The ultimate in corporate team building!
I know you don’t want to read another word about Surf Ranch. About Lemoore or greater Lemoore or the Grapevine. That you are thoroughly and completely exhausted so I’m sorry for this here but we still have things to ponder in our hearts. Therefore, pull your work pants up and let’s get to pondering.
I saw many things while walking, people and Dirk Ziff in cream-colored dress shorts w/leather topsiders and Barefoot wine signage. I heard many things too. That Surf Ranch offered 88 days for lease this year or rent or whatever it should be called. Loan? Whatever. That Surf Ranch offered 88 days for loan this year, $50,000 each day, and has completely sold out.
Big blue chip corporations are using the Lemoore facility to host employee appreciation events or gold member perk nights, tossing foamies into the pool and turning the wave down, letting senior vice-presidents from Omaha feel the rush. Or turning the wave up and letting Jim from accounting release the fins a la Sebastopol Zeitz.
Just kidding. Jim from accounting can’t release the fins at all but I was thinking anyhow, if you worked for a big blue chip corporation and they gifted you a day at Surf Ranch wouldn’t you be hyped? Oh sure you’re in Lemoore BUT also at Surf Ranch and Mary from legal is in the hot tub watching the last little barrel bit of the left.
All to say, when I heard the 88 $50,000 days had all been sold out it made me think the WSL is really on to something in turning surfing into the ultimate team-building exercise and suddenly $50,000 didn’t seem like very much at all.
Right?
Also, did you see Kelly Slater doing his Wim Hof breathing before his final run?
But back to team-building days at Surf Ranch. A steal at $50,000 no? I would imagine a speaker (not Paul), some nifty hula-hoops and a catered meal from Buca di Beppo costs more than $50,000.
BeachGrit is going to book a corporate retreat next year once we pay off the billboard. We all need better teamwork and more trust etc.
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i see what you did there…
It’s the Slater-Ziff surf-biz triangle model, it reads like a powerpoint slide on how to monetize/grow the sport of surfing and it’s just as exciting. Invest in a (1) surf league, (2) a wave pool company, and (3) an epoxy surf board company, it’s glorious and harmonious, like peas and carrots. I like the WSL with exception of the latest contest, would love to surf the surf ranch at my leisure, and don’t really have a need for an epoxy board even though I do like them. There’s definitely a future for the triangle — but for who?
I’ll talk as much shit as the next guy, but I’ll also take a list of companies please. Updating resume currently…
It’s a made up number for all the investors that got fucked at Goldman Sachs putting money into Dirk Ziff’s sinkhole! (Add the cow smell and you get ‘stinkhole’) Anyway, if your one of the fuckees you get a free day at the Jurassic Surf Park for you and your friends for every $50k you got fucked out of! Nice trade. That’s probably about $500 bucks a wave. Get out the KY!
Wow! Corporate Retreat! They finally found their wet spot.
no more – lemore!, no more lemore!, no more lemore!
fuck the lemore whores! I am over it, done, fuck em.
its a sick wave, the comp is boring, it would be fun to have a day or two at it.
they are selling something surfers love and it sucks. they do not deserve unfettered praise, they are doing something shitty and Kelly is selling his legacy. it is ok, but it is also ok for Chas to rip them for it and no one should feel guilty, they can do what they want and others can criticize them for doing it.
Red Bull, please start a tour,
join forces with another and start a tour that encompasses all the great waves. find an onshore air ramp, go to jBay, go to Tavi, do it right. get sponsors and the surfers will come. it might be profitable as well. Have the Volcom Pipe Pro be a Red Bull event, get the Eddie under your belt.. make it real surfers tour!
Please.
“the fruit of the sweating”
Clever
There’s plenty of time
To build a powerful team
Thanks to one wave sets
these get better and better
We’re gonna be gutted when we find out it’s Humble-B.
Meh.
I’d rather go to The Shhhnake, and other places to see exciting foreignness.
But then I’m not a corporate body looking to reduce tax liability.
beachgrit team-building activities — oh, the possibilities!
Brainstorming future billboards, etc etc
MOAR BILLBOARDS
“You don’t have to be locked by land to get shacked.”
