Round Wall

Lovelock Nevada Skatepark

2011-11-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

Driving back to CA we stopped into the micro town of Lovelock Nevada for some gas and food. Right at the exit there was this crazy little park.

Weird. Definitely the product of non-skater design.

Interesting thing, this town is in the middle of nowhere with a total population of just over 2K and yet they built a skatepark. Well done Lovelock.

Here's the main attraction. This really weird and slippery bowl. Yeah, thats coping on the waterfall. I'm all for different shit but this was kinda awful. It was also painted enough times to get really slick. Add a little desert dust and it's hipper hell.

I'm not positive but I think this was a prefab park. The transitions were kinda kinky but rideable.

When I got there a community worker and two teenage girls were cleaning up the park. It was spotless. She said that the local kids had hacked into the lights so they would stay on all night. I guess it gets really hot in Lovelock during the day.

So if you're ever heading across the Nevada desert you know the deal with Lovelock NV.

Falls Twp Skatepark with special guest Chuck Treece

2011-08-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

This was a quick hit on the way back from FDR. Falls Twp skatepark sits inside a very nice larger park system. We pulled up and found only a few other people there. As you can see the ramp area was totally empty.

Here's the bowl. It's one of the pre-fab jobs, but it's installation was very well done. Most of the other prefab concrete parks I've ridden are on the crappy side. This one was nicely done. Nice views too.

And what makes any park better? All time Jersey skate legend and super nice guy Chuck Treece. Chuck has been in it since I was a kid. I remember walking down the driveway during Groholski's contest and seeing him do a 360 rock. I instantly chickened out from entering the contest.

If you've never heard of McRad hit up iTunes and give it a listen. When we were kids in NJ my buddy Weeps won a McRad record from a WFMU telethon. We played it into the ground because it was that bitch'n. Thanks for the inspiration and influence Chuck.

FDR

2011-06-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to hit this park the last couple times I was in Jersey but it never worked out till this trip. I was all worked up to ride the peanut. It was not what I expected. The whole place is rough as shit. The concrete work is good but it's nothing like the west coast DIY parks. I hit Washington St last year and it was like a Vans Park by comparison.

The whole place has little gems like this gutter next to the peanut.

This is from the bottom of the Toilet Bowl looking up. This thing is tall, kinky and rough. Everything I've seen in pix takes on a whole new dimension after you see the place for real.

If anyone knows the deal with Bob post a comment. This is the third time I've seen this little ditty.

Here's a spine in an area that was so rough (even with 60mms) that I didn't go near it.

And more gnar.

Future home of more crete?

Three bowls back to back.

Look how insanely rough that is! It looks like someone went at it with a pick axe.

Here's the mini. Fun and fast with a metal surface.

That's the Toilet and the Peanut on the left.

So that's a ten foot+ drop off the backside of that coping. East coast is just super heavy.

Here's more fun. This is from the back of the peanut.

I've been in CA for 13 years and it has obviously made me soft. I know we rode some rough stuff when I was a kid but this place gave me pause. It was all I could do to get a few grinds and a rock-n-roll in the peanut. I'de really like to hit it again with someone who has it wired.

Here's the big ramp. Also covered with steel and probably worth a trip to just ride it. Looked fun I guess.

Special thanks to Matt and Dave for making the trip and finding the place. Always more fun to skate with your boys.

A final thanks goes out to all the guys who made this place happen. For more on FDR check out the Thrasher video 'Under the bridge'.

First try at making a board press = fail.

2011-05-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

The first skateboard deck mold I made was in my grandparents basement in the fall of 87. It sucked. It was made out of plywood and a ton of wood clamps. I bought a roll of maple veneer and pressed three decks with TightBond glue. I went through two in a week and JT Murphy got the third. They were weak and heavy due to too much glue and not enough pressure. Fast forward 24 years and here we go.

There's a ton of information of the web now so I had a more educated approach. Here's my nice salvaged lumber mold case. The bolts are for mounting the concrete forms into a press.

Here it is with the uncut blank caulked into the box. Still looking pretty good.

And now it goes south. I poured the quick set into the mold and was a tiny bit shy. Bought three bags and could have used a bit of a fourth.

The result? Big ass cracks. I failed to keep it wet for the first half hour and I got some gnarly surface cracks. When I busted open the mold box It wasn't a total loss, but I'm going to have to fill some divots with laminating resin or something. My concrete work was not awesome. If it doesn't come together with the resin then I'll have to make a new one. There's a gallon of sk8 bond and 10 decks worth of veneer getting dusty in my garage. To be continued...

The 'lost' Powell video.

2011-04-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

In 1988 I was working in a shop in Bernardsville NJ when a Powell box arrived with two copies of Axe-Rated. This was weird for two reasons. 1- We didn't know a new Powell video was coming. 2- When a new video did come out we received them by the case. This was different.

I call it lost because it wasn't for sale to the public and it's never been re-released by Powell. To be honest there's another even more 'lost' Powell video called Skating in the 80s. I was given a copy of it by Donnie Griffin during a Kona trip in the mid eighties. But that's for another post.

I've been looking for a copy of this for over a year on ebay with only a few coming up. One VHS copy sold for over a hundred bucks last summer. One reason for the high price would be that every copy had a cover signed by Stacey and George.

The video isn't that good. It's more of an oddity than a full blown skate flick. Ms. Kathryn (as seen above) mostly does a kitchy sales schtick for Powell products interspersed with skate related vignettes. The best pieces are a behind the scenes of the building of the Chin ramp and some vert skating. Worth watching the video just for that alone. There's a bunch street skating and early mini ramp footage that feels pretty dated. At the end of the video is some very early footage of Cab and Hawk. Super fun.

There's a bunch of other stuff including a Johnny Rad sequence. I'll leave some surprises for you. Go check em out before youtube blocks/pulls em for copyright issues.

Axe-Rated Part 1

Axe-Rated Part 2

Buena Vista Pool revisited

2011-04-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

I made a trip to Buena a few days after the rain finally stopped. I expected to find a flooded out mudded mess. Instead I walked up to a totally dried out and newly painted pool.

This was my sons first trip there. He loved it. My wife didn't have a bad time either.

He was all over the pool.

It's always amazing to ride this place. It looks super easy and welcoming. It's gnar.

The keepers of Buena are serious about. You can tell by the lack of tags that people respect this place.

Take a good look at this shot. What's missing? No drain. All water is drained by hand.

No graffiti. No garbage. No joke.

I'm super lucky to live close.

Royal Hawaiian

2011-03-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not telling anyone where this is so don't ask. All I will say is that it's at an abandoned motel with 'Hawaiian' in the title.
It'll be drained and going this weekend.

Newest addition to the family.

2011-01-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

Mom rocked the Christmas present this year.

Chris Miller in NJ 1985

2010-11-30T20:31:00.000-08:00

In 85 Chris Miller came out to do a shop signing at Millburn Sports Center. On his way out to NJ he got stuck in Houston for 12 hours and finally came into Newark at 3 in the morning. My mom got tasked with picking him up from the airport. He crashed out in my room after a brief 'hi'.
The next morning he rallied and did a great signing followed up with a ripping session in my back yard. Genuine good guy and incredible skater.
Enjoy the pics...

Sorry, no reason to the order of the pictures. I'm still scanning and cleaning up bags of pics. I think there are two more pictures in the BS air sequence. If they show up I'll put it together. So if you were there for this session (and I know a few of you followers were) please put your recollections in the comments.

Here's one. A pile of us were sitting in my living room watching the Upland contest video where Chris takes that crazy slam. We all laughed, but Chris quietly said 'that really hurt.' Epic.

Flip Demo at the Santa Cruz Boardroom

2010-11-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

November 18th the Flip team came to the Santa Cruz board room. I braved a ridiculous ear infection to watch the demo. All the Flip guys were super nice and accessible. When they weren't signing or demoing they walked around the crowd and hung with the kids. Good guys.
I shot some awful iPhone video of the demo.
Highlights of the night:
1. I won a David Gonzales P2 in the raffle.
2. Met up with Lance and talked video projects.
3. Watching the Flip guys demo. David and Luan were insane.
4. $1 beer tent.

Great stuff. Big thanks to the guys at the Santa Cruz Boardroom for throwing a first rate demo.

