
Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave - acdanger
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/17/kelly-slaters-shock-wave
======
dwd
Good 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.

~~~
gthtjtkt
Yup, 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.

~~~
bonestamp2
> AND they can change the shape with the push of a button

The Surf Ranch can do some of this... they apparently have over 50 wave types.
I'm not sure if it's as versatile, but it's more than just one type of wave.
The wired article from September did a better job of talking about the tech
(albeit, not much):

[https://www.wired.com/story/kelly-slaters-artificial-surf-
po...](https://www.wired.com/story/kelly-slaters-artificial-surf-pool-is-
really-making-waves/)

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subroutine
Best 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"

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rhodysurf
William 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
As 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)

~~~
GreeniFi
Going 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
... one of the reasons I moved back :) glad u liked it!

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jonknee
In 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)

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laurentl
Great 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.

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laxatives
Just 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.

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monk_e_boy
I 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.

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Gatsky
This is an almost perfect article, and I don’t really care about surfing at
all. Brilliant writing.

~~~
bayonetz
Currently 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.

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Animats
Here'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
It 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.

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dajonker
Makes you think why you would go to work every day and be so serious all the
time. This looks like serious fun.

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kevinwang
The writing is so good

