Introducing Surf Theater.
The biggest investment co-Waterperson of the Year and billionaire Dirk Ziff made, when he purchased professional surfing for free back in 2013, was the acquisition of Kelly Slater’s eponymous Wave Company.
Surf Ranch, unveiled hours after Adriano de Souza claimed Brazil’s first world title in 2015 with the express intent of crushing his joy, was a marvel. An engineering wonder and certainly the future of surfing altogether.
Things have not quite gone according to plan.
New, more interesting, cost-efficient, scaleable technologies popped up in Surf Ranch’s wake, the facility has hosted the two most boring contests in surfing history and also the most boring specialty events, the only being built outside Lemoore, California is killing koalas by the truckload, or whichever cuddly Australian marsupials lives in wetlands, the U.S. Olympic team is shunning Surf Ranch for Waco and U.S.A. Today has no idea where it is.
Per the most widely read newspaper in America:
Surfer Carissa Moore, ranked No. 1 in the world, is no stranger to wave pools, training in Waco and competing at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in La Cienega, California, over the past three years.
“The biggest difference is Kelly Slater’s pool, or the surf range, is about 45 seconds long, and the Waco pool is probably top five seconds,” Moore said. “Kelly’s wave is pretty much kind of the same every time, and Waco has a lot of different settings, different waves that they can produce.”
Coach Brett Simpson went on to add:
“We’re not really expecting big waves. I mean, there is a chance for that, but we are expecting more high-performance, shorter rides, and that’s what Waco really allows us to do; really kind of fine-tune equipment and maneuver in the Japanese-style waves.”
Surf Ranch sure wishes it was in La Cienega, California, which isn’t actually a town but rather a boulevard that runs north/south through the west side of Los Angeles from very near Los Angeles International Airport to Sunset Boulevard hugging the Hollywood Hills.
Ideally, where could it be placed?
I’d say West Hollywood and could be themed very flamboyantly. Pulsing neon lights, staged productions, house music pumping at full volume, surprise appearances by Cher etc. and not called Surf Ranch at all but rather Surf Theater.
Very progressive. Very now and oh what might have been.
Living north of the golden gate. There’s been a shark attack at every single one of my go to spots besides OB, but I would pass on Manresa now. Pleasure point looks like a complete shit show with no regulation anymore. Grateful for those years I lived down there before the tech boom.
I’ve interviewed a lot of those attack victims over the years.
Like Megan Halavais at Salmon Creek and Lee Fontan at Bolinas and a couple guys up in Humboldt.
I helped Megan sell her chomped board to a guy in Malibu who wanted a chomped board.
As for Ocean Beach. This is fun at around 22 seconds.
What do you do? Paddle in or freeze?
Knowing what I do of shark attacks, they go after vibration, not blood.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Always try and face them and not let them get behind you. Saw pics of a guy in Esperance WA that didn’t panic and kept trying to not let it come up behind him. Usually in Nor-Cal nobody has time to make any decisions like that. That girls story at Salmon Creek is incredible. From what I remember she climbed on its back. She still works at the surf shop up there.
Yep in the dozen attacks I have interviewed and written about, exactly 0% of them have seen it coming.
All the victims have these things in common:
1. They’re the person that moved. Either paddling for a wave, or paddling back out after catching a wave. Stop. Sit. KABOOM!
2. No one has seen the shark before it hit. Not one.
3. The first reaction, before fear, is History Channel: LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS FRICKING THING!!!!
4. Then it’s fear, fight, punch, fear. They’re all convinced they’re going to die because they are completely overwhelmed by a huge fish with teeth.
5. They all managed to get free and get to the beach, bleeding and cut and adrenalized. Some say it’s a massive rush.
6. When they’re sitting in the hospital after, stressing about the medical bills, time off from work, etc they all think the same thing: “I can’t believe something that big could sneak up on me.”
7. If they don’t have medical insurance, they’re truly screwed.
8. Mick Fanning’s PTSD is for real. Many of them say the worst part about an attack is nightmares afterward. For years after.
9. We always get them a new wetsuit. “You had a rough day dude. Look at the O’Neill catalog/website and tell us what you need.
