The death of a surf park

For the last two years, we lived in hot anticipation of the world’s greatest wavepool. It was to be housed in Florida, and it was to include a changeable bottom that could, at the twist of a dial, switch from a fun beachbreak into a dramatic ledge. Now? It ain’t gonna happen, buddy… Photo and story by Jimmy Wilson

Mark my words. There will not be a legitimate wavepool made for a long fucking time. You can cry yourself to sleep at night or whatever the fuck eases your pain, but if you think you’re gonna be getting any chlorine pits anytime soon with the luxury of a few man-made pumps of water… I’ll just go ahead and shatter your dreams right now like that bitch mom did to the precious leg lamp in A Christmas Story (youtube: A Christmas Story Broken Lamp).
That’s right, folks. Our once realistic hope that we wouldn’t have to pay attention to any more bullshit Surfline.com forecasts, or worry about how to fit a surf session into our busy schedules of trying to make more cash flow and get more pussy. That hope that we could just roll our fat ass on down to the Surf Park and get our rip on, just took a turn south. By south, I mean in the direction of hell, not the glistening-with-pussy-sweat nightclubs of South Beach, Miami.
Who do we have to thank for flattening our dream like a steamroller on asphalt? None other than Ron Jon Surf Shop. The most bullshit of all bullshit surf shops in the universe. Ron Jon from its early origination has only been a cold sore on the dickhead of surf society. It breeds the image that surfers are a group of dumbass Cocoa Beach, Florida (Hometown of Jimmy Slade), bros who spend their days on the beach shredding the knee-high sandbar peelers, applying tanning oil, and working on their six-packs (abs not beers) while hoping for some beach-blanket whore to approach them and suck their cock. If you have ever seen one of their many shitty billboards driving along Interstate 95 in the Sunshine State of Florida, you would have no choice to agree with what I’m saying here. I mean, at least put a smokin’ hot girl in a bikini back up on your billboards like the days of old. I sure as fuck don’t want to see some death sentence photo of a look-a-like dude from 90210 in elastic-waist floral boardies throwing a shaka at me when I’m trying to concentrate on staying awake driving down the most boring road you’ve ever seen. I’ll admit I’m a little off subject here, but those Ron Jon assholes just pissed me off one too many times. They are the brains and bank account behind what we all once hoped to be the solution to our less than average surf conditions on the south-east coast of the United States, otherwise know as Ron Jon Surf Parks. It looked like the real deal from the start. A solid financial foundation, a hip new website with digital previews that made it look like Pipeline was about to come to Orlando. The hype was real, unfortunately nothing else was.
When I got the call that I would be the lucky sonofabitch invited to come shoot photos of the first surf in this new “revolutionary wave pool” with CJ Hobgood and the brothers Lopez, I almost shat myself! I thought I was about to shoot an important moment in surfing history. Then there were some problems and the session got delayed until further notice. Instead, it ended up being Aaron Cormican, Alec Parker and Evan Geiselman as the first surfers to try the pool out. The moment we pulled up to the contraption disappointment set in. I just knew it wasn’t going to work, but I decided to retain a little hope until I watched the first waves pump out. Here’s the play-by-play of what I witnessed… Fifty-kilo super-grom Evan Geiselman struggles to work the knee-high dribbler into the inside section and almost manages to get radical with a pathetic whitewater climb at the end, before dry docking himself on a shitty metal grill.
“How could this happen?” I thought to myself. I know this was only the prototype kiddie pool, but the whole layout was just wack. I came to find out, the dudes who created this thing had no idea how to ride a goddamn surfboard. Creator A was a mad Kiwi scientist who all I heard say was a bitter “It’s not possible” when Creator B would scream at him to crank