Is the wave pool arms-race officially over?
It officially is a wave pool arms-race now. I’d have BeachGrit take credit for coining the term “wave pool arms-race” or “wave tank arms-race” or some such variation but I have not listened to Del the Funky Homosapien’s entire catalogue nor have I thoroughly studied Native American pre-colonial recreation facilities.
The Atlantic, anyhow, made it official by doing a story titled The High Stakes of Surfing’s Wave-Pool Arms Race and it’s a good read. Here’s a taste.
But as Slater grabbed headlines, something else was happening. Consortiums of engineers, scientists, and financiers were building other wave-generating technologies around the world. Slater’s company wasn’t only generating fake waves; it was spreading an infectious enthusiasm for the very idea. And there was potential gold for whoever could do it best: In 2016, the International Olympic Committee voted to include surfing in the 2020 Japan Games. First to market in Japan meant an introduction to the world.
A race was on.
Please read the rest but, and this is an important but, the piece appears to have been written before a young man died from brain eating amoeba after surfing the pool in Waco, Texas and also before the reveal of the plunger and chlorine utilized by the Occy/Lynch fronted Surf Lakes in Yeppoon in Australia’s Queensland.
Of course we haven’t seen the pool yet but between the plunger and the chlorine I’m ready to declare it a clear winner.
Surf Lakes for President? Can we rename it something a little more… youthfully edgy though? Like, Fucking Surf Camp for the Holmeses or something?
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surf lake. thats catchy.
This will all be fun when there isn’t enough energy to keep these pools (amongst a million other things on this planet) running.
Shouldn’t we be trying to find out how to live with less energy than building/innovating in things the are or will be contributing to the problem …? All this in the name of economical growth (that cannot happen if there is no energy…)
Other than that,really great inventions!
It’s the uncertainty principle, which keeps us interested.
Probably has already been said here, but I wonder if that’s why Slater showed up on Rogan the other day? To take away some attention of Occy’s pool? You know..where he told Joe his pool is a good place for beginners.
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That picture makes it look like they dug the hole, and just dumped all the spoil off to the back.
I’m prepared to offer discounted Plumbing services and 4 days a week no hidden cam deal in the bathrooms for a look in at surfing the place…
How epic is Stab’s series? I read each twice!
Lordy, part 2 was slippery backtracking affair. I could feel Mikes balls shrinking with each sentence…
STAB… Edgy until questioned.
wont be long till there is one in vegas, where retired pros go to perform three times a day in 20 minute choreographed shows, set to pyro and the music of Paul Shaffer & The Shaf-Shifters
Could be a job in it for Micro and Wilko next year…
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Actually Wynn Resorts is building a huge water park with a $1.5 billion ‘first phase’ price tag next to their casinos, replacing a 130 acre golf course. A wave pool might be a great draw there, they seem to have plenty of money and space for it.
kelly might be moving to vegas to hang out with tyson and mayweather
I hope Occy’s pool doesn’t bore me as much as his podcasts.
I’m going!
Baudrillard insists that with disappearance, strange things happen—some things that were eliminated or repressed may return in destructive viral forms—yet at the same time, he reminds us that disappearance has a positive aspect, as a “vital dimension” of the existence of things.
Thats in case an amoeba disappears me.
I can’t wait to read this story. I mean, assuming the amoebas don’t get you, Idk, don’t drink the water, man, we’d like you to come on back. Among other things, I’d have to find more shit to write about and nobody wants that!
I’ll give you $200 to type out my memoirs.
Not bad for 5 minutes work… BOOM!
You’re on fire, Nega. I’m not worthy.
Sorry was listening to Method Man…https://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0B...
What’s the commotion, oh my lord
Another corn chopped by the Wu-Tang sword
Heyheyhey like Fat Albert
It’s the Method Man ain’t no if ands about it
Hope someone’s going to be filming you…
Pool Vs. Pool
Journo Vs. Journo
Yeah right. I heard the plunger shat itself yesterday arvo when they tried to get it up to speed.
No one wants to hear about your fucked up sex life mate. Get off the gear.
Train: 1
Plunger: 0
seriously ?? Are we going to see footage of the waves and overhead waves ..head high for your brother does not count?
get on board mate, you must be owed a trip.
Rocky will blow your mind.
Embarking on a fishing trip tomorrow till next Thursday so Id be missing the “media” day even if I got an invite.
Fingers crossed I get an invite for the internet hero day.
Sea or river? I hear you have great fly fishing in NZ
Sea, 50kms off the top of the North Island… to be honest I’m more into fly fishing though.