Probably saw you out there. I moved to live oak, a half mile from the harbor and went to college down there that year. Surfed the lefts all spring into summer.
Remember this? That was us.
Making money from the valleys, surfing Rivermouth until August, rocking out to KSJO and Van Halen,
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… then went to Europe and surfed Mundaka.
Nah I guess i missed it. I remember big logs everywhere on the beach after the storm. I’m a goofy foot so it was manresa, river mouth, and 26th ave. Got tired of the crowds at the points.
Pointing out your cringeworthy white-knighting for Kelly does not in any way indicate an obsession with nutsacks. Yawn. Why so 0/10?
Wasn’t Brokeback Mountain about the phag cowboys? I don’t know for sure; I’ve never seen it. You seem to be privy to some relatively obscure trivia regarding the movie. Almost as if… well, you know.
Neither is commenting on said stories, especially when you have the imprint of Kelly’s nutsack on your forehead.
You yourself are obviously neither, so what’s your point?
If he used the word “snatch” he was deceiving you.
I used to service Ma Maison, L’Ermitage, L’Orangerie and I opened Spago, so I know that area well. Mitzi Shore was a very good client. Didn’t spend evenings in that area, was commuting back to Newps.
Left you an email at your biz, no reply.
One of the weirdest storms I’ve been through, after those hideous fires. Waking up at 330 in the rain thinking t was sunrise, bright pink sky…you could read a book outside….that was the burst gas main. Kinda seemed like end times. Then, duh go wander around looking at the gardens in the middle of it all. Went to sleep, quiet for awhile, then the helicopters started……..we did not know what had happened until we walked over to Coast Village,
We all had had fatigue after the fire evacs. Mudflow warnings were ignored by most, I stayed through the whole period. Weeks of chaos.
Its been happening for eons though. Fires then debris flows.
I stopped cruising around on my bike for awhile as law enforcement was really being serious about looters. I made sure I had my drivers license with me.
My neighborhood is between San Ysidro and Cito creek, looking at it with fresh eyes you can see how the flows have shaped the landscape. Those little creeks have always been wider thatn they look, but the trees and bushes that fill in for 500 years obscure their true dimensions. Those ring nets they put in? Stop some little stuff coming down, but not a debris flow.
It could have been much worse if it was an el nino storm. I saved the radar signature from that storm, it was really aimed right over those burn areas, not north, not much south either.
John McPhee wrote a 2 part piece in the New Yorker 1988. first part is free. Los Angeles Against the Mountains.
https://www.newyorker.com/m…
I thought about you Section8…. I was standing in a creek about 2 miles above you and looking at all the boulders that had not found solid footing from the last slide. Next one will be gnarly and all the construction in the low lying crevasses is insane…. how can they not learn their lessons? Your hood seems immune though anything can happen. My old house on East Valley was taken out clean.
During 2005 El Nino, I used to drink at night listening to the boulders run down the creek toward the meadow. So next level gnarly. Now my drinking spot is gone.
Wow, local!
Quoting John McPhee from the New Yorker in the 1980s.
What’s a dazzling surfisticate like you doing in a rustic website like this?
I know California weather pretty well and have seen all kinds of extremes,.
I was signing up for classes at UCSC in 1983 when the skies went biblical and it rained harder than I’ve seen rain from Byron Bay to Austin. It just rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained some more.
And that rain turned the fetid, defeated San Lorenzo River into the Colorado. The San Lorenzo took out bridges and created the most epic sandbar at Rivermouth the world will ever see.
It lasted until August,and that summer had to be an El Nino summer because Santa Cruz got lashings of southern hemisphere swell.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
So I’ve seen that and many other wonders. I was in Austin once when it was 98 degrees and it started hailing.
But I still can’t believe California could rain hard enough to turn those listless Montecito creeks into neighborhood destroyers.
The damage didn’t look real. Looked like a very expensive movie set.
The people who live in Montecito aren’t stupid.
Rich people tend to be smart.
But it took them by surprise, too.
No one had ever seen that, or expected that.
Best winter in the history of California, hands down double down.