Morgan Hill Skatepark

2010-11-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

Do your homework or pay the price. I can hear my mom's voice echo in my head.
I've been wanting to hit the Morgan Hill Skatepark for a while but it's about 35 minutes away so I've been putting it off. Well last Thursday I made the trek without checking the parks hours online. What resulted is over an hour of driving and these photos shot through the bars of the fence. Doh.

The street area looks pretty fun.

But this big old bowl thing is what I went for. And it looks really fun. The whole place looks to be really well maintained.

Yeah, looks really fun. So todays lesson is check the hours online before making the trip. I'll be back soon for the real deal.
On a side note if I lived and paid taxes in Morgan Hill and could only skate when the kids weren't in school I might be sorta pissed.

Marina Skatepark

2010-10-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing about it for awhile. Last week a couple of guys at Cunningham said that Marina's pool was worth making a trip. They described it as almost abandoned. I thought they meant the whole park but I guess they were referring to how the pool is off to the side and unused. Go figure.

This is what you see when you go in the gates. It's a nice size street area with lots of good obstacles. All the concrete work is well done. The steel ledges look pretty fun. Notice what you don't see? A pool. When I walked in for the first minute I thought I was at the wrong park. (Yeah, there are so many that it could happen) If you look way back in the picture you can see what look like concrete highway barriers. And behind them is...

This beast. Sweet huh. The rest of the park looks really well used, but this pool is like brand new.

Check out this coping. Barely touched. Not a broken or chipped block in the place. Also none of it looks like it's been truck or rail beaten.

This picture tells the tale. This pool has a nice 'in the wild' feel. Not quite as much as the Travel Lodge pool but different in a good way. You can see that the 5 foot shallow end goes to vert. Not a super crazy drop but tighter than most park built pools. It also has those super fun square corners to pump through.

Adding to that 'real' pool feel is the super beefy coping lip. Well over an inch all around. The entire depth of my thumb nail is before the coping goes round. A ton of what Dave Lackland used to call 'ka'.

This warms my heart. The skatepark is right outside a very nice teen center. Right out front just inside the gate is a board rack and pile of gear. It's all just hanging out unlocked. Just makes me remember that people really are basically good. This made my day.

This is looking down the wall in the shallow end. Vert. Really fun and damn fast. I skated alone for about 45 minutes then took a nice hipper in the shallow trying a 50/50 in the corner. You know it's a real hit when the nausea sets in. Nothing a couple fish tacos and a Modelo Negro couldn't cure.

Marina get's a thumbs up. Hit it if you get the chance.

Snakes shoe laces

2010-10-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not big on product endorsement but this time I can't help it. I got the tip off a month ago about these skate proof laces that are GUARANTEED to outlast your shoes. One of the guys I regularly skate Cunningham with saw the spaghetti mess holding my shoes on and recommended that I try some Snake laces.

Well they've been in my shoes for over a dozen concrete vert sessions and they are like f-n steel! For whatever reason I destroy laces when knee sliding. (and I spend a lot of time knee sliding) I get maybe two or three vert sessions at most before I need to replace the laces. I've ridden the Snakes for weeks and they haven't even frayed. Nothing.

These things are some type of industrial nylon weaves that's dipped in urethane. They come in 1/8 and 7/64 inch thicknesses. I'm riding the 1/8 and they fit in my Vans without an issue. Initially they didn't like to stay tied but after a few sessions They were great. Check em out here.

Just so we're all straight here I paid my ten bucks for these laces. This is not some lame product shill. I am impressed and thoroughly believe in these things. Try em out for your self.

JT Murphy 85

2010-09-30T22:27:00.000-07:00

The most positive influence on me as a kid was JT Murphy. He pushed me in good directions and showed me anything was possible. If you skated in NJ in the 80s you had to know him. He was everywhere. He took me all over and introduced me to everyone in the scene. I just recently uncovered these pics. This was at the Hillcrest Ramp.

Check out the nails holding down the pool coping. Funny.

JT could tear it up on any skate medium. Street, vert or freestyle he killed em all.
You are sorely missed my man.

Great Oaks Skatepark

2010-09-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

This week we've got Great Oaks Skatepark. Pretty cool looking from a distance. It's got a Logan's Run feel. Funny, it looks like it's running down hill a bit. Yeah, that's because it is. And it makes the park difficult.

You can really see it from here. It's weird going up hill doing a 50/50. Weird but you can get over it.

Here's the real issue. The park seems to have been built by someone who doesn't skate. Check out these seams. They're all over the park and they're huge. That nice thing in the center of the shot is way big enough to eat a wheel. I took about 8 pictures of different seems with major issues. Yuck.

Here's an interesting bit. Behind all of the steel pipe coping is a 6" piece of flat steel. I rather like it. It slides well and is super fast for grinds and what not.

If you take a good look at this picture you can see huge chunks of paint that have flaked off. Apparently the local maintenance folks just spray paint the hell out of the park whenever the graffiti get's out of hand. It doesn't do anything good for the riding surface. Slippery and lots of big old chunked out spaces. I never really got excited about riding this place. The few other guys there seem to have the same opinion.

So let's end things on a positive note. Check out these benches! Totally Logan's Run. They rule and add to the fact that this park makes me like about to go for Carousel. Wink and a nod.

Phil Shao Skatepark Redwood City

2010-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Phil Shao was a a long time skater who was slated to be the next editor of Thrasher mag replacing Phelps. (A good thing in my opinion) He was killed by a drunk driver. Another case of what could have been.
So to memorialize him his home town of Redwood City built this skatepark in his honor.

And what a park it is...

I've started using the PS photomerge so get ready for a lot more panorama shots. They give a proper sense of what the park really looks like.

The centerpiece of this park is a big bowl. It's a lot deeper and steeper than most of the non vert bowls in the area. It's about six feet deep and super smooth. The hips are really well placed for extra pumps all over the place. There's a spine right there are on the right side that's pretty hairy. The coping is well worked and slippery. Fifty fifty's for years.

The channel is pretty fun. It's mellow enough that you can grind right into it. (I saw a ten year old kid do it, not me) You can see that spine from here too. I did a willy-nilly rock and roll on it. Rails were definitely overkill here.

You can see the deep section of the bowl on the left. I wish it had pool coping but what ever. That's just me being a complainer.

That's about two and a half feet of vert on top of an 8 foot transition. Oh it's real.

The far end of the park has this mini volcano. It's really buttered up by the local kids and super slippery. No idea what they do with it.

Here's a little 3 foot deep micro bowl at the other end of the park. Its fun but sorta wonky. It just didn't feel right. The transitions were off somehow. I'm sure if you rode it a bunch you could get it really wired.

I have to end this one with a little inspirational commentary. Every time I find a new park (new to me) I get this feeling like it can't be real. There just can't be this much incredible terrain just sitting around waiting to be ridden. It blows my mind. Then I talk to the local park builders and they say there are more parks scheduled for construction right now than currently exist.

Sleep tight and dream of concrete wonders coming our way.

Jason Oliva Art Show in NYC!

2010-08-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

If you know of Jason or his art then you know how cool this is going to be. I have first hand knowledge of a few of the surprises that await gallery goers and they are stunning.

So go check out some really cool art and say hi to a great guy. You'll be glad you did.

You can glimpse some of Jason's art at TheHouseOfSteam.

Stonegate Skatepark

2010-08-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

...and we're back!

It's been a summer and in celebration of labor day we're visiting Stonegate skatepark. It's a little public park right behind Stonegate Elementary in the valley.

It's a little gem of a park with some street stuff wedged in the middle of a mini half pipe.

The half pipe is fun and you can crank off the island in the middle for extra speed. The whole park is covered with graffiti which is cool but makes all the surfaces sketchy.

On the far side of the park is the bowl. It's just as fun as looks. Great transitions and super smooth pipe coping that the local guys buttered the shit out of. Check out the kids on the upper left. Fire drill. What a bummer having to sit outside in neat rows and watch people skate a bowl.

Some of the local kids were there hanging out. The guy on the far left was trying to lean how to drop in. He sacked up and tried it 4 times before he made it across the flat. You can see how heavily tagged the bowl is. Smooth but very inconsistent when it comes to traction. I kept it real simple with a bunch or grinds and walked away.

