Break out the checkbook!
The surf dystopia grows more gloriously dystopian every single day. Ocean filled to the very brim with adult learners bobbing on Costco surfboards. A rusty plunger straight off of Fury Road pump, pump, pumping waves in an inland corner of Australia. A Surf Ranch, fronted by Kelly Slater, in Lemoore.
And now, unanimously approved by Riverside County’s Board of Supervisors, a members-only luxury surf resort has just been approved to be built on the shores of the Salton Sea. A true post-apocalyptic tableau.
Supervisor Manuel Perez said, “I want to thank the community advocates and all involved in this project for getting us all to this point. This is unprecedented. This has never been done before in the County of Riverside. With our concerns for affordable housing needs, clean water, lack of infrastructure and basic amenities, we have to establish partnerships and relationships to advance improvements.”
And nothing says “affordable housing needs” like a members-only luxury surf resort.
For those unaware, the Salton Sea was formed as a glorious accident when an irrigation ditch bringing water from the Colorado river overflowed and made California’s largest lake. Initially seen as a miracle, prospectors rushed to build gorgeous homes on the shore but then it turned gross, toxic, stinky etc. because it was not a miracle but rather an abomination and now it is a sulfurized circle of hell where dreams go to die.
Or surf.
Very exciting.
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Let me know when you’re awake….
It smells so bad I couldn’t tell my car was breaking down when I visited once
Grew up in old money LA. Went to college in PV. Pedro side was my haunt although did enjoy mid week mid morning Lunada. GF lived above Avalanche too… some Indies, but I liked the points on the south side better.
I lived on 38th and surfed the right off 40th before the sand filled it and ruined it….
Ritchie lived on 39th and was young, we would battle it out every day and I wanted to fuck him up, but he was like 15.
Was proud of him though making the tour when all the Newpy “stars” failed.
Lance is a very trippy man and very candid. You should see his boards. I’ve been toying with this concept of board neutrality and Lance tuned in quickly, our conversation got animated and he was scribbling my board order as I kept telling him I wasn’t buying.
Only way to shut him up was mentioning Ritchie. If I was to have a board, I wanted that double wing swallow Ritchie rode. Lance got real quiet and showed my Allen Lopez’s twin fins and I said no.
Nice man, good energy… great fun to stop in. You should see the bottoms he’s shaping and the rails are 3 inches thick!!!! Super wides too, 22″.
Gonna go back and chat again. Asked to interview over email to avoid the chaos, but his wife would have to relay the questions because Lance doesn’t do the computer!!!!
I had a gig in Palm Desert…. the Grand Hyatt where the tennis tournaments were held. The corporate women wanted all this stuff and so many interactive things going on in the ballroom, it was a fucking mess.
The year before, same deal with BMW. Too much for the Ritz ballroom, so I hung the cars from the ceiling and it created so much empty space in the room.
Thinking to myself, how can I apply that here. The “theme” was space junk…. something odd for a medical supply convention.
They had a video that they wanted to play on loop from all sides of the room and I had to clean this up, it was driving me mad.
Came across a place on my first site visit in Cathedral City…. between the resort and Palm Springs. Dude had hundreds of Tv’s…. the old kind and all this other junk… mufflers, used heating conduit, you name it. I rented all of it for nothing and his crew loaded a rented flat bed.
We pulled up at the ballroom loading entrance late at night. No way I wanted anyone interfering with the install and questioning my madness. I was either going to hit a grand slam homer or be thrown out by the clients.
Changed the room layout so that we had a central bar…. huge, maybe 60′ in diameter and I doubled the stage in the middle, draped linen and began installing my sculpture of shit. Every kind of metal known, bumpers, camper tops, you name it and I wove TV’s through the entire sculpture carefully wiring each one (my lighting guy did that) so that we could play the corporate video from dozens and dozens of TV’s all askew in the giant pile (sculpture) reaching the ballroom ceiling, maybe 18′.
The bar shelves partially hid the mechanics of the sculpture and was 360 degrees to serve 400 some odd guests.
Switched the vendor booths to the outside perimeter and cocktail tables punctuated the open floor plan.
I made sculptures out of PVC pipe that were easily 10′ high…. painted them with stucco patch and sprayed to look like space detrimus grey and black. At each pipe ending, I used Orchids tied in bunches, volume that breathed organic life into this crazy pile of stuff. Felt like a mad scientist.
The reveal was treacherous because the event planner was so fucking scared, but clients were thrilled. So much so, the clients stopped talking to the planner which made me very happy. Planners are fucked, btw.
We had 10′ diameter balloons flanking the bar and my lighting guy lit them up with ever changing psychedelic melting colors, same as the flowers on the bar corner sculptures…. just colors melting and we even filmed the balloons melting and got the IT guy to add that video to the reel playing on all the tv’s.
