Pickleball Turf War
Jason Koebler has a big-time job these days as the founder of the news site 404 Media. But in his heart, he is a reporter. He digs into stories. He describes himself in his bio as someone who loves “Freedom of information Act requests … and surfing.” Recently, he’s been FOIA-ing on a new topic: pickleball.
At this point, you might have a few questions. First off: Why pickleball? The answer to that has to do with this growing sport’s aggressive lobbyists, who are tying local governments up in knots. But when he started his research, honestly, Koebler didn’t know too much about that. He just knew what was happening down the block.
“I live near a paddle tennis court, which is basically tennis but on a small court. And at these courts, I saw this big sign that said, ‘Pickleball players, go home’ or ‘Pickleball was not welcome here.’ And I was like, What is going on? What happened was that pickleball players were sneaking onto the courts when they were open and playing pickleball when this was supposed to be a court for paddle tennis only,” Koebler said. “When I saw that sign, I was like, I bet these people are complaining to the government about the pickleball people.”
It turns out that these people were complaining. A lot. And not just in Koebler’s neighborhood. The city of Dallas told him that it had more than 100,000 emails mentioning the word pickleball. They couldn’t even begin to forward them all. The city of Fort Lauderdale said it would need $10,000 to produce all of its pickleball discourse.
These emails are about who can take up public space, and whether pickleballers are taking up too much of it. And if you’re thinking, Who cares?, Koebler says that the fight over who can take up space in this country—it’s kind of at the heart of the whole American project.
“I think that in exploring the absurd, we can learn more about how government works and you can take larger lessons from it.”
On a recent episode of What Next, we spoke with Jason Koebler about what his overflowing inbox can tell you about how the government’s working right now—and who it’s working for. Oh! And pickleball. We’ve got a lot to say about pickleball. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mary Harris: On the off chance you do not yet know what pickleball is, Koebler says, Just imagine a Diet Coke version of tennis. It’s slower and smaller. Uses paddles instead of rackets.
Jason Koebler: It’s honestly like a mix between ping-pong and tennis but played on a small court. » …