Here's a shot of the eye of the bowl. Check out the death fixture. I did three lines before I even noticed it with all the graffiti and filth. That drain is about 10" in diameter so that hole can easily eat a wheel and send you head first into the wall.

Well that's it. Another fun park in the valley.

I know I haven't been posting much over the summer but I've got a bunch of write ups just waiting in the wings including a real classic. I was at Lake Cunningham a few weeks ago and was talking to the park super who informed me that San Jose has no less than 6 more parks planned.

I love California.

Board Rescue

2010-07-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

Board Rescue is an organization that helps underprivileged kids through skateboarding. They provide organizations that help kids with skate gear. As an organization they target youth at risk, 'fringe' kids and help them find positive outlets through skating. Good stuff.
Here's a bunch of decks painted by pretty heavy artists such as Cab, Keith Meek and Jim Phillips. They're all up for auction and the proceeds go to Boards Rescue. So check it out. You can find the auctions on ebay if you're inclined to buy.

Sorry about the image quality. Phone pics and I was rushed.

Tamarindo Skatepark Costa Rica

2010-07-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

I just finished up a surf trip to Costa Rica. Right across the street from the break we surfed the most (Tamarindo River Mouth) was Costa's only skate park. It rained every day because, well, it's the rainy season. The top shot is Scott and I trying to clear the drain for the local kids. They wanted no part of going in the water which leads me to believe that this thing was skatepark / public urinal. Who knows. We got the leaves out but it still wouldn't drain.

The whole deal is a snakerun that empties into a bowl. One side of the snakerun has metal pipe coping and the bowl has pool coping. Looks really fun. The local kids were stoked that we took an interest in checking the park out.

Road Trip Part 4 -Washington St San Diego

2010-07-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

In the DIY skatepark Hall of Fame Burnside is probably the all-time number one, but Washington street is a real close second.

Here's a full view of the park made from a bunch of pictures stitched together with an app called DoubleTake that I was too cheap to buy. It's located in a sketchy area under an overpass. It's totally fenced in with super rad steel fences that were custom made. (Think american chopper style metal work)

The day I went they were in the middle of the 'Shitter' jam. It was a punk rock, BBQ, skate rock, weed smoking fun fest. I didn't get to skate the main park because the contest/jam was in full swing and it wouldn't have been cool. It was also a really fun family vibe. There were moms and kids and a big old BBQ scene out front.

Aside from the main park area there are two 'pools' on the far side.

The top photo is the classic pool. Check out the left side of the pic and you can see where it blends into the bridge column. Rad. The bottom pool thing is steep and wacky. On the left side is a roll in/ledge that looked sorta nuts. The classic pool is the only thing I rode. I didn't see a helmet or pad on anyone there so I left mine in the car to keep my kook factor as low as possible. The pool was nice but weird. Nothing was level or symmetrical but I guess that shouldn't matter.

Here are three shots of the main area. Check out the channel-rolling. I saw guys hucking meaty airs over it. One guy did a big stale-fish and hung. Wacked his head pretty good. Shook it off and chugged a PBR to everyones cheers. Hooray for concussions! You can see that the coping is a bit rough. Didn't seem to slow anyone down.

Coping that's built to be hammered. A lot of the lips around the park looked to be poured in place. Nice technique.

While you're checking out these pictures remember that this was an empty overpass that a bunch of skaters decided to make into a skatepark. It's awe inspiring to walk around it and appreciate the scope of what's been accomplished. No funding. No work crews. Just guys who wanted a good place to skate they way they wanted skate. Makes me wonder what I'm doing with my time.

Yeah, that's a couple of car rims with some jagged steel welded to em. This place ain't for sissys.

There are more and more of these parks popping up around the country. I've seen pics of ones in places from California Mountain tops to Maine underpasses.

If there's one by you I suggest you pitch in, even if it's just showing up with a few bags of ready mix. It feels good to be part of the solution. DIY is the future.

Road Trip Part 3 -Vans Skatepark Orange County

2010-06-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Lurking in this mall...

Behind this retail store front...

Hides this ridiculously good skatepark.

Here's a good shot of the half pipe. Looks super fun and well built thanks to Team Pain construction. Never went near it because if you're me the only reason to go to the Vans Skatepark is to ride the Combi-Pool.

Here's the right hand round bowl. The very one that Jeff Grosso board slid 28 blocks in. That's not feet, that's coping blocks at 2 feet each. Check it out here. It's unreal.

Here's the square side of the pool. Super fun and surprisingly friendly transitions. The recently re-done surface is absolutely the finest thing I have ever ridded. Period. It's silky smooth and just not so much as a drop of concrete out of place. Grosso and Lance Mountain were the men behind the redesign and sweet baby Jesus did they get it right. It's so fast that when going through the double bump from one bowl to the other my wheels would chirp.

So what could be better than having two hours to skate the pool completely alone? Well let me tell you what. Skating it with just one other person...

And that person is Lance Mountain.

I got to the park and WALKED right across the street course and dropped into the pool. I got in three lines when Lance showed up. And then he and I skated, alone, in the best pool ever built for two entire hours. He was filming some stuff for a video. I didn't take many pictures because I was selfish and way more into skating than shooting. Sorry. This was a once in a lifetime thing and I wasn't going to waste a second.

Lance is a super nice guy and was into skating with someone else (me).

This coping is incredible. It's super smooth and really hard. Makes a funny barking noise when you hit it. You can also see that the transitions are not as gnarly as you might expect. You can pump out more speed in these square corners that you can even imagine. Crazy speed.

So it was just like this for two hours. I have to give props to my wife Liz without whom there would be no photo documentation of any of this. Kurt Hayashi was there filming Lance's lines. Kurt's the dude who did Lance's sequence in the Extremely Sorry video. If you haven't seen it you're missing out. The best back yard pool skating ever filmed. Ever. And it's all done by a 45 year old. Inspiring to say the least.

Cameron was really bummed out when we discovered that the minimum age for riding the park is 6. He had just gotten new pads. Heartbreaking.

Here's one of Lance's lines shot by my very patient wife. There's some great footage of the redux of the pool this spring with Lance and Grosso. Go find it, it's riveting if you love pools.

In closing the combi pool is the finest thing I've ever skated. I'm embarrassed to say that I spent the rest of the week trying to figure a way to live closer to it. It's magic. When I finally get the Padulo brothers out here I'm going to vote that we just skate here. It's really that good.

One final note- I made a frontside rock in the corner of the square pool and Lance clapped for me.

BEST DAY EVER.

Road Trip Part 2 -Santa Barbara

2010-06-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Santa Barbara skatepark sits just off the beach right by State Street. It's a fun looking park in a beautiful spot. The concrete work looks good and it was thoughtfully designed. Check out the mini grinder bowly thing.

It's really a street park with a few transitions but nothing over 5 feet. I think they did a good job in creating something that the maximum amount of skaters can use simultaneously.

Check out the far side of this picture. Skate moms hanging out drinking coffee watching their kids. Not that it needs to be said but, skate moms are way hotter than soccer moms.

I couldn't say if the park's any good or not because I couldn't skate it. It was closed for 'Skate Camp.' I watched for a few minutes and it was pretty weird. The kids were all herded together and the 'counselors' would talk about a trick then demo it. I guess it's pretty cool. I would have swam through a lake of broken glass to go to skate camp when I was a kid.
Some things are definitely getting better.

Road Trip Part 1 -Los Osos

2010-06-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

When we decided to do a 10 day camping road trip down the coast to Mexico I immediately started to check out skateparks. Los Osos is a tiny town in Morro Bay that looked like it had a fun set up and was really off the grid. It was designed by the Wormhoudts so it has some pedigree.
The first things that I noticed was that the place is super fenced in and you have to pay to skate. ($2) It's run by the parks dept. and staffed by a sorta creepy guy who didn't seem to like skating or skaters. To his credit the place was impeccably maintained. When I arrived he was finishing up sweeping the entire place. I skated it alone for about 90 minutes with just the parks guy sitting at the gate watching.

Here's an overview of the street course/main area. The top shot is to the left of the bottom shot. It's pretty fun and very well done concrete work. Super smooth. The wall layout is a little wonky but you could probably figure out some good lines. On the right you can see the creepy parks guy's umbrella and hang out spot.

