Thousands upon thousands served.
Much of the news around wave pools, these days, is relatively depressing. Stories mirroring the Kelly Slater Austin, Texas project wherein a bullish development is stalled indefinitely and/or Surf Snowdonia, the world’s first public tub, closing forever.
Understandable, then, the pure joy pulsing in the artificial surf community, today, after Atlantic Park Surf, in Virginia Beach, Virginia released its numbers after being open for one calendar year.
Some 90,000 folk from all 50 United States and 43 countries getting their paddle on. That’s 246 people per day, 30 people per hour (assuming it is open for eight hours per day, 365 days per year if my math is mathing).
Atlantic Park Surf is, of course, the brainchild of the multi-hyphenate artist-designer-singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams and utilizes Wavegarden Cove technology, for the surf-minded, but also offers over 15 restaurants, a concert venue, shops and other “experiential attractions.
Brittney Albert, development and operations manager for Atlantic Park, declared, “The first year has been really good. I think people are very impressed by the development. It’s kind of a spectacle when you walk in here and you see the architecture that’s so different from anything else that you would see at the Oceanfront. You see The Dome, you see the surf lagoon. I think that people are impressed with the development.”
Would you credit the success to location, location, location? Pharrell’s Midas touch? The fact that Virginia Beach is Jason Borte’s hometown?
More importantly, do you think the boom can be replicated elsewhere?
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
Outback Steakhouse cunt.
Wave pools are the future for what ever mainstream “sport ” surfing types , which i hope is great as it hopefully reduces the mass crowding in the line ups that is going on around the world at the moment , this includes board riding clubs , surf schools , HP coaching , blind and disabled events , women girls go surfing days , short board longboard single fin festivals etc and pro and am contests …shove em all into the pools and good riddence to them.
I think you’re correct about pools but are wrong about the effect on global lineups. These people are going to travel and mob places like Bali and Bocas del Toro more than they already have. I think we’re gonna start seeing expensive hotels try to monopolize access to very good but remote waves so they can charge $1,000 per room.
Listen to you pair of softcocks stroking each other off for doing a bit of digging and garden work. Yous can come and take over on site from me and I will head off to uni and get me masters and retire hahahaha. Only joking boys and love ya both xx
One day of hard work and you’re already sounding like a soft cunt and claiming it. Imagine over 30 years of doing it day in and day out? Ya wouldn’t be prancing around at a tango class on a Friday night then ay dickhead hahahaha
Dude I woke up and saw this on the Perth Subreddit, then it went to OzBargain and I was soooo tempted, but thought it would just be cancelled as a price error. Mate came round today spewing and said he woulda dropped 5K on it
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/972264
COLES GOT FUCKED
Check out some of the loot in the comments
Mate come round to day and is sad too, thinking it would be cancelled….
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Invite Hoyo…ran into him a few weeks ago down here with Jay davies/Bad Manners…..he’s still only drinking VB……..bring back the Hoyo!
Setting grade there ey
That is a great idea
And THEN you can put a XXXX club on the other side too
The name alone will draw in patrons, even though it tastes like horse piss, I doubt they are coming in for the beer….
Must have been draining
I still watch em…
I seen what ya did there brother but that timepiece is going to a meme. Sobbing hard haha
wrong thread, cunt. I literally still enjoy watching old Billabong flicks on my VHS…more so for the soundtracks. It’s all engraved in my brain anyways.
I surfed the wave pool when I was in Melbourne. Place was busy. I did first session in “cruiser mode” with my kid and the others in that group were mostly adult learners but every kind of person that you,d never see at a beach, even an Indian guy floundering around! (Dots not feathers)
It seemed more akine to going to the gym than surfing. Time limit,lockers, restaurants.
Had another session on “tubes” and it was actually surfers but again nearly full.
40 odd waves in 2 hrs for 200 bucks
Way more fun than id imagined
Same
yeah, I did it once, never again.
didn’t dig the whole PE teacher vibe and being crammed into that corner with kooks.
Yeah waiting in the noisy corner next to the mesh and the kooks was a bit weird
but I put it down to all the cbd oil I took just prior ha ha
I will look into This!
Those are beautiful timber poles. Tree species?
Jack was the king is surf films in his heyday. Nothing beats them.
Were you not a proponent of the correct terminology « boon » ?!
Xox
real work!!
No but reminds me of a mates idea for the name of a thrashcore band, ‘quick fuck puppy blood’
this pool saved my sanity, but hurt my wallet $$$.
I live 5 min from the pool, how do I do this? My local pizza pub started getting toña and I was psyched on that
I had no idea you were a water flow technician? In saying that Bog is the perfect name for a plumber