Day One agenda:
9am- How to screw fins in backwards
10am- How to knock fins out again
11am- Coffee table longjump
I like how this is going, so far.
It could quickly go pearl shaped
11:07 – tecates
11:07 is at least your 6th tecate
No fucking way they sold out all their days. That is pure horseshit. I cant believe the electric bill for that place is so outlandish that they have to charge 50k a fucking day to surf it. Get the fuck out our here. And those solar panels? I work in commercial/residential solar and can tell you with 100% certainty that those panels provide enough power to run their floodlights outside and that is about it. That thing is the least sustainable pool on earth and no-one will give 2 shits about KSWC in 5 years time. Mark it.
I feel your anger vibrating through the screen of my phone!
I’m sure the locals at Lindamar will be stoked to have those folks somewhere else for a few days
if I had a firm that needed to burn 50k for tax reasons I would do it. got to be better than golf.
I suppose someone has to note that A) Barefoot Wine is repulsive plonk made by giant robots at a tank farm in Modesto, and B) their Inside Coco Ho campaign surely makes everyone else feel like a creepy uncle too, especially the part where she can’t tell you about her secret spot but just might show it to you. Yikes.
Yeah. More than a little tone deaf ad. Also.if youre gonna run an ad 100 times can we lift the production quality? Maybe a good idea or two?
The first time, I assumed I misheard.
They must have asked secret surf spot and Coco answered awkwardly…but no, it was meant that way.
To be fair, we are all probably over 35 with kids
oh. uh. wow. i totally missed this one. that is not great!
i did see her strolling the lobby of the tachi palace looking both fabulous and fabulously out of place.
I once saw Alana and Jack strolling Nordstroms at Fashion Island and they did not look out of place in the least.
Oh that seems totally right to me! Totally.
Coco Ho at a casino hotel in the back end of nowhere? Guh. She is very stylish out of the water!
So creepy. That could use a quiet edit for sure.
Let me be the first……call bullshit!
$50k for cow shit smell all day. This is the price for Tavarua for a week with food…not avocado and toast.
Marketing bullshitters.
As wealth inequality grows, the rich will need thier safe space.
I’m sure the gates are high enough, and the location is perfect to keep out the huddle masses.
Kelly’s money transcends surfing, glad he needs the surfing public’s approval so desperately, or we may have never seen a contest held there
In all seriousness, would Kelly actually be making money off this? I mean, after factoring in how much he’s poured in to create it and how much it must cost to run it
he already sold it to WSL.
presumably for profit and scrip.
This is true. WSL really do have more money than sense
What makes you believe he used a cent of his own money?
I just assumed he bank rolled the R&D. Probably with the money he made off Quicksilver. So really, the basin sent Quicksilver broke
Me’s thinking he got all Danny DeVito and used other people’s money
Silicon Valley/ San Fran is full of rich young libertarians who would blow 55k in “team building” vice paying thier now much lower corporate tax
Pretty entertaining few days all round – Longtom, Jen See and you and Carroll chewing the fat on DLS. I had a no-Ranch detox over the weekend which may have helped to keep enthusiasm levels from waining.
Keep up this sort of standard and you’re going to have a liquidity event on your hands.
thanks for readin’ it’s good times making words for you people! but maybe i don’t go back to lemoore soon.
And to think, I used to consider a “No-Ranch Detox” a weekend off the Hidden Valley salad dressing/dip.
Who could possibly survive a whole weekend without salad dressing?
I never said I was successful at it.
Looking forward to Lewis Samuels’ account of showing up with Google and the Google soft top armada that clogs the Nor Cal lineups. “Turn it up to 11, boys. Let’s do this.”
There at least enough tech companies with guys who think they surf to make this viable until the next bubble bursts.
Wonder how much it would cost to rent Waco for a day
I think it’s somewhere in the 20ks….
How much for one day’s hire of Chas Smith to read Cocaine and Surfing plus signed copies and a couple of lines each for a staff of 20?
15k. I booked him for our Christmas function this year
so around about half a brick with Chas on delivery for tips
As of mid-July it was $22k for the whole day.
Amém to the gold lame dead horese and to Pharisees of the Temple!!!
And what a spit and a tiny cloth can do, huh???!!!