Here's a close up from behind the channel. It's fun and narrow so it's cake to huck over. It's about 2 feet wide and just touches vert. The real issue is generating enough speed to really do it any justice.

Every park has to have it's weird thing and this bowl was it. The picture doesn't really show it but the deep end is over vert. Took a few rides in it and it was just a little too off for me. Kept having 'whoa' moments during the simplest of lines. Some things are better left alone.

This figure eight bowl was my second favorite thing in the park. You can jam the corners and generate enough speed that your wheels are barking with each corner entry and exit. Good times. Scott's Valley has a single square bowl that's sorta like this but not as big. This one is a honey. Love getting that extra pump as you go from the shallow to the deep end and back.

Here it is. This is what you go to Los Osos for. This kidney pool is flawless. Best I've ever ridden and just beautiful to stare at. Lot's of vert (2 feet+ in the deep end) and a shallow end that's got enough tranny to drop in and crank off of. Perfect pool coping all around that's barely seen any abuse. Totally cherry.

Here's a shot from the deep end. Magnificent. Double double heaven. A death box would have been sorta cool but nothing about this pool is on a backyard scale so it would probably be out of place. Don't let the pictures fool ya, this thing is serious. Easily 11 feet deep. My favorite part? That yummy hip on the right side of the bottom pic. Butter. Wish I could have ridden this thing all day long. When we left town the next day we drove past the park. It was dead empty. Shame. This place deserves a thriving scene.

This spot has no name.

2010-06-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

*DISCLAIMER* This information is for entertainment value only. Visiting this or any other site on private property can result in you getting in trouble. Proceed at your own risk.

There's a DIY skatepark hidden in the vast farmlands along the coast north of Santa Cruz. Go ahead, try and find it. Dare ya.

I had seen a few pics and a little video of this place. No idea how old it is or who built it. This one I couldn't find on Google maps. After spending the last decade surfing all along this coast I saw a tiny bit of video that showed a beach. That was enough to get me close.

Pretty rad huh? It's an old rain water catch basin. As you can see it's been heavily modified which due to it's semi-remote local is a pretty serious undertaking.

Check this out. It's a bunch of jumpy, grindy concrete. As you see each of these additions remember someone had to drag all this stuff out into a field. If you've ever worked with concrete you know how much water you'd need to get all this done and it all has to be carted in.

The place is pretty smooth considering what it was made from. It's sorta rough but all the excitement of skating something like this that was created for the love of doing it smooths out a lot of kinks and inspires plenty of awe.

There are three of these little mounds They help generate speed in the long wall to wall real estate.

This bar is about 2' high to give you some perspective.

This is bad ass. I hit everything in the place once (with the exception of the 2 foot bar of death) but I kept coming back to this spine. It's actually on a bank and slopes down toward the flat area. Dispite how it looks it boardslides like butter and grinds like a champ. I wish more parks had something like it.

Here's a bottom view of the place. It's pretty expansive.

I'm gonna leave you with my favorite shot. Look at this pile of tools and materials. These guys are dedicated. See that stack of pool coping? Wonder what it's going to turn into? My guess is something really fun and original.
This place is so off the grid that these guys just leave all their stuff right there under tarps. Those are 80lb bags of ready mix. No easy feat getting them there. I hope that maybe at some point I'll get to meet these guys and be able to help in the building of what ever they do next. Initially I used the GPS coordinates for the title of this post but thought better of it. If you really want it I've given you about as much info as I had. It only took about an hour of ground searching (and a friendly cop) to find it.
This post is dedicated to the DIY people who don't wait for a park to be built for them. Rock on.

Frederick St. 'Skatepark'?

2010-05-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

Not sure how to call this one. Zach Wormhoudt mentioned that there were the remains of an old skatepark at the end of Frederick St. here in Santa Cruz. I guess you could call it a skatepark, sorta.

My first reaction was nostalgia for Reading PA. I think that reaction was primarily based on the the whole place being asphalt like Reading (with the exception of the Kink Sink)

So the intro is a slight downhill path with a bunch of carriage bumps. The slope is really gentle so you're not gonna be flying down it. There is almost no side to side transition.

Here are a few shots of the bowl. It's a gentle bank on the right hand side with nothing to use as a set up. As you can see by the water hazard this park doesn't get much use.

Here's the lip of the bank. Looks mildly fun. The surface is pretty beat. There isn't a any kind of coping which probably dates this thing to the 70's. Nobody seems to really know anything about the place. To be sure, if it was in Jersey when we were growing up it would have been a prized spot.

I'm guessing this is the last skatepark in Santa Cruz, but I've said that before so who knows.

Got any relics in your area? Let me know. I love ancient terrain.

Back to the roots

2010-05-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a little something I've been working on for few months.

My wife thought it would be cool if I built a ramp. So I headed to the Home Depot with an empty credit card and big dreams. I priced it all out but something didn't feel right. It was just too easy.

This is the Santa Cruz dump. More precisely the wood reclamation pile at the Santa Cruz dump. A crazy pile of scrap lumber than can be picked for the price of your signature on a release form. Genius. How many ramp transitions can you find in the second picture?

It took about a month of weekly trips to get all the lumber for the frame including 3/4 plywood for the trannies. One of them was an old shelving unit complete with shelf peg holes. I bet someones rack stereo system lived on it for decades.

You'll notice that a bunch of the wood looks new. There were 2X4s and 2X6s that looked like someone had bought em at the lumber yard and taken them directly to the dump. Yay for me.

Here's the frame fully studded out. Not purchasing a single board felt good on a bunch of levels. If Jersey had wood reclamation when we were kids there would have been some big ass ramps built in the woods of Warren and Watchung.

Absolutely one of the best moments ever. Check out his hand on the top of the drill. Totally gets it. Nothing could be better than passing along the DIY attitude that we had as kids. (and for you ramp builders out there -how about how straight that lip is)

If you're one of them smart types who can learn from other people's mistakes here are some of my recent ones.

I had some serious size limitations due to our yard so to maximize on space I went with 5'10" transitions. They're too tight. I wouldn't consider building anything with less that 8' radius cut to whatever hight.

In the picture above you'll see that on the left I have 50 cent drywall screw bits and large threaded screws. They worked fantastic. Almost no screw heads snapping off.

The $10 Dewalt adjustable bit was awful. Never worked well. Also the thin threaded screws snapped way more. Invest in good screws and cheap drywall bits for maximum success.

I plan on finishing over Memorial day weekend. More to come. And in case I forget to mention it, building ramps is even more fun than you remember. Go do it.

Ladys and Gentlemen the legendary Buena Vista pool.

2010-05-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

This is the place I wanted to do the first blog post on. If you ask around in Santa Cruz everyone claims to have skated it. The problem is that almost nobody knows where it is. I heard the same things over and over. It's on Buena Vista. It's in gang territory. It's always full of meth freaks. It's full of dirt etc etc.

I did two trips to Buena Vista Ave looking for it with no success. Then I went on Google earth and found an image of a pool, filled in with dirt.

I left my house at 6:45 am and headed over to see the filled in legendary pool. I figured at that hour it would have the least amount of inhabitants. I only took my board with me for it's defensive value.

When I got to what I thought was the spot I parked and hiked off on a sketchy trail. I noticed that the trail was almost exclusively covered with the tell tale Vans shoe prints.

When I came over the rise and saw the pool wasn't filled with dirt or junkies I was in awe. It's a site to behold. I got a tiny taste of what Howard Carter must have felt cracking open Tut's tomb. The graffiti was done by Jim Phillips for a contest. It just jumps out at you like seeing something mind blowing in a museum. I especially love how the 'Buena Lives' eye is incorporated into the light hole.

Check out the coping. It's been ridden to death. This place has been a skate spot on and off since the 70s. It's been in every skate mag. It's been in tons of videos. Independent even made an ashtray that's based off of it. This place is legendary. Go online and look it up. You'll find a ton of videos of people killing it. The place looks super rideable in the media.

The truth is that it's really crazy and hard to ride.

