We have an incredible platform to engage with passionate surfers!
It truly is a fantastic time to be alive what with global warming/bigger storms/rising ocean levels creating exciting new waves, a World Surf League and various wave pool technologies racing with each other to be the incomparable best. You of course read about Webber’s continued efforts last evening. The WSL, ears ringing, maybe sensing the early dominance of their Surf Ranch slipping away, this morning announced a compelling move certain to cause “waves” on the Gold Coast and in Waco.
And let us go directly to the press release. Let’s not waste anymore precious time.
The World Surf League (WSL) has appointed former Disney executive Nick Franklin as president of its Kelly Slater Wave Company (KSWC) operation.
Key areas of focus for Franklin (pictured) in this role will be driving the growth and development of the business globally, pursuing strategic and operational integration with the WSL and leading the continued innovation and evolution of the product, including the wave, the venues and the customer experience.
Franklin joins the WSL following a long career at the Walt Disney Company. During his 18 years with Disney, Franklin worked in corporate strategy and in the Theme Park and Resort business unit where he led teams across a wide range of functions including global strategy, business development, real estate development, and brand and operations. Following his time at Disney, Franklin served as executive vice-president of strategic operations for KB Home.
Franklin said: “Having got my feet under me in the past few weeks and having a chance to see the capabilities of this superb team, I can see all of the enormous potential and am looking forward to building on the amazing foundation of work that’s been done so far by both the KSWC team and partners at the WSL. With the wave technology, Surf Ranch in Lemoore and the connection to the WSL, we have an incredible platform to engage with passionate surfers and also connect with those new to sport to expand the business.”
Scoring a Disney exec who worked in corporate strategy and the Theme Park and Resort Business unit is very much a a shot across Webber/Waco bows. I have zero doubt that they are scouring LinkdIn for Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain exes but it may be too late.
Put one up on the board for Lemoore.
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Franklin said: “Here’s my opening statement full of key corporate buzz words”.
This pool wave that destroyed Chas shoulder, can I ask Brutus who we believe makes surfboards, might Chas generate more speed and maybe even he execute a bottom turn if he turns his fins around on his board?
the Mick Fanning 6 0§
Superb team, enormous potential, amazing foundation, incredible platform, passionate surfers… this is the kind of shit the WSL creams over. HIRED.
I hear there’s a fire sale on Dreamworld execs at the moment!
Go to FB now you all
The Inertia is in live video now for the future of good things in suf, in community, in Earth, in Mars, in KS Wave ranch, in North Korea, soul surf, in WSL…and bla bla bla, whatever…
Evolve!!! Evolve us… now!!!
Wooooooooowwwwwwww
Uhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
I would call what they are doing is Devolution!
Brutus the thing is so egocentrical…
I don’t spell names here…
But… look the call…
“Presents EVOLVE: Uniting the Brightest Minds in Surf and Outdoors…”
“It’s here! EVOLVE is a first-of-its-kind gathering that features panels pairing thought-leaders from different spheres of outdoor culture to tackle pressing topics and world-class live music to mobilize innovators…”
“The I… – The Definitive Voice of Surf, Mountain, and Outdoors” (well is the response Google do when you do the search…)
And what a blabbering, annoying, discourses… and eternal bla bla bla for nothing, inconsistent…
The most funny thing were the guy, Z, looking like “the revenge of the nerds” with a shirt buttoned, strangled, by the neck… and with orgasms with himself…
Calm down you all!
Better things are coming, now!
“The Inertia Proudly Presents EVOLVE: Uniting the Brightest Minds in Surf and Outdoors
The Inertia está ao vivo agora.
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It’s here! EVOLVE is a first-of-its-kind gathering that features panels pairing thought-leaders from different spheres of outdoor culture to tackle pressing topics and world-class live music to mobilize innovators in the space as a force for good like never before. 🏄♀️🏔️
Feel free to leave questions below for our amazing panelists, and we will do our best to integrate them into the actual show. 😎”
https://www.facebook.com/Th…¬if_t=live_video
Derek is killing it on the “From The Archives” selections. It’s entertaining as all hell to see where wave pool discussions were two years ago, and where it is now. It feels so awkwardly nostalgic. Keep up the good work.