I surfed TOH Topanga and had to connect the Chart House section to get in by the old bar b que house. Sea Lion will never be that good again, ditto Trancas, Encinal, Supertubes, and RIP Kiddy Bowl.
Not local, just a feral serf transplant from Darien Conn. Got a low wage job and a room here after UCSB. 78… Cito reminded me of home…. figured I could grow herbs in the hedges. Locals then were a tight bunch, shit still are. Hippy probably more connections than I do. Of course,sneaking under the 101 through our tunnel tosurf the Meadow is probably not real social. I have public anxiety I guess.
I was driving through your hood in 83, PCH had small boulders and streams to drive around, gotta love a old VW bug to get through that. Yeah, rain…some big waves too, the spit here was good as everywhere else was big and messy.
Cali had wild weather then, the high pressure block was no where to be find. Just spinning lows 17 ft 17 secs. I used to save the LA times satellite pics and glue them onto stuff….Internet? haha….people were just figuring out the buoys. No need really either, there were more waves than not.
Chaparral when it burns too hot, forms a waxy layer, when, combined with ash, create a semi-impermeable layer that just sheds water. All the mountain canyons are basically funnels, so when the rain hits, and cant be absorbed? Just massive volumes try and move through the creeks. Too intense fires burn the roots as well, which can help hold the rocks in place. In hindsight, of course, these incidents are really predictable. In foresight as well!! But who listens to science? haha. and after weeks of evacs, and trying to sneak food (using the sheriffs to ferry goods in) man, people were just tired of the whole thing. Perfect setup.
The flows have the density of concrete, basically liquid stone, so even the largest multi-ton boulders were just floating along, “like beachballs” is the quote. It that stream touched you or anything else, you and it were gone. Heard a few horror stories about that. White shark attack might be easier way to go.
I did a lot of research after that event. Lot of seeing the landscape with a new look.
I imagine the real locals, the Chumash, knew these happen. Maybe not as bad in their time, as they let fire run its course. Forest manangers today really seeing, in the 2020 fires, what their upside down policies have done. Logging not much help either, as the big trees are quite fire resistant.
Hey when you gonna do a screenplay of some of Kem Nunns books? Those seem so ripe for a visual treatment. WSL should make movies, as…well for this feral serf….surf contests…eh, not my thing. We all know already who is on for the day…or not.
Not local, just a feral serf transplant from Darien Conn.
Connecticut? Ain’t nothing there but steers and craft beers.
I just meant it was fairly sophisto to be bringing up those John McPhee stories from the New Yorker way back when.
I’ll say a couple things for Trump: He’s made the New Yorker Great Again. And he’s made Saturday Night Live Great Again.
I met Bill Finnegan at the first Surf Ranch contest and rang him up for a story New Yorker did on Hollister Clothing that was startlingly inaccurate. The New Yorker is known for getting it right but they were WAY off on that one.
Got a low wage job and a room here after UCSB. 78…
It was fun being a surfer in the 1970s, wasn’t it? Bad surfboards, bad wetsuits, bad leashes. We didn’t care.
Cito reminded me of home…. figured I could grow herbs in the hedges. Locals then were a tight bunch, shit still are.
Josh Brolin was a ‘Cito Rat back then.
Now he’s a movie star. He has soft hands.
Don’t know why he didn’t get nominated for No Country For Old Men.
Hippy probably more connections than I do. Of course,sneaking under the 101 through our tunnel tosurf the Meadow is probably not real social. I have public anxiety I guess.
You suffer from P.A.D? Ask your doctor about Cannabis.
I was driving through your hood in 83,
My hood in ’83 was Santa Cruz.
PCH had small boulders and streams to drive around, gotta love a old VW bug to get through that.
My mom always drove VW Bugs.
Mom Would Go. We charged it all the way down Baja and across on the ferry in the 1970s in a blue VW Bug.
Yeah, rain…some big waves too, the spit here was good as everywhere else was big and messy.
Cali had wild weather then,
Please don’t call it ‘Cali.’ Only wannabe rappers and dorks call it “Cali.” Don’t be a dork.
the high pressure block was no where to be find. Just spinning lows 17 ft 17 secs. I used to save the LA times satellite pics and glue them onto stuff….Internet? haha….people were just figuring out the buoys. No need really either, there were more waves than not.