As you can see from this picture this place has hairy amounts of vert, and some slight over vert. The transitions are good but shifty. I took a bunch of runs straight down into the deep end and to the left of the light hole. As I got up to the lip the wall just seemed to disappear from under me causing one of those full body extension to crunch up as I got back onto the transition. And that was just doing little kick turn carves. My goal was to do a rock and roll in the deep end. It's gonna be a few trips before I can make that happen.

I guess I got away easy. I slammed my shin into the steps trying to get up over em in the corner of the shallow end. A little swelling and a bit of blood seems like a small price to pay for entry into a piece of history. The day I went was sunny and really nice. The place was still creepy and looking like a great spot to dump a body.

Hope you enjoyed it. It was a serious undertaking to finally get there. If you're ever in SC give me a call and we can hit it. The Buena Vista pool is a big one on the list of stuff to skate at least once in your life. --And it is NOT on Buena Vista ave.

My favorite Saturday night activity, ever.

2010-05-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't a skateboarding thing but check it out. I have a new love in my life. Roller Derby. Let me give it to you in bold strokes: Girls with tattoos, on roller skates, getting aggressive with other girls, on roller skates, in skimpy outfits... and really good beer.

Just listen to the crowd in the video and you'll get a good idea just how fun and entertaining this is.

It's way beyond bad ass. Here's their site. Check out the profiles, Roxy Scarmichael and Candy and two of my favorites.

This all started last year when my wife got me tickets for my birthday. I was instantly smitten. Here are a few really bad shots from Saturday nights event when the Santa Cruz girls whipped the Oakland Outlaws.

I know how bad the pictures are. Sorry. My camera battery was done, but I think you still get the idea.

And just so you know, roller derby isn't fake. It's full on and these girls/women are giving it all they have. It's so bitchin to see girls getting to be so punk and aggressive. I seriously love it and you will too.

So go google your area and find some local derby. All the big metro areas have it and even a lot of smaller towns too. Go to a bout and I promise you'll be happy you did.

Derby kicks ass. and sorry for the lousy formatting in this post.

Palo Alto Skatepark -breaking the 20 minute mark.

2010-05-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling crappy about this review. Not because the park sucked. To the contrary, it's magic. I'm just feeling really guilty that I live and work in the middle of such a ridiculous bounty of skateparks. The title refers to the fact that this is the first park I've reviewed that's more than 20 minutes from my office or house. It's exactly 22 minutes from my office with traffic and it's really, really good.

What you're looking at is one giant interconnected bowl. First section is about 4 feet deep. The middle section is 6 to 8 feet deep. The super deep end is about 9 feet deep. You can see that there's almost no flat in the deep bowl. It's tight enough that you can carve really long high lines all the way around the thing. Genius.

Here are a couple shots of the middle sections of the bowl. I could just live in this thing. I skated it for about an hour and had some good lines going. If I ever get really rich I'm building this exact thing in my yard.

The above shot you can see how the shallow end dumps out into the deep end. With a good pump you can set up a nice grind or r-n-r on the vert extension. Below is the middle bowl. It's laid out so you can double corner pump that bowl section in the middle.

One weird thing about this place is the pipe coping. It's coming apart. I would do a 50/50 at speed and I swear metal was flaking off. You can see the big chunks that were missing. Strangely it still smooth grinding and sliding. It's almost like someone took a pipe and and painted it with metal.

Yeah this place had a street area. Looked ok, but I didn't go near it. Seriously, why would I?

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give this place an 8. (Cunningham is the only 10, although Pacifica is a solid 9)
I had no idea how much stuff was this close to me when I started writing this thing.
Finally in the next week I'm going to finally review the spot that was the reason I started this blog. It's taken this long to get everything in place to hit it.
When you see the review it'll all become clear.
Finally I'm hoping that someone decides to pay me a visit. I would love to devote a day or more to skating a bunch of spots with a friend. I'm betting it's going to be Matt.

Sometimes good things happen

2010-05-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

I recently had an incredible bit of luck that was facilitated by the hard work of life long friend Adam Debicki.
A ton of my old skate stuff which I had written off as lost for ever was retrieved from my ex wife.
When I opened the first box and saw my old skate photo album I very literally teared up. The first page had a giant picture of Weep (Chris Blank) It was like seeing that stuff for the first time.
AHD, you are truly the man.

The boxes held a ton of pictures and interesting items but what totally surprised me was the 6, 1980 full size news print Thrashers including #1 and the issue with DP on the cover.

You'll notice that I have two July issues. If you have any of the large format issues I'm missing I would be psyched for a trade.

There will be at least one future post regarding my completely undeserved good fortune. Adam you are a friend for the ages. I owe you big buddy.

Menlo Park Skatepark

2010-05-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

I love a ghetto skatepark.

When I was a kid there was a park in NJ called 'Off the Wall" in Point Pleasant. It was past Brave New World right before the train tracks. It closed in 78 but wasn't demoed till 80. It looked just like this. I snuck in once to the horror of my mom. It was covered with far inferior graffiti. Anyhow, I grabbed a little broken piece of concrete from the park and it lived on the counter of Millburn Sports Center for years. The park was dozed a month or so later.

Tangent alert.

Menlo Park is a really nice area. The skatepark happens to be sorta off on it's own which makes it a nice place to tag -if you go in for that sorta thing.

As you can see this place is super bowly. No coping at all. Zero.

It looks fantastic. Classic creative Wormhoudt design. They're my favorite local builder, also responsible for such gems as Pacifica and the almighty Lake Cunningham.

The only thing in the park that you could grind is the volcano in the middle. It looks like an incredibly fun obstacle. I've never ridden a volcano.

Look how speedy and pump-able this place is. I bet if you rode it a bunch you could come up with tons of crazy carve lines. Endless possible speed runs.

I thought this was a bit of particularly interesting art. If you look hard you see that the beast has a tail that winds around the rest of the bowl. Rad. All the paint probably makes for some really great slides and berts. Old school.

As you might have figured out by now I didn't get to ride this park. I packed my board, pads and camera. My sneakers were sitting on my coffee table when I got home. I was seriously debating doing some barefoot runs but that probably wouldn't have ended well. You can bet there will be a part 2 for Menlo Rark -where I actually ride the thing.

So here's my question to you. Do you dig surfy old school type parks or are you more into the new tech parks.

Live Oak skatepark (The tiniest park ever)

2010-04-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

I've heard that there was a third skatepark within ten minutes of my house. I looked around but only found sketchy references online and no solid address. So I stopped at Bill's Wheels for some new softer bushing and asked about it. They gave me some vague directions and I hit the road. Truthfully I doubted that there could really be another skatepark that close to my house. But this is Northern California, and skateparks are everywhere.

Crazy huh? That's it. They even made the entry steps skateable to maximize every foot of space.

Check out this little set up. It's super fun. Even a geezer like me can ollie off the bank and grind down the ledge.

Real fun little hip thingy. That kid is about 5 years old so you get an idea on the size. The concrete work at this place is magnificent. Almost too smooth. -Almost. Zero kinks too.

Here's a shot from the far side. You can see how the high side sets it up for launching off the hip. There isn't a single transition in this park with coping. None, and to be honest it's kinda cooler for it. Makes you think of other ways to ride it than the obvious.

Here's a nice shot of the slide bar and benches. Fun and sorta small and easy for the age challenged.
I was thinking about how small this park was when I was leaving and then imagined if it existed in New Jersey in 1985. It would have been considered the best thing in the entire world and 100 kids would have been living in it.
Got a micro park in your area? Write a comment and send some pics. ALSO- feel like doing a guest review of a park not in Northern California? I'm looking to add some geographic diversity to RW.

Salba speaks!

2010-04-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

On my last east coast visit the Padulo brothers commented on the size of my board. I'm riding a Flip Lance Mountain Vato deck at 9" wide. They said I wasn't really living until I started riding something smaller. Take advantage of the new school tech.
So I've been searching around for something new to ride when I checked out Salbaland and saw that Salba was selling his own decks. They're sporting his old Krytonics style graphics and he gets to keep the dough. So I ordered one up. I'll write a review after I've had some time on it.
Anyway I asked him if he'd answer a few questions and lucky for us he agreed. Here goes the first Round Wall interview.

