Josh Kerr, Shane Beschen, And The Hobgoods Are Opening A(nother) Wave Pool In Palm Desert

It’s Fourth of July weekend, and what act better demonstrates the Americanized vision of freedom than making your own surf park?

Okay, you’re right—shooting guns in the air while asserting your right to reinstate measles as a global epidemic is probably first, but the wavepool thing is a close second. 

Slater did it first in Lemoore, which was followed by a wealthy and water-loving business owner opening a surf tub in Waco, Texas. Cheyne Magnusson took everything he learned in Waco and applied it to a pool of his own in Palm Springs, which if you’re to believe the Instagrams of CT veterans Josh Kerr, Shane Beschen, and CJ/Damien Hobgood, is about to get a new neighbor and competitor. 

This from @josh_kerr84:

I’m very excited to announce the @dsrtsurf project I’m a part of. This world class surf pool resort will be nestled into the beautiful surroundings of @desertwillowgolfresort in Palm Desert. We have an amazing team that has spent countless hours in the last 2 years to make this dream a reality. We’re getting close to having it across the line and breaking ground! More than anything I’m excited to spend time out here with my family and friends! Yes of course you’re all invited too!

DSRT Surf, a new addition to the Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert, CA, is set to break ground at the end of 2019 and open in 2021.

While this is very exciting news (and we wish our friends Kerrzy, Besch, and both Hobgoods all the best in their venture), we can’t help but notice a trend in the whole wavepool arms race, that being a whole lotta talk and not so much action. 

It seems there are dozens of pools that are “supposed” to be built across the world in 2019, but even in the locations where holes have been dug and pipes have been laid, we’ve seen a lot of unexpected problems arise, like at the Surf Lakes pool in Yeppoon, where a major component of the wave-making apparatus was snapped in half during testing, or at the Wavegarden site in Melbourne, where a projected January 2019 opening has been pushed back to (insert random guess here).

Speaking of Wavegarden, they’ll be providing the tech at DSRT Surf.

If you recall, Wavegarden constructed a small-scale proof of concept pool in Europe, which can provide up to 1,000 quality waves per hour. The full-scale version will feature a larger left and right under the scope of the same machine, meaning that 2,000 waves per hour is technically possible. That is if/when they figure out how to get a large-scale model up and running. 

Bearing all of the above in mind, we hope you won’t mistake our skepticism for negativity. Here at Stab, we love wavepools (have you seen Stab High?) and believe that, within reason, it’s the more the merrier.

We’re just a little frustrated with their general pace of creation.

As great as Waco and Lemoore are, one doesn’t fit our budget and the other is halfway across the nation (east and west coasters) and/or the world (Australians, etc.). So we need more pools in California, Florida, and all over the great Australian nation before we start losing our caca. 

Frankly, it would be best if every wavepool adopted the Waco model of saying absolutely nothing then overdelivering with tantalizing Instagram clips. That way we’d have nothing to cry about if the pool fizzled and everything to gain if they succeeded.

Low expectations, high reward. 

Unfortunately, that’s not the way investing works, so it’s likely we’ll continue to hear about this pool and all the others like it around the world, regardless of whether or not they’re actually going to be built. 

Catiously optimistic,

Stab