Yeah back then we didn’t know what was coming and went by sound and smell and looking at funky black and white weather charts in the Chronicle.
First day of a swell belonged to the locals, and then word would get out.
These days they can predict a swell just after a leopard seal farts in the Antarctic.
Two weeks notice!!! That’s enough time to get divorced, sell your house, buy a Wavestorm and learn just enough to become a nuisance at Malibu or The Lane.
Or Pipe.
Chaparral when it burns too hot, forms a waxy layer, when, combined with ash, create a semi-impermeable layer that just sheds water. All the mountain canyons are basically funnels, so when the rain hits, and cant be absorbed? Just massive volumes try and move through the creeks.
Yeah I know all that.
Montecito was a Perfect Storm of the waxy surface and a rainy microburst and also a dam failure.
But still….
The damage was scarcely to be credited.
It didn’t look real.
10-ton boulders in people’s front yards.
Range Rovers smashed into go karts.
That had to be Colorado River Plus.
Too intense fires burn the roots as well, which can help hold the rocks in place. In hindsight, of course, these incidents are really predictable. In foresight as well!! But who listens to science? haha. and after weeks of evacs, and trying to sneak food (using the sheriffs to ferry goods in) man, people were just tired of the whole thing. Perfect setup.
You mean people were burned out by the fires and disregarded warnings about floods?
I don’t think even lifer Californians could have anticipated that kind of damage.
Actually the deal at La Conchita was that bad.
An entirely hillside turned into a tsunami of mud.
Welcome to California: Everything’s Okay Until It Isn’t.
The flows have the density of concrete, basically liquid stone, so even the largest multi-ton boulders were just floating along, “like beachballs” is the quote.
And ending up in people’s living rooms and front yards. I sawr it with me own two eyes.
Jut like a I saw people ODing in the streets of San Francisco, two falls ago.
It that stream touched you or anything else, you and it were gone. Heard a few horror stories about that. White shark attack might be easier way to go.
Yep. Seeing the aftermath was believing. Must have been horrible when it was going down. We visited a woman whose house was just barely above the destruction line.
She heard it and said it was terrifying.
I did a lot of research after that event. Lot of seeing the landscape with a new look.
I imagine the real locals, the Chumash, knew these happen. Maybe not as bad in their time, as they let fire run its course.
I once read a historical deal that claimed there were more Chumash living in the Channel Islands then on the mainland
I wondered why then figured the land was probably burning or recovering or landsliding, most of the time.
Forest manangers today really seeing, in the 2020 fires, what their upside down policies have done. Logging not much help either, as the big trees are quite fire resistant.
Well my friend Mike says there are 150 million dead trees on the west coast. Couldn’t those be harvested and burned for electricity?
Hey when you gonna do a screenplay of some of Kem Nunns books?
Well they turned one Kem Nunn story into a TV show called John From Cincinatti but it tanked.
And my screenplays just get stolen and made into bombs that lose tens of millions.
I have an idea right now called Breaking Point I am trying to get to the Eastwoods. It’s about the homeless situation in Santa Cruz.
Those seem so ripe for a visual treatment. WSL should make movies, as…well for this feral serf….surf contests…eh, not my thing. We all know already who is on for the day…or not.
Pro surfing just is not as interesting as it used to be.
Where are the funny, cool characters like Kong and Gerlach and Tom Curren and Shaun and Rabbit and Ian and PT and Mark Richards?
It’s too polished now. Too over-exposed.
As said elsewhere: So glad to be part of it in the 80s and 90s, and so glad I punched my way out of there when the punching was good.
ha..good joke about Darien!! Place had serious coin way back when, off the charts now.
People here after the fires what was called “evactuation fatigue”…just tired of living in hotels, or holed up at home, living on top ramen. Mudflows were predicted, but yeah, debris flows were a different beast.
Radar link https://twitter.com/805weat…
Climate link. (other website I hang out at. It uses Discus platform. Real time reports from people around the state of California)
https://weatherwest.com/arc…
ha..good joke about Darien!!
Wasn’t that Darryl Hannah’s character name in Wall Street? Darien?
