Disposable vs Portable
ESPN has let out a few photos of the skate structure for X Games 17. They chose the now more commonplace method of pouring a concrete over a wooden substructure. This kind of facility is temporary and seemingly very wasteful, although the concrete and wood can be “recycled” into new concrete and new ramps. However, I’m pretty skeptical that they are going to store all that wood somewhere until the next time they use it. Landfill seems more likely. On the other hand, the Dew Tour is going a different route via a familiar name in precast concrete. Don’t confuse this with ordinary prefab, these massive pieces are cut with the aid of lasers and designed to be interchangeable and self aligning. The plan is to eventually build up a large library of interchangeable parts. If you’re confused about the strange look of these, then join the club. We’re supposed to get more information shortly, so stay tuned. SPeaking of the Dew Tour, I heard a rumor that PDX local Dave Tobin was being flown back to judge!
Posted by: on July 20th, 2011
More posts by kilwag
Categories: Skate
Tags: Dew Tour, East Coast, Spohn Ranch, X Games
I still don’t understand why these corpo-mega giants don’t give a little bit back to skateboarding and build permanent skateparks for the locals to enjoy long after the contest is over. I’ve heard people say that it would be too hard to orchestrate with local governments, but I can imagine cities saying no to a free park if they give up the land. I understand it’s a little more complicated than that, but it can be done. C’mon energy drink companies and X-games, step up!
Is Spohn Ranch the same company as Barkman Skate Parks?
Nope, not the same company. Spohn Ranch collaborates with Barkman Concrete on some municipal projects, but the portable concrete bowl project is 100% Spohn Ranch.
How and why would you collaborate with another skatepark company?
Barkman is a major prefab concrete supplier. They are in the concrete business not the skate park business. It seems to me that at one point in time Barkman supplied Spohn with the prefab crete and then decided to take them out of the picture by starting a side company called “Barkman Skateparks” I could be wrong. The reason I brought it up was that both companys claim to have made the same parks on thier websites.
“cut with the aid of lasers” I can picture the foreman with his laser pointer saying “cut here” when he’s not too busy dazzling aircraft pilots.
Spohn Ranch is so wack. They use the “smoke & mirrors” technique to get cities to buy their schtick and then they dump off a few pre-cast skate turds, cash their check and leave. Just a company trying their best to capitalize off skateboarding with their McDonalds crap.