Troy Sliter sent in some pictures from a recent road trip he took to New Mexico. I’ve never skated there, have you? I like the look of that ditch, that’s for sure.
Road Trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico
Troy Sliter’s pictures from a 2007 trip to New Mexico with a little bit of a skateboarding detour. Click to enlarge. Slide show with video footage at the bottom.
Here are some pics from my trip to Albuquerque. When I had breaks from taking care of my mom, I hooked up with Nick and skated 3 parks and a ditch. Albuquerque is super dry, flat, hot and high altitude. The high altitude sure does make a 40+ yr old tired quickly. Certainly a variety of parks and demographics. Supposedly there are some private ramps and bowls in the outskirts.
Alamosa Skatepark
Brand new pristine park at a community center designed by Artifex. Street area had SW theme much like a plaza. Bowls are super smooth with steel coping, a 12-13′ vert corner pocket with granite coping. Landscapers used small rocks everywhere (duh!). No crowds in the big bowl, youngsters in the street area. I heard the older crowd shows up in the early am (Mark?) One of the straight walls wasn’t straight but had a very slight barely noticeable hip which made it interesting (I shoulda taken a pic). Lights, but not very good in the deep areas.
Calvary Skatepark
Calvary Skatepark is a gated area at a church/community Center, with hours and monitored helmets. Site Design, I think. There is a midsized bowl with vert areas against the back wall. This park has lots of flow with a spine and rollout/rolling opportunities everywhere. Crowd was relatively clean cut kids ripping it pretty well.
Los Altos Skatepark
Los Altos is a big Site Design park with huge street area. Concrete was rough and bumpy, coping is small diameter metal. Crowd was ghetto kids. Go Skateboarding event with bands and game of SKATE contest.
The ditch.
This was one of many ditches of many shapes and sizes in ABQ. You could ride them for miles. Man, I forgot how hard it is to actually do tricks in ditches. It was pretty rough so a simple fall could be super painful, ask Nick’s knees.
The video
9 comments
Danabis
You should have hit the NW quadrant park by cibola high school! Absolutely love that spot! Also a bangin mini half @ paradise hills skate park! Grew up in Abq, and miss the many parks and positive attitude twoard skateboarding. Live on the East Coast now, and all parks have fees, and tickets are handed out like lollipops for skating in public areas 🙁
Teneka
I skate ABQ all the time. I lived there tell just 4 months ago. I love Los Altos Skate Park. I can’t wait to go back and tear it up again. Great pics. ABQ is the best to skate I say
Kilwag
That’s ironic. Most of the helmetless skaters I see are young kids.
Severian the Sidewalk Surfer
Yep, the ditches rule; but scout them out slow the first time down, note locations of rescue ladders and inlet pipes (if you’re bombing on a longboard, you’ll be up on them too fast to avoid a brutal wipeout).
Indian School ditch is amazing. Bombing crosstown streets and foothills residential roads late-night, also a most excellent thrill. But be warned; rocks and pebbles are very common (it’s a DESERT, remember). The gentleman powersliding the ditch (in photo above) is setting a deadly example for kids. I live in Albuquerque, and off the top of my head, I know of at least three high-schoolers who’ve sustained life-altering brain damage, as a direct result of imitating helmetless, padless older riders. Not cool. Head injuries are forever.
Ash
ABQ is so sick. I go there at least twice a year. Don’t need to sk8 the parks. Indian School, 3 Mile, and Comanche ditches are so rad. Plus there is 100s more! Pools too and fun sk8n U of NM. Locals are rad and you have to eat breakfast at The Frontier!
Kilwag
Hey Troy, is that marble coping on the bowl in Alamosa? Funky!
jthomas
Again, I feel one of the best skateboard towns in the world. That ditch is just a small exaple of crete in NM. Indian School is equivalent to epic powder day at Snowbird.
Danimal
i skated abq a few times, the ditches rule. skated los altos, it was lumpy but was the shit 8 years ago when i was there. dame chili verde buey.
Concretin
Good stuff!