By now, surely you've heard of...
"Pickelball."
"-Pickleball. " "-Pickleball!"
Right?
The so-called...
"...fastest growing sport in the country."
Pickleball's popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic...
bringing it out of retirement communities
and into the mainstream.
Oh, my God.
It is a phenomenon.
I discovered pickleball and a light went off in my head.
Where would you be without pickleball right now?
I honestly don't know.
Now there are fancy new Instagram ads
selling trendy paddles and balls...
a professional league backed by Kevin Durant and LeBron James...
and a Facebook group for pretty much every town in America.
Everybody loves Pickleball.
Well, maybe not everybody.
"Why don't you take that pickleball and shove it up your ******!"
"A catastrophe..."
"The lantern flies of the sports world."
So how did pickleball take over?
And where can it go from here?
It's not hard to understand pickleball's appeal.
It's sort of like a giant adult playground game
that's easy to pick up and find people to play with.
Whenever we come out and it's actually nice weather
the entire ground is covered with pickleball courts.
I live literally like right next door here
and I just saw scores of people on the weekends and...
I kinda just jumped in.
The rules are similar to tennis
but played on a much smaller court.
Which means less running and quicker games.
And pickleball can be played anywhere.
The nets are advertised as being portable and easy to assemble
and there's plenty of resources online
that show you how to carve up a tennis court
into one, two, or up to four pickleball courts.
In some places, the impromptu nature of the sport
has caused some friction
and so-called turf wars for public space.
Like at the Peninsula Tennis Club in San Diego
where a group of pickleball players staged a dramatic take over
demanding its tennis courts be converted for pickleball.
In Santa Rosa, public courts dual-lined for pickleball and tennis
were vandalized with motor oil.
To send the message that the new craze
was no longer welcome there.
But it's not just the fight for court space
that has some people fed up with pickleball.
This is a sound level meter.
It measures sound pressure levels in decibels.
A decibel is one unit of loudness
and it's measured logarithmically rather than linearly.
Basically, that means that
steadily increasing sound level by 10 decibels doesn't look like this...
but more like this
where each increase of 10 decibels sounds twice as loud.
So a motorcycle at 100 decibels
sounds twice as loud as a hairdryer
at 90 decibels.
Which is twice as loud as a vacuum cleaner at 80 decibels.
This is Sam.
He produces Vox Atlas and he's going to help me
with a little experiment.
Okay, go ahead.
Bouncing a tennis ball on a tennis racket
averaged around 70 decibels...
which is comparable to the noise level of a busy office.
When we measured the sound of a pickleball against a paddle...
it clocked in around 80 decibels.
That's right where sound becomes loud enough to be irritating.
Now, obviously, this isn't the most scientific experiment
and of course, tennis matches make sound.
But the point is pickleball's equipment:
rigid paddles against hollow plastic balls...
makes a lot of noise.
"I wake up, I hear it."
"I walk down the steps, I hear it. "
[imitating clanking]
"As loud as a rock concert."
Mounting noise complaints have forced cities and towns
from Victoria, British Columbia to Newport, Rhode Island
to come up with temporary solutions
like limited hours for pickleball
and in some places, banning the sport altogether.
Both sides of this conflict agree.
Pickleball has to go somewhere.
Expanding or creating dedicated space for the sport
would help alleviate the strain on shared spaces
and help isolate the noise issue pickleball brings.
A wave of developers have already cashed in on the demand
opening state of the art
private pickleball clubs across the country.
So far, underfunded parks and rec departments
have been moving slower
but progress is being made.
Cincinnati recently opened this free-to-the-public pickleball facility
a collaboration in between community fundraisers...
the Cincinnati Parks Department...
and the philanthropic Cincinnati Parks Foundation
converted 8 dilapidated tennis courts
into 18 pickleball courts, plus 3 dual-line courts
for pickleball and tennis.
What was formerly a mostly ignored space
drew over 13,000 pickleball players in 2022.
There's plans like this in the works all over the country.
This one was shared with me by the Peninsula Tennis Club.
That's where that angry pickleball takeover took place in April 2022.
Their proposal would convert this unused space
away from the tennis courts for pickleball courts.
These projects need funding, but where pickleball goes
other facilities benefit.
Efforts to invest in public pickleball courts
are resulting in new volleyball courts...
basketball courts and skateparks too.
But until more courts become available...
and maybe even after they do
pickleball will likely maintain its DIY spirit.
There are pickleball courts around the city
but we could just come in here and play
like not really plan anything in advance and just find a spot..
Being able to just like grab a little bag here and come out
and text my friends and have people show up and meet new people
is very appealing I think.