Me: I've read, heard and seen that you ride older Indys. Would you mind telling us what ones (size and stage) and why?
Salba: I like 166mm stage 6-7 and or same deal with 169's......for awhile they went to136,146,156,166mm but were basically same width........I prefer these to 189's just cuz I have ridden them for over like 10 years but just ran out of em....I have one this guy just sent me...but I need another to match em up,,,,,,,I think they turn better than new ones......that is why I ride em......
Me: Are you a proponent of coping treatment? Sauces, waxes etc
Salba: When needed.........sometimes ya don't need it......
Me: What's up with the formica on the bottom of your boards? Are they heavier than a normal deck?
Salba: It slides over anything cuz I am sick of rails......if all the old school guys took off their rails they would not be able to hang...........and yes it is heavier cuz I have 8 plys made for me only. I hate flex on the tail when riding up the tranny.......most pools we ride have 2-3 of vert and smaller trannies than the combi .......so formica makes board stiffer along with extra ply..7 wood ply ...1 ply formica.......
the regular formica factory offers is 7 ply..6 wood ply with 7th formica. It makes board stiffer for sure.....
Me: What's up with Mickey?
Salba: Mickey is a barney
Me: Last trick that you learned?
Salba: Front truck grind to lipslide......hard to do .......
Me: Anything exciting you wanna tell us about? Good recent session, whatever.
Salba: Just been preparing for protec I guess........pool is so different now..not even the same so I gotta put some work in...new lines and such........total different animal....trying to get the tricks going........leins,lein to tails,andrechts,front 'd's,corner airs..bert reverts..........
been running twice a week....4-5 miles a pop.......

Me: Thanks again Salba , you kill it.

And there it is. One of the heaviest pool skaters ever giving some insight. The Indy thing really facinates me. You can bet I'm going to be searching ebay for some stage 6s.

I highly recommend taking a look at his site. It's full of really great stuff. While there you can pick up a deck and check out Salba's writings. They're worth the read.

I'm ending this one on a pic of the man at Cherry Hill, cause what's better than that.

Cunningham Tombstone -for Matt

2010-04-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here are all the pics I have of the tombstone/cradle area. Enjoy.

Here's a wide shot from the gate.

This one's from the side of the Skull bowl. You can see both cradles.

From the far side of the full pipe craziness.

Again by the Skull bowl.

From the deck of the larger roll in.

The inside of the cradle closest to the Skull bowl.

Lake Cunningham Skatepark Part 4

2010-04-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd start the final Lake Cunningham post off with a shot of the cradle/tombstone area. It's a really odd setup. Nothing faces anything else directly except for a giant roll in across from the tombstone. I'm not sure how you can get enough speed to really crank around the cradle but I guess it can be done. My favorite aspect of this area is of course the pool coping. It's everywhere and it's good.

To give a little perspective regarding the scale of what you're looking at the small end of the tombstone is at least ten feet of vert. I like that it's lined with pool coping. It's an eternal challenge.

Here we have the mini-bowls. They're bigger than the micro-bowls and are really fun. I supersized all the pics in this post to enhance the drool factor. The deepest part of the above bowl is about 4 feet. Perfect transitions. The round one is a little light on flat which makes the walls come up on ya pretty fast.

The square bowl below is fun. I dig the spine, and the spine digs my shins. Literally. The square bowl is a great spot to learn a new trick. Lots of flat makes for easy recoveries. The tombstone is also fun and a perfect setup for a little air over the spine. (That what I see the kids do with it)

The left most mini-bowl is really fun. If I could build a perfect little bowl in my yard it would be this one. It has a shallow end with a roll-in and a deep end with nice square walls. This is a great spot for the little guys to graduate to from the micro-bowls. This guy who's name is Chilli was on his first day at the park. He was really social and found it easier to roll into the shallow end than to drop in. Kids.

Recently I've been politely accused of being bias against street skating. I don't feel that's true. To be clear I love street skating, when it's done in the street.

So the last two times I've gone to the park I went and spent some time in the street area. I'm 41, so I'm not riding hand rails. BUT I have been doing some board slides and getting my pop back. I have to confess, it's really fun. I ask the kids for tips and they gladly show me what's up.

So I'm softening my stance on street areas in skateparks. What can you do. Gotta keep up with the times.

And there it is. Lake Cunningham skatepark in a 4 part nut shell. Hope you enjoyed it.

Steve Caballero is a ripping artist and hell of a nice guy.

2010-04-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the opening of a three week show of Steve Caballero's paintings at the very cool Abbey Gallery.
I was stoked to meet a legend and check out some skate art. What I didn't expect was just how rad Cab's stuff is. He uses all types of mediums including paint, ink, spray paint, stencils and collage.
His subject matter was like hand picked from my own brain. Toho monsters, hot-rods and skateboards were all given the artistic love they deserve.

The first thing I checked out were the decks and original canvas paintings. The amount of detail and work was fantastic. Way above what I usually see on a deck. It's interesting to note that every one of Steve's original paintings was considerably down rez'd (for lack of a better way to put it) when they made it onto the deck. Much of the very cool paint texture and subtle hues were photoshopped into oblivion for mass production.

My wife and I had some minor pain over the pig painting. I wanted it and she wasn't a fan. We settled on a set of hot rod prints for the kids room. I may still get my pig on if it hasn't sold yet.

The truck was another favorite. Large and super rad in person. As usual my pics don't really do any of the art justice.
The single flaw I have with SC was that the guy is just too nice. He hung and talked about his art, future projects and the Faction tours back in the day. He's one of those guys who can slide into a conversation with anyone and make you feel right at home.
On the very rare occasions that you get to meet one of your heros how often are they as rad as you'd imagined/hoped?
Steve Caballero is hands down one of the coolest guys you'll ever meet.
You can see more of his art for sale here: http://www.myspace.com/cabsart

Lake Cunningham Skatepark Part 3

2010-04-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

We've got a load of stuff to cover in this post so let's jump right in with the big-ass full pipe. Right off, this is the biggest pipe I've ever ridden. (I've ridden three in skateparks and three in the wild) It's really big. Easily 20 feet. It's so huge that you have time to pump at each wall with ease and not just get un-jammed and then crank at the bottom.
It's also the longest pipe I've seen. It has lights in it so you can skate it at night and be able to see what the hell you're getting into.

So as you can see the pipe dumps out into this mondo bowl-dish craziness that's 13' tall. There are weird walls and a shallow end with a bowl that double dips down to the deepest area.

This shot best shows the nutty config. There's a video of Lance and Cab skating it when it was first put in and just killing it. Lance does like a head high BS air off the 5' vertical extension. I have ridden and stared at the previously mentioned extension (with big gnarly pool coping waiting for you at the top) and the experience is bowel loosening. Serious.

Here are a couple shots of the square pool. About as it looks. Good spot to get old tricks back as you can easily regulate speed and it's got plenty of transition to help you down gracefully. I like this pool but it would be way better with pool coping. The shallow end is super playful and easy to skate. I dig it for boardslides. It's the only corner I've made it all the way around on my rails and pulled it.

And finally the oddest thing in the park. The backyard pool.

This thing looks totally perfect. It's got super tight trannys in the shallow end. A death box in a weird spot. Quick steep walls in the deep end. (They look really gentle but they're not)

So how rad is this pool? Super rad, and really scary.

I've seen more people eat it in this pool than the rest of the park combined. The deep end wall on the right sneaks up on you and throws you off. Put crazy tile work that will stop a wheel dead under the large pool coping and you get a beating.

All that said this pool rips and many thanks to the designers for creating something perfect and still original. I think the second shot does a little better job of illustrating how odd and sweet this tiny pool is.

I wanna know what you guys think. Out of the first three installments on Cunningham what's your favorite thing so far? I ask this because I'm saving some nuttiness for the final installment which will mostly cover the street and mini-bowls.

Tell me your thoughts, and someone please tell Ben to get me his mailing address. He's got a DVD coming.

