Welcome to City Beach London!

Our Meetup group is organised around social volleyball activities across London and related to the ongoing project working to open the City Beach London facility. We're a mix of volleyball enthusiasts and casual players looking to have fun and grow as a community in anticipation of City Beach London.

Our goal with City Beach London is to create a unique indoor beach facility, catering to beach sports and leisure activities and events. Beyond contributing to much needed sport infrastructure in London, City Beach London also aims to be a community hub for fun, healthy, and positive social experiences, from hosting club tournaments and offering warm-up facilities for the 2012 Olympics to engaging in community school sports activities to promote healthy living. 

For more information, or to get involved with the project beyond our Meetup events, join us on Facebook (search for and join "City Beach London") and check out our website at www.citybeachlondon.com.

Oh... You're still reading....  Well here's a bit more information about this group and me:

I spent my first three years in the UK in Reading working for Microsoft and found a great social club there named Spikeopaths.  Since moving to London, I've working on a dream entrepreneurial project called City Beach London. It's much like a business plan we wrote about 15 years ago back home in Wisconsin (US) and not that different than a different business that 11 others and I opened a couple years later and ran for 8 years before selling it to our largest customer. The idea of the business is to build an indoor beach complete with Palm trees, beach chairs, a bright sunny atmosphere, and tons of sand and volleyball. Possibly as many as 20 courts! Our favourite location is on the West side of London near the BBC, Westfield Mall, and White City, and we're working hard to get it open before this winter, or before the 2012 London Olympics next summer at the very latest.

We've been promoting volleyball events and clubs we love in order to reach people who might "sign" our virtual petition. By becoming a member of our facebook page (www.facebook.com/CityBeachLondon) or this meetup list (www.meetup.com/CityBeachLondon), you are casting your vote of agreement in one or more of our premises:
- I feel that Britain needs a world class volleyball centre
- I feel that London needs an indoor beach (for other sand related sports or activities)
- I would go to an indoor beach in London at least once or twice if there was one
- I would like to make an investment or donation to help City Beach London or City Beach Charities to help accomplish their missions.

Most people I've met recently agree with at least one of these so I'm excited to share what we're working on with all of you. There is no club behind this. No one is trying to recruit members of your club away to come and join something that competes with it. After we open our venue, the same will be true. We value clubs and want to help them accomplish their mission. We know they will continue to grow as more courts become available in England and we want to help them in any way we can with that growth. We need to be close to as many clubs as we can to best understand their needs as we move forward so that we satisfy as many of these as we can. If you agree with at least one of those statements, please "Like" us in FaceBook or join us in meetup. We tried to make the process of voting as easy as possible - that's really all you need to do to help us out. Well - that, and maybe tell your friends who might agree too.

By doing this, we are hoping to measure the pulse of social volleyball in England - and to help a bit to build it up in the process. To that end, we're promoting some volleyball in the park on Saturdays, and will be handing out informational postcards at volleyball events this summer. We're not yet sure if we will obtain the facility we're trying so hard to get but this year is our best chance with the Olympics coming and so much attention on the lack of volleyball infrastructure available in England.

Kevin Q.

By the way, did you know that beach volleyball is by far the most watched sport of Summer Olympic games. It captures over one third of the total TV viewership and it's next closest rival, Track & Field, is just a little more than half that size.