World’s best surfer invents world’s best artificial wave. Why so sad?
There isn’t enough plastic buckets in all of China to contain the flood of tears from surf writers these last couple of days. I’ve wet a few t-shirts myself but only because, even with a drone, a drone pilot and a cherry picker lined up, your pals at BeachGrit couldn’t summon the momentum necessary to record history.
Travis Ferré, of What Youth, he with the honey-hued shoulders and chestnut head of hair, first wept at Kelly’s enclave and its crushing insularity. From an office bedraggled with magazines on every chair, he wrote:
“It feels slimy. Elitist and weird… I get the same queasy feeling I get around private golf courses and churches… I’ll hack my gold ball down any old street before I pay to play that course.”
This morning, Chas Smith, a loveable Lawrence of Arabia figure who likes to stir his Arabs into futile, suicidal attacks, wrote,
“I hate Wave Ranch. I hate it with everything in me and with no pulled punch in vague hopes of getting invited to surf it one day. I hate it with a hatred reserved for drunks who speed through red lights near elementary schools and the Apple Genius Bar. Hate.
“Because it is officially over. The dream has died. Surfing has been successfully and cleanly amputated from ‘surfing.; The simple physical act from one of the most wonderful, most indescribable joys on earth.”
And in an interview with Matt Warshaw on the day of the event he posited,
“If wavepools are the end game, pro surfing is well and truly fucked.”
Now tell me.
Is this surfing? Is this the apex of soul? Surfing weak corners at Seaside or Newport with thirty pals, catching maybe five waves in a two-hour session? Risking literal, and not figurative as is the apparent case with Kelly’s pool, decapitation when longboarders winsomely toss their craft away at a set? Dreary, pointless waves with all the sex appeal of a raw carrot?
The hate toward wavepools, and especially this one, is tedious.
It reveals an inability to pan back and see the breathless garden laid out before you.
I saw magic at Kelly’s (and Adam Fincham’s) pool. The greatest artificial wave ever created. Fruits ripened over ten years of thinking and finessing.
(Come and click here to look at the wavepool patents.)
If I walked down a little track at a remote beach and saw this shorebreak trumpets would blare and I would cry for joy.
Joy.
I’m sick with longing for this wave.
It affects my respiration!
Heavy words from Matt, are we on the verge of a new world order.
Of course I’d love to have a go in that pool. It looks hella fun, but it’s never going to happen for 99% of us.
Snobby conservatism and poetic ocean hand-jive aside I think it’s an amazing bit of technology that is yet young.
Is that a metaphor for ‘head up ass’?
Early days, proof on concept. When they double or triple the size and drop the train further underwater most of us will be pretty happy.. v2.0 https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
nah….you got that arse about. the big money conservatism is with the tub guys.
I surely hope so. Hopefully hydrofoil boards don’t fill the imminent SUP void.
Maybe seasonally driven spikes for SUP. I’m looking more at the overall trajectory and relative difference in interest.
Despite Kelly’s best efforts it looks like the proletariat have limited interest in wave pools. SUP on the other hand seems to be exciting the masses. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Just in, Beach Grit publishes 15th consecutive story on Kelly’s pool.
You seriously counted them? This is both a testament to your Grit® and determination, but also to the increasing intelligence of the Komment Krew (previous best was counting to 11 – thanks Ke11y).
All the way to 15? Fuck me…
There appears to be no end in sight so we may even make it all the way to triple digits.
You’re dreaming. No one can count that high.
I think, nine. But maybe more left!
And then when the surfing clientele drys up, you can drain the pool and skaters will have a dream snake run.
The size of the wave still puts it in the novelty category, add two or so more feet to it with shorter waits between waves and then that becomes a pretty dreamy set up. A big shelter belt around to negate wind issues wouldn’t hurt either.
I wondered when Dell would come back with the rebuttal.
the line about suicidal arabs being led into battle was gold……weren’t you shaken, if not stirred by Chas’ polemic this morning Derek?