Tent City video review

2010-03-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

Quick review.
Didn't love it.
Here's what you get- about 35 minutes of a bunch of guys skating around in Australia and living in tents. The skating is interesting due to the terrain. They go to some rad full pipes and beater skateparks. Tony Trujillo is always fun to watch skate. I saw him for a few minutes at Sunnyvale skatepark and he's stupid good. The rest of the guys were OK but not super bitch'n.
The format is 8mm and video, and in my humble opinion the biggest downfall. It's technically not very good. In a bunch of spots the lack of simple white balancing is badly apparent.
Overall it's totally watchable and the bonus features are ok.
So here's the thing. First person to write a comment wins their very own slightly watched copy of Tent City. That's right. It's a contest, sorta. So write a comment and get the flick. Easy as that.

Lake Cunningham Skatepark Part 2

2010-03-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been raining. A lot. So you're getting a very abbreviated second installment.

Here are the micro bowls. They're about 10 inches deep and very forgiving. To give it some perspective the mini bowls on the left side of the photos are about 3 feet deep. These micro bowls are the first place I'm taking my son to ride.
I find it incredibly cool that the park designers took the time to build not one but three micro bowls for the little dudes.
Last time I was there a little girls was very happily rolling from one to the next. Right next to these are some mini bowls for an easy graduation to slightly larger terrain.

You can see the cool mini bowls on the left side of the images.
Next time I promise more photos. Weather and camera issues have been working against me.
If your local park has micro bowls let me know. I've never seen them at another park.
Stay tuned for installment three (of four)

Lake Cunningham Skatepark Part 1

2010-03-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

This place is so good that it's going to take a minimum of 3 parts to do it any justice. In this first installment We're gonna focus on the Skull bowl and what I call Mr. Superfun.

While the Skull bowl looks really intimidating it's not that crazy. Yes the deep end has like 3+ feet of vert. But the interesting thing is that it's a really accessible ride. The deep end has pretty big transitions that are buttery smooth. Speed is absolutely not an issue. The corners are big and bowly which makes for petal to the metal instant acceleration when you jam into em.

The shallow end doesn't go to vert and is an easy drop. Heck, it's a pretty tame acid drop if you use the corner. I love the shallow end. I can get on top of the grinds and board slide around the corners. (As much as I can)

Let's talk about the coping. It's magnificent. Perfect grind every time. Board slides like a dream. Now for the downer. I personally don't like the 'tile' work. It's like a paver driveway. Super clicky. Like knock you off your board on top of 3+ feet of vert clicky. I catch my wheels doing board slides all the time.

Now Mr. Superfun is whole different beast. He's my go-to warm up spot in the park. Fun grinds in the halfpipe-esq shallow end. I often hit Mr. Superfun to re-learn tricks. I super slammed on a backside boneless and limped away. If it was the Skull bowl I would have been spackle on the bottom.

So enjoy the pics. Comments are more than welcome. Even better, come for a visit.

And a little side note -The park is 56000 sq feet right now. They're putting in a snack bar and plan on expanding the place to 70000+ next year. San Jose is very serious about having the largest skatepark in the world. Good for them.

Latest addition to the collection...

2010-03-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Just won this on ebay. A nice addition to the LM collection.

I'm still hunting for Powell "Crest" and a black wood, Future Primitive.

While I'm at it I'm looking for the following:

1 Indy stage 4, 149 hanger.

A set of white 97a RatBones from the 80s.

One red Blackheart wheel. (Yes, I have three others)

The black Lance Mountain with Indy 149 Stage 3 trucks and Powell freestyle wheels I lost at Kim Buckard's house in 86. (There was a bit of partying and the cops that led to the separation) I loved that board. I would pay handsomely for it's return. Seriously.

Scored anything lately? Tell me about it.

Fun, unintended uses for Google maps.

2010-03-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

This here is a picture of three houses with pools in good old Warren NJ. The middle and most round-ish looking one seems to be, well, empty.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of this. Hell, I'm pretty sure I'm not in the top 1000, but what an amazing unforeseen benefit of Google maps.

See what's in your neighborhood. Fortune favors the bold. It took me about 60 seconds to find this one. (Note- the average cost of a trespassing ticket is $266 in NJ)

Tell me if you land any gems.

Mike Fox Skatepark

2010-03-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

Mike Fox is the best skatepark ...that I don't like.

Here's the deal. Every time I go there (It's a ten minute bicycle ride from my house) it's filled with kids not wearing helmets and older kids smoking and being douchey.

It has a great pool as you can see. The full pipe is on the smallish side and the entry and exit bowls are all pretty good. The problem for me is that the place just never has a good vibe. I never strike up conversations with people and almost never see old men skating the place.

All of this could just be bad timing or preconceptions on my part but after like ten trips there I still feel the same way.

So now for the good news. First, this place is loaded with pool coping. Everything in the park has it. Some of it is getting a bit ragged but more about that later.

The pool is of a nice scale, not too crazy but really fun. It has a very well placed death box that I have made exactly once. The shallow end is one of the best I've ridden with excellent transitions that are just enough above your average backyard pool to open up tons of possibilities and still be challenging.

The bowls are pretty good, but not fantastic. (this is very subjective) I can't seem to find really good lines and I've never seen anyone else really rule the place either. The shallow entry area of the bowls is really fun but the coping is already in need of replacement. There's a huge section that's just ground to hell.

The most used part of the park by far is the street area and micro bowl. I've counted over 40 kids in the street area and been skating the bowls and pool alone.

Take a look at the pictures and see what you think. Am I being a spoiled whiner? Probably.

One thing is certain. I need a new camera with a much wider lens.

Sunnyvale Skatepark

2010-03-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

Speed, speed and more speed. Let me start off by saying I blew it and forgot my camera. On the plus side I brought a buddy (because I thought the park might be in a really sketch area) and that buddy had an iPhone. So here we go.

Well people, Sunnyvale is all about the carving, and the carving, is good. This place is sorta wide in it's layout with lots of concrete in between obstacles to make for unlimited lines and solid setups.

There are two big multi-bowls that make up the meat and potatoes of the park. The bigger/deeper one has a big rounded hump in the middle that lets you crank tons of speed. The corners are really well done and super carvable. I only skated for a few minutes due to silly work obligations but they were oh so glorious minutes. The vert extension in the big bowl is really fun and well placed. I hit a little wheeler on my second try. Hat's off to the builders.

I only took a single spin in the little bowl but it was cool but not as appealing as the big boy. The whole place has metal pipe coping which works well.

Also I was totally wrong about the area. It's in a nice location. The locals were a little weird. As soon as I went over to the big bowl they all split to the other side of the park. If you know me then you know how intimidating I am, which is not very. Oh well.

So to recap- really fun park. Super fast and very smooth with zero kinks. If I have a complaint it's the lack of vert. Special thanks to Pat Vasta for taking some pictures. Those iPhone things are pretty cool.

What are your thoughts? Is vert essential or not? Go ahead, hit that comment button.

Chlorine video review

2010-03-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

Alright, it's been out for like 7 years so I'll keep it brief. I really loved this movie. Maybe it's watching Ols0n talk about skating. The guy is just infinitely cooler than pretty much everyone else on the planet. He is punk rock.

So here are the highlights in no particular order.

Duane Peters dressed like a fast food colonist. Dave Reul rolling into a pool down the freaking sliding board multiple times wearing exactly one elbow pad for security. Dave Hackett and Olson talking about being skateboards and looking like rock starts. And finally Lance Mountain falling headfirst (without a helmet) into the deep end of a seriously steep pool and cartwheeling out of it with a smile and a laugh.

My advise is after you watch the film watch it again with the commentary. I think it's even better than the regular sound track.

I'd be curious to see what videos ya'll are into these days. Add a comment. I'm curious and I need more videos to review. Stay tuned for a Northwest review coming soon.

Side note- I swear I'm going to review some more spots. It's been really rainy.

Skatepark saturation.

2010-03-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

I thought this was kinda funny. Here's a map of all of my 'local' skateparks. Ridiculous.

I'm not sure if it's a solid trend but there are 3 parks within 30 minutes of my house that are NOT on this map.

What's it like in your area? Use concretedesciples.com or whatever site you like and take a look.

I'd be curious to hear what people find.

Pacifica Skatepark- or god damn this place is perfect!

2010-02-28T20:39:00.000-08:00

I am a junkie. An addict. A full tilt degenerate. There is only one thing that can pry the monkey from my back, and that thing is pool coping. Dear sweet Pacifica, I am your strawberry. (It's slang, look it up)

Even if every perfect wall of this place wasn't lined with the equivalent of concrete cocaine it would still be a 10 on the park meter. Designed by local legends the Wormhouts it is absolutely amazing.