I played grass and clay courts while the party raged. First time on clay.
He was a thief, virtually untrustable and I watched him stab a guy at a party on a tennis court, then ask me for a ride home as the cops arrived with a paramedic.
Can’t wait to see how much of a loss they take on this. Country clubs across the Coachella Valley are lowering their membership fees and creating deals because their bleeding out members. And now this “resort” wants to open up in the least desirable place in the valley, and try to charge membership fees that are orders of magntifude above the most prestigious clubs in the valley? They Thunderbird and Tamarisk, just build a wavepool to compete.
I was touring Palm Valley with my uncle showing me all the real estate for sale.
“Unc, inventory is your enemy, you should sell now before values drop”
He thought I was crazy. His club was never full and I played both courses past 10AM with no one around, played 2 balls.
So he turned 85 and couldn’t swing anymore so he built a home in Camarillo…. huge spread (??) and I asked how he did with the home in Palm Desert…. “Took a bath, you were right, the HOA can’t pay for the golf course’s anymore and the whole resort looks like it may belly up.”
Thunderbird won’t, but the others are as I type. Morningside values are dropping like a rock from 2 milllion down to low 1’s. HOA”s are outrageous, but those will come down too or the places are empty.
Plus, my generation will not afford part time homes as easily as the early boomers have. People are struggling with their main residences. Palm Springs or Coachella Valley is set up to cycle in the newly retired and cycle out the dead and it’s not going to happen.
Real waves are 4 hours south…. although the cabo san quintin is good on hurricane swell.
No way we didn’t cross paths although I was pretty evil. You seem nice. Yup, interesting times.
Had a long chat with Lance and was going to do an interview with him… still might. You would be amazed to see his showroom….. a walk back in time.
Rough fucking year man.
I know when you’re working you are looking for accoutrement…. the desert has so many cliches, but if you juxtapose mediums, it’s actually a great canvas. Your description was perfect and it is as if I was there playing with you.
My desert stuff is more Pal Springs, Vegas and Phoenix. The one problem with my program is I have to be near decadent wealth. Didn’t used to be that way, but times have changed and access to wealth has given me a tiny sliver of insulation. Hence my interest in gallery work which I’m very discouraged with. Pitching the deal to an old friend in fashion…. he’ll nail it, but so said all the others. A surf photog told me to dumb it down and go more graphic design…. been friends forever and he used to shoot my commercial shit, but he doesn’t get it.
Seriously ready to give it up and find a place to jump.
Of course, the surf kicked in and I forgot about life long enough to remember it’s all a game I can no longer apparently win. Fuckfuckfuck.
Nice to see you back in the saddle. You’ll meet the oddest ducks east of the coast.
r.i.p Dave Eggers
what are you doing awake at 2AM?
amazing no one here even knows Eggers spent last decade of his life working as a sober bartender at salton sea bar no more surfing
short memories TOW.
How did he die?
I heard about Eggers being in Salton Sea when asking around about what ever happened to him. I thought he had died, but then heard he was out there in the desert. Sad story how he burned so hot and fast and then went off the rails.
A bit older am I ….was more 85 to 90s ….. Occy , Greeny , Dog along with a crew of about 40 not to mention the elegant elder statesman Jim Banks …. and that was just at our beach at Cronulla .
Thanks LGR …. I love a bit of old surf industry story , especially from different perspectives and other lands .
Surfing needs all types of characters …. the more the merrier . Please correct me if I am wrong but he was played off as the polar opposite to John Gothard , the black knight of Echo Beach … never was sure if it was a real rivalry or media beat up ?
John was a college student and represented the same aesthetic as the rest of the state. Newps was onto something new, fresh and it wasn’t prevalent yet.
I was riding clear, logoless twins without leash plugs and black suits. I was living in heavily guarded point breaks and was driving in at that time… if JP had even driven over the bridge into Pedro he would literally been hospitalized.
Will say this, they saw a niche and pushed it through.
So there was real clash between the new wave of Echo beach and the black rubber establishment ? Or everyone stayed in their zone ?
Not in Newport, but they couldn’t travel out of orange county at that time. IT changed rapidly though.
We should all give up surfing and kill ourselves at the BG white party, where before we die we can talk about how good surfing was pre surf dystopia.
Also, when is the promised BG white party? White has so many meanings! Very exciting.
I lost the formula …. bugger .
Hahaha, this is too funny, “private” waves for the ‘privileged’ few. The beginning of the end?
Is surfing now gonna be the new golf?
Wait—maybe it’s not too funny.
I’m thinking land must have been pretty cheap out that way.. They probably picked it up at a steal price, ‘before’ they made their wave pool announcement.
I had to Google “The Salton Sea”, not being from your part of the world – I wish I hadn’t!