Brings to mind “A River Runs Through It “ by Norman Maclean .
Shit you’re a way from home
Say hi to Brutus for me.
me too.. i can lose a day solid on a river alone.
Barthes spoke of the ‘Death of the Author’… I hope that doesn’t involve you!
With little paddling necessary in wave pools, I think it fair to say that this is not an arms race. On the other hand, the best technology will most likely be achieved after the race is already over, much like a traditional arms race.
I think it most strategic for Beach Grit to promote a race to be the first to conceive a child in a wave pool. For fuck sake right?!
Gotta gal you love?
I do, send me to one of the pools and I will bone
Yes. I asked her if she’d be down.
Her response: “Listen, your kid will be lucky if they don’t inherit your retarded complexities. Don’t you think the amoeba risk will all but condemn the child.”
Everyone knows ladies can’t get pregs in a pool. Or is it a hot tub?!?!
Anything larger than these test tubes ( babies ) seems a perfect place for the practice of safe sex and family planning ?
After the Pax Romana and Pax Atomica we will eventually surf with joy during the Pax WavePoolaHula ?
I love Yeppoon is going to be entering into my vocabulary a lot more. It’s always great when you hear it on weather reports “there was some stormy weather in Yeppoon last night”
How about ‘Yeppoon backdoor blowouts’ w/ tag line ‘Ride Yeppoon any way you like’
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Yeppoon is Australia’s Alabama.
Yes! It’s got that amazing potential to evoke both the mystical beauty of the landscape aka go-betweens ‘cattle and cane’ but also the rum-soaked brutality of a lynching or ‘oi cunt I’m gonna skull fuck ya missus’
And it sounds like ya poon.
I loved it even before the plunger. ‘Plunge into Yeppoon!’
Yeppoon just keeps on giving.
Some of Australia’s best bush weed and gnarly drug fcuked cunts guarding it.
also, surprisingly, some good surf from time to time.
Haha Emu park fox tail buds long as ya arm mate!
Just checked, few lads I know can hook ya up
I’ll be paying a visit to my mate “goanna” up north of there a little ways.
Sweet mate hope you’re given the full CQ hospitality, plenty of madd cunts that love it
it really is the perfect aussie answer to the CA’s cow stink swamp and amoeba bay out in TX.
Spike Milligan called it “the world’s only above-ground cemetery”.
No he did not. That was Woy Woy.
Fuck! Don’t turn me into Ben you cunts.
What about the Mark Twain quote about Newy when he visited it in the 1890s just after a new cemetery had been allotted. “Newcastle consists of a long road with a graveyard at one end with no dead people in it, and a Gentleman’s club at the other end with no gentlemen in it.”
Mark Twain was BeachGrit ahead of its time!
Down here, John Cleese called Invercargill the arsehole of the world (Mick Jagger hated it too). Cleese also said something along the lines that Palmerston North was the place you go to kill yourself… On both counts he was right. Then there was Theroux on Christchurch, the list could go on… Fuck, when I think about it New Zealand is just a cluster of desperate attention seeking small towns precariously holding onto 2 narrow, isolated, continually shaking, sheep infested strips of land, that are ripe for a ribbing.
But a wonderful place to shoot the waves …….ps ( well done Paige Hareb )
Oh most definitely a wonderful place to shoot waves and also shoot errant surfers daring to surf your ‘local’.
Dont bring that gentle, brilliant soul into this
Who Cleese?
He’s a bit of a Pro-Brexit twat actually. Age has turned him into one of his own comedy characters, except not so funny.
Ah Newcastle. Sounds like a great place to retire ? No death and no gentlemen …….
As I always say it’s a great place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit.
Great response.
Whoops, Whoops…and that’s what happens, kids, when you don’t research for primary sources.
Next you’ll be confusing Mooney Mooney bridge ( not far from Woy Woy ) and Dame Edna’s Moonee Ponds ? Keep up the good work .
His mum lived there ! Spike’s that is in that wonderful gateway to Umina ?
How’s the cat fingering going?
The Northern Territory has the Red Centre , Queensland now has the Dead Centre with a Pool ?
Impossible. The only place in the developed world as bad as Bama is Mississippi. Both places in hospitals when white kids are born give them confederate flags and nooses.
Idk. I’m torn between fear that we will have nothing to write about if we declare the wave pool wars over and a strong desire never to think of them and their organism-filled waters again.
*orgasm-filled waters, baby.
Ha ha oh shit that sounds so much better than the brain-eating bullshit.
Surf Lakes Pty Ltd (in liquidation)? Has a ring to it.
I like where your head’s at but, then, I always do.