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Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave
- jonknee 8y agoIn related news, HBO is releasing a surfing documentary tonight that features Slater. It features people who worked on well received ESPN 30 for 30 docs, so I expect it to be high quality. https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/momentum-generation https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/momentum-generation
- rhodysurf 8y agoWilliam Finnegan is the best surf writer in the world probably and this is the best article on the surf ranch so far. As an ocean engineer it’s a pretty awesome spectacle and a wonder of a system. But it totally glosses over the environmental impact and the hypocrisy of the entire thing. Surfers like Kelly Slater and Steph Gilmore are huge environmental advocates, yet the pool uses and absolutely obscene amount of electricity and water every day (the water usage is worse, using up to 300,000 gallons a day!!!) and everyone is being flown there on private jets. It’s also just localism all over again, except now it’s just straight up money that keep you out of the club instead of a more abstract idea of being a local.
- donjoe 8y agoAs a river surfer surfing in Munich I'd love to see our river wave replicated more often. Rivers float 'for free' anyway. Why not just use its power whenever possible and reasonable? https://youtu.be/fCJyyy97DyA https://youtu.be/fCJyyy97DyA
- lbotos 8y agoThanks for sharing! I do agree that's an awesome idea. I wonder why this isn't more popular. It made me think of flatland skim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UpWbILAIec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UpWbILAIec
- subpixel 8y agoI've been thinking about this as well. I suspect recreating a Munich wave would be harder, perhaps much harder, to do than my imagination suggests. Topography, water volume and speed, to say nothing of access and permits etc. But I want one in my town.
- GreeniFi 8y agoGoing to Munich - and not having heard about the downtown river wave - and then seeing people in wetsuits carrying their boards, dripping along the pavement:what, where, how!!!??? And then finding the wave and watching all the groms - and a couple of silver surfers - for a few glorious hours. And then my girlfriend (now wife) and I cycled up river, left our bikes and clothes and floated back down in our kecks. And then walked back to our bikes and clothes which were still there. Ahhhhh...European summers! And the naked people in the park...hahahahahah. Anywhere in the anglophone world you’d call the police if there were guys getting naked in the park...that is a great place!
- donjoe 8y ago... one of the reasons I moved back :) glad u liked it!
- gamblor956 8y agoIt would be really cool to recreate that at Big Bear or Mammoth.
- rurban 8y agoThere are some river waves in Boise, Jackson Hole and a few minor ones, but the best are still in Canada, besides Munich, Austria, Swiss and France. As river surfer you don't really care for these expensive big machines, they are not sustainable. Like the Tokyo wave in the 80, which only lasted a few years.
- snowwrestler 8y agoRiver waves are just not comparable to ocean waves. The mechanics are different and so is the shape and power. I only know of one river wave that reliably stands up and curls and is big enough to surf, and that's on the corner of a huge hydraulic on the Zambezi River in Africa. River waves also tend to be sensitive to flow, changing pretty dramatically (or even disappearing) with more or less water. There are plenty of river waves that attract surfers, like the Lachine waves near Montreal. But even at their best, they're not like ocean waves.
- sixQuarks 8y agoWhat's up with the crazy dance club right next to that river wave?
- rspeele 8y agoThat's amazing! Isn't the possibility of a head injury on that (stone? concrete?) embankment scary when getting on the board?
- donjoe 8y agoYeah, there is some risk. It's not the concrete on the side though but some rough rocks on the bottom which can be quite nasty... That's why locals refer beginners to the second wave in Munich which is located in Thalkirchen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHYffdBNmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFHYffdBNmI Some of the local surfers actually found a company which is constructing river waves based on simulation: http://riverwaveproject.com/ http://riverwaveproject.com/
- gamblor956 8y agoThe water is recycled...due to the nature of the water in the Central Valley and its intended use, they can't just pump up the water from the ground all the time. The water needs to be treated to remove contaminants, then is constantly recycled to prevent algae growth. The pool does use a ton of water when it gets (re)filled, but that's only a few times a year. Filling the entire pool uses about the same amount of water as the average California golf course uses in one day... It’s also just localism all over again, except now it’s just straight up money that keep you out of the club instead of a more abstract idea of being a local. The Surf Ranch is a high-end/test pool, and they've been pretty open about that. Source: Got to visit the wave pool and talk to the employees during the Surf Ranch Pro in September. EDIT: Follow-up. For point of comparison, while 300,000 gallons sounds like a lot, a "storm" in LA can drop 100 million of gallons of rainwater in 24 hours...LA's catchbasin system absorbed 22 billion gallons of water in the 4 month period between October 2016 and Jan 2017 (https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/01/23/68360/how-much-storm-water-is-la-catching/ https://www.scpr.org/news/2017/01/23/68360/how-much-storm-wa...)
- rhodysurf 8y agoRecycled or not, it does evaporate. Its in a very dry area of the world. > The Surf Ranch is a high-end/test pool, and they've been pretty open about that My point isnt that its not cool, its more that its the anti-thesis of surfing as a whole.
- ecpottinger 8y agoYes, but it does not waste water the way tried to make it sound.
