Dave Taylor / Waco Surf

Dave Taylor is the owner of Waco Surf, the 500-acre surf park that brought wave culture to the middle of Texas.

We sit down for a wide-ranging conversation about building something from scratch, the culture of surfing, and what it means to bring a coastal lifestyle to the heart of the Lone Star State.

A Southern California native who spent years in entertainment and the restaurant industry, Taylor stumbled into wave pool ownership almost by accident. A three-day visit to Waco Surf in 2019 — while he was weeks away from retiring to Mexico with his pregnant wife — convinced him he couldn't walk away. What started as a beat-up water park with a rough reputation has become a surf destination drawing everyone from professional surfers to first-timers who've never seen the ocean.

We get into the real costs and regulatory hurdles behind building a surf park, why a Texas zoning loophole called the ETJ made it possible when California couldn't, and how Waco Surf carved out its identity as the "people's pool" in contrast to Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch. Taylor also gets philosophical about whether a perfect wave on demand carries the same meaning as one you earned in the ocean — and what it looks like to build a genuine surf culture somewhere that's never had one.

A laid-back Californian bet everything on Waco, Texas. It paid off.

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