What’s Trending: A Pretty Sick Munich Wave

0:00And it's time now for what's trending brought to you by locally owned dynamic electric with quality workmanship and outstanding service for all your home and commercial electrical needs. Find them online at dynamic-electric.com Victor Lewis here on the studio. Good morning. How are you? Pretty good. I'm excited to talk about today's trends. I'm a little bit late to this party, but I did some follow-up research to make sure that there wasn't any movement. I'm a little surprised with some of the developments. Today, I would like to talk about the city of Munich, specifically I'd like to talk about the icebox canal because in 1972, a bunch of concrete blocks were placed in the icebox canal in Munich to try and control the current. It's a very strong current. It's a fast flowing river and they were having the usual municipal problems that take place when you have a fast flowing deep river and people were getting into that river and not getting out. That's just a thing that was happening. I'm a little bit surprised that this is happening in a canal.

1:01You would think that they would adjust the flow in something that they're already digging anyway so that it wouldn't be super fast. You could have designed it, but I guess you also probably in 1972 were not thinking things out to that level, even though we clearly knew about Bernoulli's principle by then. It is what it is. Anyway, they put these blocks in and these blocks resulted in creating what would eventually become an extremely famous stationery wave. So how wave pools work is just got big jets of water that flow over blocks that didn't give you a stationery wave, that's what they made here completely by accident. Swimming is not allowed in this river, but that is a rule slash law that is not enforced in any meaningful capacity, of course, and this has become an extremely popular and like signature feature of Munich is that you can go surfing in Munich and by all accounts, it seems like it was a pretty sick wave. It was like a four foot tall standing wave. You could get real surfing done in Munich. People would spend afternoons of picnic baskets on the side, watching people surf.

2:04You go there. It sounds really cool. I assume they got rid of it. Well, every year Munich drains the river to clean it, to clean out the canal. That's right. And when they refilled it, the wave failed to reform. Oh no. And this is at the tail end of 2025, there's been like downstream waves because you know, this is the really popular one and it's really crowded. So other waves have been sought out or in some cases created by the surfing community just sort of like, oh, no, sure would be a shame if some blocks found their way down here. That's been a thing that's taken place. This has never been explicitly encouraged by the municipal government, but it has been allowed to happen. The wave did not reappear. Surfers complained and authorities were kind of just like, hmm, that wave was never supposed to be in the first place. So I don't think we're going to do anything to help you about this. And I found two conflicting reports. I found one report saying that authorities were attempting to figure out how to restore

3:05the first wave, but in other follow up reporting, that's like wonderful vision of surfers and officials working together to recreate the wave falls apart. The city authorities seem to be actively thwarting attempts to recreate the wave. They look like they're done with it at this point. I feel like it depends on who you're talking to here. Yeah. I'm sure there's which officials because like you're talking about city officials. That's what I'm saying. Which is like hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, like it's a big city. So there's going to be some who are in favor and some who are there's got to be some pro surfer city council members, like that has to exist. There's got to be like a next versus chalp battle going on. Exactly. And I don't know who's on which side here in this, in this metaphor, but as folks that interface a good bit with the whole government, I find it especially fascinating that in Munich right now, you probably have pro and anti surfing factions and the landlocked in Munich. Yeah. And that's just a wonderful vision.

4:06I hope we get some follow up on this story. I mean, it happened at the tail end of 2025 summer is common. I think this prime surfing time, yeah, we're going to have to get this on a control Munich. I thought Munich was a much less cool city than in the parently is. They got surfing right in the back. Right. They got surfing right there. Also, side points, they created this when 72. They must have done it for the Olympics, right? They must have like done it to even think about that. They must have done it to like make the river the canal like safer for the many, many people who were going to be showing up for the big like also tracks will be kind of a rush job. And we just put some blocks in and then made this wave and then people loved it. And we just decided that was a fun knockoff and fascinating shout out Munich, I guess.