- roymurdock 8y agosurfing culture has changed a lot...kelly slater's participation led to a big part of the change. i watched him give interviews in a recent andy irons documentary touched by god and the man is a pure machine - there's nothing laid back or surfer-like about him at all. you respect him for his complete dedication to the craft and willpower to rise to the top of the surfing world no matter what, not for his carefree, anti-corporate, all-too human personality (personified by andy irons and his tragic relapses in/out of drugs while still competing at top surfing competitions) guaranteed if you go out to your local beach and poll the surfers, 50%+ are well-paid workers in corporate america, otherwise they wouldn't have the means and time to buy all the gear needed and live close enough to the beach to surf as a hobby the wave machine is perfect for practicing, showing off, and competing for a televised audience, which will bring in more sponsors and of course put more money/attention into the sport. the surf you know is mostly dead [1], which isn't necessarily a bad thing, everything changes [1] https://surfisdead.com/ https://surfisdead.com/
- justinator 8y agoBut it totally glosses over the environmental impact and the hypocrisy of the entire thing. Surfers like Kelly Slater and Steph Gilmore are huge environmental advocates, yet the pool uses and absolutely obscene amount of electricity and water every day (the water usage is worse, using up to 300,000 gallons a day!!!) and everyone is being flown there on private jets. I'd say any sport that has a world cup style of competition, where you are constantly flying to different locales isn't very environmentally friendly. But I see this in skiing/snowboarding (and other outdoor sports). What is the angle that these athletes use to show their pro-environment slant? Is it all just talk/greenwashing? Or is it just that they don't feel their personal environmental impact is all that important?
- somberi 8y ago+1 on Finnegan. I enjoyed and recommend his Pulitzer-winning memoir about his surfing obsession - Barbarian Days. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693910-barbarian-days https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693910-barbarian-days
- orasis 8y ago300,000 gallons is nothing depending on location. I had a seasonal pond on my property that was probably 2,000,000 gallons and could refill in a few days during spring runoff.
- dajonker 8y agoMakes you think why you would go to work every day and be so serious all the time. This looks like serious fun.
- monk_e_boy 8y agoI surfed in the UK all my life and loved every minute of it. Then, on a whim, my brother and I went travelling around the world surfing. It after a while it struck us, "Oh, that's how you get good at surfing. Good, consistent waves." We came back a hundred times better at surfing, but it ruined UK waves for us. Waiting six months for a good day wasn't much fun. We turned to kitesurfing. I would love to have one of these wave parks near us, it would be so much fun to play around in.
- dwd 8y agoGood article but I was disappointed about his throwaway comment at the end on the Yeppoon Surf Lakes which is a better example of democratising waves. Five different waves for various levels of surfer skill and generated seconds apart by the single plunger. A bigger wave just needs a bigger plunger. https://www.surf-lakes.com.au/prototype/ https://www.surf-lakes.com.au/prototype/ Disclaimer: I live on the Sunny Coast so possibly biased in wanting to see Occy and his partners make it work.
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- subroutine 8y ago"democratising waves" Ah, don't sweat it little grom, there's still plenty of free non-designer waves to mash out on the nar
- coolaliasbro 8y ago"gnar" FTFY
- subroutine 8y agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shred%20the%20nar%20nar https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shred%20the%... http://southpark.cc.com/clips/412655/hit-that-fresh-nar-nar http://southpark.cc.com/clips/412655/hit-that-fresh-nar-nar
- itronitron 8y agoYeah, the surf lakes design looks simpler and safer as there is no iron plow sweeping under the water. Also the plunger as a steam piston would adapt well to any arid environment.
- gthtjtkt 8y agoYup, Slater's wave is DOA because of this: > He chortled, but he did not stop peering across the water, assessing the waves and the state of the pool during the three minutes that it was left to settle between waves. 1 wave every 3 minutes will never be economically feasible. They're currently charging $10,000 per hour, whereas BSR charges $60 per hour and you get several times as many waves per session. American Wave Machines' system can already pump out a full set of waves every 10 seconds AND they can change the shape with the push of a button. Beginner, intermediate, advanced, left, right, air sections, barrels, they do it all. Slater's wave will never be anything more than a toy for himself and a few of his close friends. Every surfer I know said the surf ranch competition was the most boring thing they ever watched.
- subroutine 8y agoBest exchange from the interview... "I said can you picture some kid who just learns in a wave pool but has this perfect wave at his disposal, and becomes unimaginably skilled, and becomes a world champion because they trained on this incredible wave. And she says yeah, and then they paddle out at the pipeline and drown. And we both laughed"
- kevinwang 8y agoThe writing is so good
- Animats 8y agoHere's the wave machine.[1] It's not complicated, just big and expensive. Surfstream[2] is more practical.[2] It's a surfing treadmill - the wave stays in one place. Uses a modest sized pool. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaNMQW74v8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaNMQW74v8E [2] http://americanwavemachines.com/technology/surfstream http://americanwavemachines.com/technology/surfstream
- drpancake 8y agoIt is pretty complicated. The article states that it took 9 years of R&D to get it to work. SurfStream is nothing like real surfing.
- Gatsky 8y agoThis is an almost perfect article, and I don’t really care about surfing at all. Brilliant writing.
- bayonetz 8y agoCurrently reading David Foster Wallace's collection of essays book titled "Consider the Lobster". I get a similar feelings about the topics of the essays because of his great, quirky-for-journalistic-essay style in them.
- laxatives 8y agoJust for some context, the author wrote an autobiography called Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life that won a pulitzer prize and is a bible for a lot of surfers. Probably just about every (American) surfer with a college degree has read that book.
- laurentl 8y agoGreat article, even though I don't really care about surfing. One thing that struck me is how he describes the physical attraction of the wave, the need for it. After spending every surf session in your entire life waiting for a good wave, yearning for it, scrutinizing each swell to see if this is finally the right one, to have this perfect wave available whenever you want... It must be like handing the keys of the prescription drugs cabinet to an opioid addict. I wonder if a good parallel for the wave machine is the advent of climbing walls in the 80s. I would say, 40 years on, that indoor climbing walls have indubitably been a Good Thing for climbing in general. Yet I'm pretty sure they sparked the same debates about the nature of the sport, its democratization and professionalization, etc. when they made their first appearance.