64 Year Old Man Skates Better Than You at New Skatepark

I went to the soft opening of a brand new Parklane skatepark in Portland Oregon with a bunch of old men, all of them better skaters than me, one of them probably better than you.

It’s good to see southwest Portland getting some more skateparks, and this one in Parklane park is the newest, with Berrydale being only about 10 minutes away, already completed but not yet open. We expected it to be blown out but were pleasantly surprised.

Depending on your approach, the first thing you may notice are 3 skate features on the approach. Portland has a law that requires a certain percentage of any new public construction be put aside for public art at the same location. Thankfully, PDX decision makers have long ago figured out how to maximize their dollars by making skateable public art when coupled with a skatepark. I went to link to some old Pier Park construction photos but it looks like I forgot to transfer those almost 20 year old photos to the new site when I switched from raw HTML to WordPress. They are probably postage stamped sized photos anyway. I’ll add that to the list of things the intern will have to do when I get one. This type of feature has to be relatively cheap to build. Variations of these things should be everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

When you reach the area you’ll notice that the “Skate Area” has been fenced off for someone’s protection, I’m not sure who’s.

Woah! Look at the size of that bowl! Deep end looked like 11 feet to me but those who actually skate bowls on the regular say it is in reality 10 feet deep.

Here’s another angle that I am now realizing should have been rotated over to the right a little. The closest part of the shallow is really mellow, and the deep end is a little spread out. This picture also makes the waterfall look deceptively smaller than it is. You can’t take carrying your speed out of the deep for granted, or then again you probably just need to skate faster than I do. Also barely noticeable in this shot is the hip on the left side of the deep end. It’s a shallow one but you still have to pay attention to it.

Now check this out…. That’s a big, red curb. Very nice.

Now we’ll get to the area 90% of the skaters will care about.

Lastly, the pic I care about… Here’s lovely iPhone SE snap of the aforementioned 64 year old man (Mark Conahan) making a front side air in the deep end while a couple of old men clown around in the background. Whee! This angle shows the waterfall better.

I was little surprised by the scope of the bowl in this one, which no doubt will bum out some people who will deem it unnecessary, but Parklane is a fun park with a little bit of something for everyone.