Opposing armies used to line up across the battlefield and go headlong into the fight! That must have been a sight to see and pretty fuckin’ gory. I’ll keep surfing my shitty little spot and enjoy the wave tank wars from a distance. Hopefully the newcore™️ won’t bother with a mostly dribbly spot after tasting the spoils of Babylon (Disney, et al).
newcore.
normcore.
There’s a generation on the horizon that will have been reared completely on wave tanks. How will this newcore™️ species be integrated into the ocean surf culture, being devoid of the hierarchy and nuanced lessons that are specific to each community?
Ah, Poolies , start them in the wave garden and let them progress to the Webber barrel , K-Tub, Waco?
This is the Corpo equivalent of a hospital pass.
I hope your medical insurance is robust, Mr Franklin.
Does Franklin know which way the fins go
Asking the pertinent questions.
Someone else to blame when sh!t goes south.
Was it not a Mr. Kenny Powers that cost you your BMW dealership, Mr. Schaeffer?
So… we’ll have Goofy like host for KS Wave Ranch???!!!
Wowwww
But like I said before… I prefer Krusty!ops…! sorry… Kruslly!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I’m sure the spurs are quivering on their cowboy boots over in Waco.
Or blissfully unaware while making money off the wave and all the other cool/kooky shit they have at that place. That’s one thing that these wave pool ventures should consider before embarking. Not everyone is adept at surfing even when faced with a perfect layup of a wave so to speak (think Chas at Kelly’s wave). There’s got to be some other stuff to draw the unskilled and their even-more unskilled families/friends. From the admittedly little I’ve seen Waco’s, certainly checked that box.
Looking forward to the $10 churros after the $10,000 tubes.
ah wasn’t there a Disney Exec involved with Q/S , how did that work out?
New Cove wavegarden announced here in France , 30 mins fromHossegor , 40M Euros at Castet!
Read the article in Surf Session and the Fédération Française de Surf will use it as their official High Performance training facility in the lead up to Tokyo and eventually Paris 2024.
Really? Very pretty part of the world – and a sure hit with wealthy mountain-snow-tartiflette lovers. And the cow shit smells better than in Lemoore.
Like the Mayor said ,Castets has always been a place that people have been obliged to pass through and now they have a reason to stop and to stay . Leaves me fjording for the pines or something like that ? An ex girlfriend’s parents had a beautiful old home surrounded by pines at Lesgor not far away .
Very nice place!
I’m gonna buy some real estate around Castets before it’s too expensive, I don’t want to be the grumpy guy left behind when the euros, dollars or pounds are gonna drown the place!
Nope, no cows, no tartiflette lovers, 2000 people, mostly in their sixties, but some of them with lands ready to welcome buildings, and then tourists living the ari bnb / wsl experience, while grumpy locals as myself will watch helplessly …
Crap! I thought he meant Castet, near the Vallée d’Ossau.
They already have the ski in the mountains, they would have refuse this thing. And this place is great, it would have been a pity to see a wavepool there.
Castets! With an “s”! It’s a small place with nothing to do except passing through, and catching the highway. But they already have a Mc Donald’s… Funny, ’cause I’ve worked there when I was a kid early eighties, in a gas station, telling australian surfers which way they had to drive to reach Hossegor…Now, they’ll be able to stay there to surf.
In fact, thinking about it, it’s kinda frightening…
Salut Walter, it was you working at the truck stop in the middle of nowhere while I was living up in Cosmopolitan surf city Sydney in the 80s . Just kidding .How far is the site of Wavelandes Atlantic from chez toi ?
70 km, less than an hour driving.
Ahah, could have been! It was a garage and a gas station, on the road between Bordeaux and Hossegor/Capbreton/Seignosse, and I worked there two summers, there was me at the gas station, another guy ripping tourists at the garage and a third selling weed, just in front of the “gendarmerie”… True story, and it worked great until they build the highway!
I just did the drive , it,s about 40 mins using the peage from Hossegor , I think you would be blown away by how much development and surfers there are now from Vieux Boucau to Mimzan , all done with a sense of French Style , I drive é hrs a day for 1 surf a day , just to get away from the crowds of EuroKooks.
So Castets it is , cheap land and easy access from the autoroute …..
Unfortunately, I’m already blown away, since I’m surfing around St Julien en Born from March to November each and every year… It’s really difficult in summer, though. But I agree with you, how different it is from the eighties, or nineties, or even ten years ago!
