WaterShapes World Blog
I ran into an interesting reaction to my last blog — the one about diving boards and slides — that forced me to meditate on my approach to this series of articles about elements of aquatic environments that I like and/or dislike. “Must everything,” I was asked, “be about aesthetics? You yourself say that diving boards and slides are a blast, but then you
My feelings about diving boards and slides have changed through the years. When I was a kid, there was no poolside sight more welcoming than either one of those accessories. The clowning that took place on and around diving boards was, for starters, unmatched in hilarity, and there was nothing quite so satisfying as
I know that I promised to start a string of blogs on my likes and dislikes in watershape design, but the news from the Genesis 3 Design Group about Skip Phillips and Brian Van Bower parting ways with David Tisherman must jump to the head of the line. I have watched these three gentlemen at work, separately and together, for
I’ve spent 50 of my years living in Southern California – an exhilarating half-century in which I’ve spent a lot of time, man and boy, in the presence of watershapes of various forms and sizes. The experiences I’ve had have filled me with opinions about the nature of these bodies of water and their accoutrements, so
I’ve always been a Christmas junkie. I grew up with two brothers and three sisters (I was fifth in line), and with so many people involved, the activity level in our household started building with Thanksgiving and didn’t really calm down until sometime after January 1. One of my fondest memories is of the first year in which
There’s nothing like a good breeze to turn swimming pools and other watershapes into magnets for debris – especially if there are still plenty of leaves on the trees. We had gusting winds of record strength here in Southern California the other day – enough, in fact, to make the national news. When I walked out into my backyard the next day, the skimmer basket was full and the pool cleaner had
As you might imagine given our plans for AquaticSpacesNetwork (see my last blog entry, “Charting a New Course,” for details), I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reaching out to consumers. Along the way, it has occurred to me that good information is almost always universally useful — that is, information that helps build
Almost from the day I decided to suspend publication of the printed version of WaterShapes, I had a vision of what was coming next. Reaching all the way back to my earliest days with Pool & Spa News, I recall impassioned conversations about the pool industry’s perceived need to reach out to consumers. Although studies were done, committees formed and advertising campaigns plotted and executed, there was never any
I’ve had a swimming pool and spa in my backyard since 1989. Through 22 years of ownership, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in the pool – especially back in the days when my three daughters were small and we all enjoyed being waterlogged when
Early in 2001, we at WaterShapes were looking for a way to break out of the pack and make a distinctive name for our then-new publication. And of course, we wanted to do it in a way that would attract maximum attention for boldness, brashness and sheer chutzpah. It didn’t take long for us to settle on
