I have a vision of surfing’s future. It isn’t bleak or dystopian (well, this vision sure is), but it sure is different from what surfing is now. We’re sitting on a precipice as we speak—wave pools are here, surfing is in the Olympics, and before we know it, surfing’s tree will have sprouted a whole bunch of new branches. It’s happening already—foils, stand up, big wave surfing, and wave pools are all becoming prevalent in general surfing society.
Take snowboarding, for example. It used to be simply snowboarding. Now it’s big mountain, park, slopestyle, pipe, and everything in between. Soon surfing will be running down that same river, with different facets of a similar sport. We’ll have a Shaun White; a surfer who takes it to the next level at the risk of losing the respect of the core community. “The whole snowboarding community doesn’t really like Shaun,” Brandon Davis, an American snowboarder, told Time in 2014. “He’s apart from everyone. He’s the lone wolf.” We’ll have a Terje Haakonsen, an insanely talented person who is outspoken about his disdain for contests. We’ll have a whole new crop of kids doing things in wave pools far from the ocean that no one thought possible. Sure, it’ll be surfing… but it won’t be surfing.
And of course, as things progress, so will those strange little offshoots of surfing, like jet-powered boards. There’s already been a few—you remember Wavejet’s failed advertising inundation of the surf industry a few years back, right? But as with every venture, some must fail in order for others to succeed.
Not everyone can be lucky enough to live near the ocean, and like they say in business, “find a need and fill it.” If there’s a market for something, there will be a product. Above, you see a video for one such product. Onean makes electric surfboards. Interestingly, they’re based in the Basque Country, where the first real wave pool was born. Onean’s got two boards, and neither of them seems to be made for surfing waves. Instead, they’re made for flat water cruising. And whether you hate it or love it, I’d bet you we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming decades. Here’s the best thing about it, though: like wave pools, if you hate it, you always have the option of not doing it. Live and let live!
