The Pickleball of Water Sports
Most people have never even seen surfing but the pickleball of water sports is changing that.
I’ve spent countless hours researching surf parks. Where they are, when they will open, how much they cost to build or to surf, key players, etc. There’s so much data, but it has been scattered. Until yesterday! We packaged the data into a single resource, surfparkdb.com. It’s now freely available to all you surf nerds and surf curious.
Three years ago, surfing wasn’t even in my awareness. I grew up in an area where no one surfed or at least they never talked about it. All I knew about Southern California was Hollywood and delicious food, and the times I vacationed on the beaches of the Caribbean, there was no surfing to be seen.
This is common. Surfing isn’t something that a lot of people around the world have access to. Surf parks change that.
Today, you can grow up in the landlocked center of Texas and learn to surf. When the ocean goes flat in Rockaway, New York, you can surf at the mall from morning to night. In the Netherlands, you can do airs surfing in a literal canal, and you can surf on a family sheep farm behind ski trails in New Zealand.
There are 49 surf parks open around the world today. People who don’t live near the beach are learning to surf, bringing diversity to the sport in a way that has never been seen before.
Remember how pickleball made it possible for pretty much everyone to enjoy tennis? That’s what surf parks do for surfing. No matter your age, body type, or experience level, you can surf. Unlike with pickleball, people don’t have to fight over space to surf at parks. The wave pool machines that power surf parks generate great waves non-stop, so there are plenty to go around.
My own journey with surfing didn’t start at a surf park. I’ve been fortunate enough to live within an hour of surfable ocean waves and I immediately got addicted to the sport. But I’d still love to have a surf park in my town because I know it will bring the joy of surfing to so many more people who have never tried it before.
On Surf Park DB you can easily check if there is a surf park near you. And if there isn’t yet there probably will be soon. Around 50 more surf parks will be built in the next 5 years, more than doubling the amount we have today.