Look for your self! See that long ever dipping pipe of joy? See the flawless transition to flat ratios? See the smaller multi-bowl thingy? It's better than it looks. BETTER! I'm not writing this to piss you off. It's just that good.

Stare long and hard at the pictures. It's incredible. I had heard whispers of how good Pacifica was. For once, it was better, way better than I was told.

Seriously, Cunningham has more stuff but I can't say it's better or even as good as what Pacifica does have. It's like they said let's not build a ton of stuff, but let's build three things and make em perfect.

I'll leave you with this. I got this really f-ed up stoney feeling while I was walking around taking pictures like I was getting the flu or something. As I got in the car to leave I realized what it was. I was having a problem absorbing the reality that someone had created something beyond what I dreamed about as a kid. It's there. It exists. And it's in Pacifica CA.

This place may well lead me to divorce and unemployment.

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Indy protos and original Jim Phillips art

2010-02-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

Here we have a taste of the mega-bounty that resides in Boardroom Santa Cruz. I'm an idiot for not taking some wide shots to show off the insane board collection that hangs on the walls. It's nutty. Well, I guess I have some ammo for another post.

But what we do have is a taste of some of the original Jim Phillips skate art including the first Jason Jesse graphic. Amazing stuff. For $4k you too can own a piece of skate history. The price actually seems kinds cheap to me. The paintings are incredible.

The second batch of (bad) pictures are of a display that contains all of the original proto types for the first Indy stage I trucks. Totally insane. Several of the trucks have original Tracker baseplates.

Enjoy.

Zorlac for sale, not.

2010-02-28T20:16:00.001-08:00

So here's the story. A few weeks ago I'm at an old man session and one guy says his buddy who drinks too much told him that Zorlac was for sale. What ever. Odd hearsay.

Fast forward a week to the Santa Cruz Boardroom. I'm doing a bit of browsing. I ask to see the Craig Johnson and he tells me 'hey, did you know they were for sale."

So a few more days go by and Dave P sends me a message to check out all the Zorlac prodcut for sale on ebay.

Hmmmm.

I check out the first two items on ebay and they're both coming from Keller Texas.

So now I'm getting crazy day dreams of buying Zorlac with a few buds. So I see that Newtron's email is right on the site and I drop him a line.

Zorlac is NOT for sale. J.N. was really cool and answered a few question. He was stoked that people were talking about his company.

So all is right with the world and the most bad ass skate company ever.

Scotts Valley Skatepark (in the rain)

2010-02-23T20:24:00.001-08:00

Here we have my standby skatepark. Scotts Valley. I dig it because it's close and almost never too crowded (when I hit it)

It's got a nice combo pool with round and square sides joined together with a big old roll in.

The bummer is that the pools are ringed with metal pipe and not pool coping, but other than that they're super smooth and really good. They have up to a foot of vert so they're not too intimidating.

The place also has two tiny bowls. One lined with steel pipe and the other with a round concrete lip. They're super fun and great to warm up in for those of us who need extra time to get their feet under em.

The street area is lined with fun walls and humps. You can carve the hell out of it and generate more speed than you can actually use. The first time I went here two kids collided head on going over the hip from different sides. Blood and tears. Five minutes later they were both tearing ass around like it never happened. I would be surprised if either of them was more than twelve. Ah youth.

I thought it would be cool to shoot this place when it was totally empty. Skateparks are like giant concrete industrial sculptures. Really beautiful. Even in the rain.

Video Review: Fruit of the Vine

2010-02-17T20:32:00.001-08:00

I hate most videos. Skate, surf whatever. I grew up on the Bones Brigade Video Show and the serious talent of Stacey Peralta and most of new stuff is just noise in comparison. So that's why I'm so glad this this doesn't even count as a skate video. It's a serious (well sorta) documentary on a subset of the skate culture. The film does a great job of talking to the real deal guys and lots of folks you've never heard of. It's full of images of people peeking over fences and seeing paradise. More than once I got that queazy excited stomach thing when seeing these pools.

Growing up in Jersey good pools were a very rare thing. For every hour we spent looking we might have gotten a minute of actual riding, and most of the pools we did ride were pretty crappy. You hear guys like Salba and TA talking about some of the very same issues which is cool because the mags always potrayed CA as having a perfect pool over every fence.

On the scary side there are a bunch of shots of these guys (with no pads) talking each other into acid dropping into a pool with a ton of vert and not a lot of transition. I won't tell you what happens but it sure as hell made me feel like less of a man.

There's cool footage of Baldy (sp) pipeline. It always looked way bigger in pictures. It's really rad and I am definitely going to hit it one day because Salba said I should.

The super 8 footage is cool and feels authentic but it's also a bit grating when they use a wind up camera and the image constantly flickers. But it also sorta had a non video film thing that I like.

Watch it and see what you think. I scored my copy from Amazon used for $6 including shipping. I highly recommend picking up a copy unless you're Matt P who'll be getting a copy in the mail for being my only reader.

Ben Lomand skatepark

2010-02-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

I can say two things about the Ben Lomand skatepark definitively. It's really tiny and it's really, really good.

It consists of a street-ish area that can be pumped and carved for endless lines, and one sweet mother of a bowl complete with a deep end and a roll-in style channel. See below and left.

The park is stashed in the Santa Cruz mountains off RT 9. If you didn't know where to look you'd never find it. (It's not even listed on the concrete disciples site)

What you can't really see in this pic is that the bowl has a deep end. It dips down about 18" and the walls get a little more vert. It's steep enough that you can hook up so you can really lock into grinds and board slides. A bitch I have about a lot of bowls is that they aren't steep enough to hang you up. I see tons of super sloppy kids skating that lock their trucks up and just pop back in. Call me crusty but I like consequences.

This is the street area. I feel I should get this out of the way. I'm not a big fan of street areas in skateparks. I get why they do it but I would rather see the concrete put to other uses. HOWEVER- this park did it right and made the street area an endless carve-fest with the size, distance and transition of all the walls being well thought out. I kept going back to it to try and carve a faster line. I'll definitely be back.

Derby Park

2010-02-12T13:40:00.000-08:00

Here we have the ancient Derby Skatepark located on the westside of Santa Cruz. Well, it's basically a mellow snake-run that dead ends in bowl-ish thingy.

So the good news is that it's imperfect enough that you can find some really fun lines. The bad news is that it's really small and get's crowded with 5 people.

Anyone who grew up skating in NJ will have memories of ditch skating. The snake run area at Derby will totally remind you of those days. While Derby has more transition the scale and downhill run factor are almost identical. Really fun. Weep would have owned this place if he had lived in SC. As it's easily walking or skating distance from my place I have seen it with different crowds. It can get mobbed with longboarders and surfy types but is usually pretty quiet. It should be noted that Derby might be the oldest continually available skatepark in the US, at least that's what concrete disciples says. It's been in a ton of videos including (I think) the Santa Cruz 'Wheels of Fire'. Hit it and feel the history.

Platta Aroyo skatepark

2010-02-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

So Here's a park called Plata Arroyo in San Jose. It's pretty close to Roosevelt and in a sorta sketch neighborhood. As soon as I got there I locked my keys in the car. Took about an hour to get a lock guy to open it.

The place is not super well designed, but that sorta works in it's favor. It has tons of stuff right on top of each other which makes for infinite lines. I was only able to skate for maybe 30 minutes but found a ton of weird lines.

The fun part is that the whole place has major kinks. Kinks in the transitions, things totally out of alignment and just plain freaky transitions. But for someone who grew up never skating parks (or at least rarely until the late 80s) I kinda dig funky stuff that takes time to master.

This pool looks great but actually is really wonky. It doesn't have any true vert and there are a ton of flat spots on the walls. It's hairy, especially at speed.

So the picture on the bottom is a little mini bowl with no coping. Super duper fun. It's steep enough to do a board slide, but there's no way to hang up. My favorite feature and something I haven't seen much of. All the kids like their coping for doing what they do.

As side note- there was a guy there skating in Chinese slippers and football pants. (the tight kind with the little built in knee pads) Awesome.