It looks like windsurfing in the eighties, when everybody had a windsurf on top of his car, now it’s a surfboard, they all come down the beach with at least a NSP or Bic plastic board, and I don’t talk about soft tops, bodyboards, kayak surfs…
Walking down the beach is the answer, that’s what I’m doing since a while now. Some guys are driving in the forest to reach some banks they spotted, you just need to ask for a fishing permit, in order to be able to park your car in the forest except during summer. I don’t do that, I promised my wife three things: no beard, no tatoo and no 4WD.
mmmh, not so cheap the land in Castets, not far from the autoroute AND Dax, where hot waters are supposed to cure everything!
Used to be able to walk 300 m in the 90’s to surf alone but today ,with the ever expanding success of surf schools , 500 m to 1km seems to be the minimum to get some peace away from the madding crowd at my old spot .
1) Moliets, north of the courant d’Huchet
2) Plage de la Lette Blanche (a bit more north) (Arnaoutchot, naturist camp)
3) South of Cap de l’Homy.
That would be my three picks north of Vieux Boucau. I didn’t go surfing south of Vieux Boucau since the beginning of this century.
I’m going surfing right now south of Contis, high tide, there is a clean bank down there.
have a nice day!
Ha I am surfing North of Moliets , no crowd ,very good sand bar have to lie to everyone that I am not surfing at the moment , otherwise its like flies to shit!
Good pick! Two more weeks and most of them will fly back to their own shit!
You can’t script this, you truly can’t.
I’m wondering when the ISA will make their move.
Pools will need an ISA endorsement as an approved Olympic training venue.
ka-ching $$$$$
Just wait until someone writes a movie where a wave-pool champion goes to Hawaii and uses all their training to become a Pipe-Champ.
Crazy huh. But it will totally validate their business model.
Fuck yes.
All sponnos to the pools.
I hope they all make money. Really.
The more pools the better, as far as I’m concerned.
If they pull more people out of the already overcrowded lineups – good.
Never happen, nature is unpredictable!
If it were being scripted, I would totally fire the writers. Like, go home, you’re drunk.
Or…or say “This is going well! Now let’s put it in space!”
ah the USA Space Force!
To the moon!
I mean is there any storys of success in surfing ,”bringing in people who Don’t surf to dictate to surfers what they need and want?”
The scary thing about the WSL/K-Tub , there seems to be no plan , I mean look at next years Schedule now , France and Portugal back on in October , Pipe probably back on with the Tripple Crown , I mean WTF is the Plan?
How,s the PPV guy going , UFC Genius meets Disney?
(thinks) There is not one single such success story.
It is all so fucking weird, like I remember writing an essay for Surfing magazine back in I dunno, 1984 or some shit? Their 20th anniversary mag. It was about the Future and I vividly recall thinking this, then writing it: Surfing’s actual core nature is its ticket into the future. It didn’t take profound insight to see that back then, and there’s nothing that’s happened since to change my mind about it. It’s not fucking rocket science!! You don’t change good things! And the fact that surfing doesn’t quite fit the sports mould is A GOOD THING!!! The best contest of this year so far was J-BAY. Way down the bottom of the world, out of almost every conceivable time zone, but right in the path of the Southern Ocean’s best storm tracks in 2018. And the only thing that fucked it up was THE BROADCAST!!!
I am fascinated to be attending the Surf Ranch event but I am feeling a bit hypnotised by it too. It’s the first pro event I’ve ever been to where I can’t just go surfing when I want, or hang around and meet local surfers and check out boards, etc. To go to this contest, you have to consciously dislocate yourself from your own surfing time and experience. I’m gonna struggle not to see this as a metaphor.
Sounds like you might need to go cow-tipping. Sure it’s not low toxicity. Nothing is in Lemoore. Go interview a local cattleman and get his opinion on this darn wave farm thing. Their perspective must be some good adjective placed here.
It’s already been done – they come across as real small town country folk but clearly nice peace loving people – it’s on Netflix now called Wild Wild something Wavepark or similar. The guy who’s father started Nike Shoes is on it too which adds some gravity I suppose. Just wait til Kelly and Ziff start arming themselves and BFB and Soph etc… along with those Pros that Ziff was trying to save the dreams of like Gabriel Madina or Peter Schroff or whoever… BFB would look hilarious… hilarious and scary.