Tedious? Not even a word of it mon ami.
I hope BG doesn’t tear itself apart over the tub.
Surf writers rejoice, this is a gift that will see us all to the gold watch.
Speaking of the sex appeal of raw carrots, I knew a gal who loved to get fruity with vegetables.
And kids, thats how I met your mother.
All I could see (mind’s eye) was Chas’ narrow white buttocks clenching with each keystroke, the loud shirt, Givenchy maybe, wet with fury. Through the goodness of my lulled heart I allowed this indulgence.
I have a doctor friend who did a stint in A & E. One night a guy comes in with a carrot jammed up his arse. He swore blind that he’d come home with his shopping, dumped the bags in the bathroom and jumped in the shower. Unfortunately he had then slipped getting out and a carrot had, quite miraculously, rolled out of one of the shopping bags and been standing upright on the bathroom floor.
Terribly bad luck altogether.
It happens.
I can’t believe there’s an argument against how stupid surfing is at an “artificial wave”. Editing my comment to also ask why Biolos phone quality is comparable to a Razor?
Hey Dez, remember roughly 20 odd years ago when you where the ed at ASL and it used to run a section asking pros there ultimate move? Most were air type moves from memory. But then in one issue you asked KS for his ultimate future move and instead of a move he gave his ultimate wave, if he could create it. Go find the drawings of it (if possible) then run them alongside that wave of Filipes. Bastards done it.
Good God. That memory of yours. Yes. Yes. I will.
Faaark, I remember that! Didn’t it have both a left and a right on the same ride?
Run in skimboard style take off, long breaking right with different sections along its length for different styles/tricks, finishing in an easy kick out onto the beach. Can’t remember a left though, but fuck it was a long time ago, so maybe.
Hmmm, maybe. I seem to remember a sort of reform halfway. Then again I was pretty young – mainly used to practise drawing those waves!
Holy shit. I remember too!
i can’t wait to see Kai Lenny foil board this place…
ha really, I ‘ll take that bet, that’s $10 a wave, are you kidding???- $10 to start up that train thing and push 20 tonnes of water ever wave will only be $10? ookkkk.
I’ve been on the fence, but now that I’ve seen (on Insta) that Joel Tudor is in vehement support I’m absolutely fucking sure I should hate it.
It’s the worst longboard wave of all time!
Joel Tudor’s contrarianism is more classic than his style.
Sgurd will do that to a man!
Derek’s other kink must be smallpox blankets.
No denning the greatness of the concept. And yes, if I climbed over some sand dunes to witness a little peeling righthander, squizzing between two islands and hitting an inside sand bottom for 200 meters I’d wet my pants with excitement. But this is different, this is that Japanese golf club that only the very elite and pro’s will ever play at. So, wow, wow, soft wave wow.
Said this before but hey, if Kelly spent the same amount of money, on a perfect A Frame Trestles style artificial reef on a wave rich, closeout coastline and let anyone surf it, unless he had a contest on I guarantee, no one would be a critic….
I agree I reckon you could spend way less on an artificial reef say made from recycled tyres ( apparently here in oz we used to send to one Asian nation to be recycled someway – now they just burn them because no longer viable) but I digress. That A-frame shaped pontoon could be towed into posi, pointed to swell direction and would be epic. Plus what about the notion of protecting coastal areas from erosion by having artificial reefs as swell dampeners from storm surges etc
Artificial reefs don’t work, for reasons I’ve never been able to swallow. But, here, through the distant amorous mist of a thinly populated inland California shithole, we see God.
never surfed the superbank?
Ah, but confected sandbank not reef.
Durban is full of piers, artificial concrete monsters and they have created some of the best most consistent and unchanged waves in South Africa. They are exactly where Jordy grew up preparing for reeling right handers.
Sorry dude, but this is a cosmically bad take.