Or was that Splash?
I see her around Malibu.
.
She got hitched to Neil Young and then one of their houses burned.
She drives a weird car called an Avanti, I think.
Talked to her once out at Malibu when she was dating S_____ M_____
Asked her about the song she was whistling dressed as a nurse in Kill Bill.
She’s a sweetheart. She surfs. Or used to.
Place had serious coin way back when, off the charts now.
Stock market. That’s how they get that rich.
And real estate and other things.
But the stock market is the fastest way.
People here after the fires what was called “evactuation fatigue”.
Evacuation.
.just tired of living in hotels, or holed up at home, living on top ramen. Mudflows were predicted, but yeah, debris flows were a different beast.
It was an impressive amount of damage. Scarcely to be credited.
Radar link
Up the road from where I lived in France , two gay builders ,owned, ran and played major parts in a cabaret / drag queen show on the weekends and would come and put on a show on closing night of the season at a restaurant where I had worked for a long period of time ,at the beach . Charming men , and ridiculously fun to go clubbing with .
Tesla is still “on the grid” as far as factories go. I do like they are trying but until they stop using plastic, burning coal to charge etc it’s a stretch to say they are green.
You complimented Chas, live with your first opinion.
I gave you subtle shit on the previous point but I like this one!
You truly ebb and flow like the chart of rich people’s feelings my man.
Yeah right.
1) if you give Kelly any credit, which we all should and you seem to Ben, then yes the drop was undoubtedly a diss track on ADS
2) who cares? Rich cunts spend their money on heaps of dumb shit, plastic surgery etc.. doesn’t make it cool
3) the market will decide. And who cares about mismanagement when you can say “official surf tank of the US Olympic team” in sales marketing materials?
4) you described 99.9999% of the viewers of the sled wave. So man.. it’s absolutely shithouse to watch and you admit as much in your point here.
5) that’s a cool name for a comp. I’ll take the meth, you keep the methane.
6) I don’t understand this point’s relevance but I think I’ve made mine.
Keep smiling Ben!
Thank you for that reply. It saved me some trouble. Ben’s been on kind of a KS poster boy, can do no wrong, Mr perfect, rant lately.
Most welcome!
*edit – original Ben comment deleted.. much rather he offered a comeback or defensive posture of some kind.
So you get emails about replies to your comments?
I do, not sure how, but would make something easy.
I just toured a few homes on the top ridge in Monty and it was devastating what is in store then next storm. There are huge rocks ready to roll 3 miles to the ocean and many of the homes are being rebuilt in the same flood plain as last time????
We lost two friends and another friend lost their home. So many stories benny boy. But it’s all set up to happen again, that was my take as I visited properties.
La nina this year, maybe no rain and that just causes different problemos.
yeah, kinda weird around here sometimes. The rains following the debris flow were just light ones, creeks handled it, some small rocks moving around. Nets put up, gardens replanted. Back to normal. I get the heeby jeebies reading the upcoming weather reports though. Climate extremes lead to bone dry periods, then hyper localized atmospheric river flows. So you never really know what will happen. I spend a lot of time chatting with guys who pay for the modeling data. (over at Weather West)
Wave track pretty messed up too.
Yeah rebuilding along the bad zone again, with basements for the mud now. Well, mabye it calms down for 100 years, till the next one
No fire worry at “least”…although the flats could still go. yeah, rake the leaves is the plan down here.. but for the forests though? ha
not quite, but I have sub contracted talent on occasion.
Not to the defense contractors…. “wars” are profitable looting exercises.
I’ve heard that they are near, but my business was murdered by Covid and I’m not visiting homes, most of my clients have left town too. Montecito is often get a way homes and I only see them when they are entertaining which they are not.
If I did clean pools, I would still be working.
And getting laid.
Probly with the Mexican maid tho
You are intuitive amigo…
Many of the home owners are single divorcee’s who prefer discreet pleasure, but there are always the live in maids.
I work often in advance of the owners flying in, so it’s good to become close with the women who run the joint.
How did you work that out?
I’ve been planning this canada trip for 30 years… 4 active canes means the whole joint is cookin through this week.
Grifting operations.