enjoy a pal’s surfing: Every bomb set your pal gets in the ocean is a wave you missed out on, especially if you’re sitting side-by-side in the lineup. And, so, it’s natural to harbour a little hatred in the darker side of your soul for your surf buddy. At a pool? Equal shares. It’s the bright side of communism mixed with the perfection of free enterprise.
5. It sifts the mystical bullshit from surf: What is surfing but a game of balance and identification of shapes, mixed with a sort of elevated swimming cardio? There ain’t no mystery to it. Cancer isn’t being cured. Unicorns aren’t being ridden across the sky. Do you think we really commune with nature on our petrochemical boards? Pools show up surfing for what it actually is – a frustrating as hell, but boundlessly satisfying… sport. A sport.