Art Appreciation

The setting: The Riverwalk in Naperville Illinois. The time: About 1984. How many times can you say “I was the first person to ever skate this?” Now everyone skates, that’s getting harder and harder to say. I go back to Naperville to visit family every other year or so. Now they’ve got a crappy prefab skatepark, but back then there was not much of a scene. I have to assume Naperville’s current park is crappy because I’ve only looked at it from the car. That town has money to burn but somehow they got suckered into a bunch of wooden ramps on a concrete slab. Larger versions and a little more about the new skate park after the jump.

Art Appreciation in Naperville Illinois

Here’s what the Landforms sculpture looks like now. Not much skating happening there now. In the winter you could probably hit it with a piece of plywood, but I’ll bet it’s like a police state there. The police station used to be a few blocks away actually, but I think it’s since relocated. This picture comes from the Snakeboarder web site of all places. Snakeboarding has a long and rich history, right? So you’ve got to trust them when they say Naperville’s skate park is built by TrueRide, and is therefore of solid construction.

It looks like it got a fresh coat of glossy paint in the shot above. It was matte red when it originally appeared. You could ride right up the thing, no ollies required if you hit it just right.

To be fair, I’m sure they (True Ride) are good at what they do. They’ve built fine looking ramps for the Dew Tour and Virginia Beach, but a wooden skatepark outdoors in the midwest makes about as much sense as something completely senseless. What a colossal waste of money. There are a couple of long running skate shops in the area, I can’t believe they didn’t step up to the plate to take care of business. These pictures below are courtesy of jenniejen500

In typical suburban fashion, the park is fenced off and probably not open all year round. As you can see, the sculpture isn’t far from the skatepark. The Naperville Parks district has a pretty neat flash map of the Riverwalk that has both highlighted. or you can see it on Wikimapia. Too bad you can’t zoom in very close.