Hey Nick ,South Africa has the exact time zone than UK and half of Europe! and of course than the Canary Islands ,which according to Facebook, has the same amount of views than California 😉
an industry built on the raw culture of surfing , warts and all.……….now sanitised mediocrity being delivered as “the Sport of Surfing” ,
really what is surfings image now and how are the big brands selling to the non surfing public?
At the “coming soon” to your town Kelly’s Tub theme parks.
Wait tell they roll out the real estate investment package….all the kooks we know will finance the piece of shit…and they say hey I’m making Bank…all whores, sell the fukken grandma for a dollar.
That’s a fucken good point Bush. You’re right, just like golf.
I can see that totally.
That was the hardest thing about that place for me — there’s nothing to do except sit in the venue, watch people surf, and drink. There’s no, like, town to wander or any kind of outdoor activity for people like me who climb the walls if I don’t get out and do something — I mean, anything will do! Open the fucking pool in the morning and let me swim laps! Idk.
I figured if I went again — I don’t think I can find travel budget to go to the CT thingy, but anything’s possible — I’d probably take my road bike and just like, ride flat farm roads and highways in the early morning. Which is hella boring, but all I can really come up with. Maybe Fresno has a skate park. Desperation.
Hoo-ee, ain’t she pretty. Now, tell me, if you had to choose a wave pool between Ranch, Webber, Wave Machines or Wavegarden, who would it be? https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
whats the one at Yepoon? Occys one.
That one.
Occys one got the best lines
∆ They building a giant curved closeout?
WaveGarden as the level of surfing drops here every year in France , witha steady influx of EuroKooks keeping the surfing level excedingly low.
Now the WSL have moved HQ to Portugal , France will be the last place you will see a K-Tub , as Sophie the Pommy has sided with the Potuguese , and continued the Anglo/Franco war…except the Quik Pro is on next year in Oct as is the RC Cup,WTF?
Umm the Australian coastline
it’s turning into more of a ‘circus’ all the time, how many millions does Dirk have to throw away.
4800
Many more, I hear. Maybe 20,000.
Isn’t it good to know that money doesn’t make you immune to going on a sans microphone rant?
In a way it makes you prone to doing it.
20 billion? Wow I read he inherited 5 and now has 4.8. Rich get richer!
The Ziffs inherited a bit over $1.6 billion collectively from their father William in the mid-1990s, after he sold off the assets of his publishing empire, Ziff-Davis. The boys didn’t want to be publishers. ZBI (their investment firm) turned that into about $13 billion, then they split the assets, distributing them widely among a range of different smaller groups head up by their hot shot managers. Each brother also runs their own show and still use ZBI for some collective investments. There is a HUGE amount of money in that spread, a lot more than than be sheeted home to each brother individually. They’re enormously successful investors, and unlike the current US president, they have a few truckloads more money than it seems.
I think I said this thing was going Disneyland…mom and dad’s step right up, open your wallet to the wizard of Oz.
Disney is a mind control beast, it is Satan.
Kelly your a whore, kook of the highest degree life will take care of you, count on it.
Surfing is gone. The experience interaction with nature is a thing kids will never see, sad days have come on man.
I don’t surf! Never have never will.
From the Bush
kelly is doing his best to destroy any soul left in surfing by handing it over to the masses. He has tunnel vision and all he sees is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well said
Kelly doesn’t own it any more I thought? He saw the writing on the wall and flogged it asap to the wsl, who are gullible sycophants. ITs got his name on it cuz it’s the only way they can pretend it’s superior, and even then not for long….
Well said.
Hey Bush, blame the parents, they’re the ones who decide what surfing and the ocean means to their kids. This pic (sorry for repost) sums up everything wrong with where surfing is/is headed, blame the parents.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
The bush apparently has wifi
Well if Hell freezes over we know where to go to see « Disney on Ice « ?
A day at Surf Ranch is far cheaper than seeing Disney on Ice don’t even start me on the overpriced merch.
Bum . I was so looking forward to the purchase of my very own “ SMELLY SKATER ON ICE “ T-shirt . My dream will now forever rest in the outerknown ?