My sister said there was a skatepark by her house. I asked her if it was concrete and she said it was. I drove over to check it out. There was a lot of concrete, a big slab of it sitting under some prefab ramps. Metal frames with some sort of black masonite-type surface that was delamming like waxy masoninte left out in the rain. I made my way past the high school lurkers with their longboards loitering under the shelter and entered the park. The slab of concrete was indeed massive, dwarfing the paltry selection of ramps. They had a nice miniramp though, maybe 4 feet tall and at least 24 feet wide. I dropped in and did a 50-50. My axles got unnaturally squirrelly and I almost wilsoned. The coping was slippery as snot. Someone had waxed the hell out of it. I rubbed my shoe on the coping and big cornflake size pieces came off. Absurd. I spent 10 minutes trying to clean off the coping and took a couple runs, but there were some slick spots on the surface from residual wax I’m sure. A shame. You don’t see many miniramps that wide. Kids on scooters and scooter hybrids outnumbered the skaters. A couple carloads of kids show up and I thought the session might get started. Then I realize nobody has skateboards. The lurkers are cruising circles on longboards in the parking lot. The parking lot is about a mile from a street that isn’t just a connector for other parking lots, sitting way in back of an athletic field complex. The suburbs suck. I start trying to transfer from one quarterpipe to another with ends touching, tilted in a 45 degree angle. I fail miserably because I can’t backside ollie without some sort of hip. Some kid named Joel notices my repeated failures and shows me up by hitting multiple frontside ollies. I take his picture. You read about it. A booming and wealthy suburb named Naperville can’t build a decent skatepark for the kids.
Frontier Park skate facility in Naperville Illinois. Click to enlarge. Avoid at all costs.
This is Joel.
His park may suck, but Joel (and a fisheye lens) makes it look fun in this shot.
25 comments
Park local
Frontier skatepark is the shit I skate it every day it’s the best skatepark so don’t talk shit about a skatepark u never skate so many people skate this park and have so much fun
Kilwag
I’ve been to the downtown Naperville park last summer, haven’t seen the additions to this one, why not send in some pictures?
nick
I’ve lived in Naperville my whole life and just to put this on the record, we have another park Downtown Naperville and they just added a ton of new elements to this park.
ksteez
mann people commin from far n wide to shred frontier these days its too packed to skate it now
Live by Frontier Park
Dude you should go back, they just doubled the size of that park. Added a ton of new stuff, It’s pretty nice now not going to lie.
Frontier Local(Joel)
Hey, I have to say you sould not make fun a of this skatepark because you do not skate it almost everyday like i do. That park was the bomb in those photos of me. Even if you skated about 20 mins later, you would of seen all the locals skating the park. It was cool of you to take the pictures of me but you sould not make fun of skateparks that you do not skate. Everybody there is like family to use like a few kids said in the comments below. It is a fun park to and the put new ramps in so you sould hit up frontier skatepark again sometime and see everybody ripping it up.
Mark's Evil Twin
Larry Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
The best parks are the ones that
cold ones
I would skate it and have fun if it were by my house. You’d better believe I would be whining and bitching the whole time, though
Larry
The best parks are the ones that
Ian
The best parks are the ones that”
1) Are free
2) Don’t require membership
3) Don’t require you to sign your life away
4) Don’t require a 30 year old man to wear a full set of pads
5) Are open 24/7
So, I’d say that park looks pretty damn good to me.
HOSOI ROCKS
“breakin’ is for wimps”
Larry
“no you’re dead meat hook.”
–corey webster
RAMP LOCAL
CURSES DAGGERS, FOILED AGAIN!
houseofneil
yup, I was right. He’s a douche.
PL–if you were at the park when he was taking those pics, then I guess you’re invisible, or you’re such a fast skater that you can’t be captured on film. Oh wait, I bet you’re one of those kids that shows up at the park with a board but never skates aren’t you?
And seriously, good I’m glad you like your park.
Park Local
actually i do think my park sucks. i just wanted to start a fight. sorry.
skaterdave
The only way we can stop the continuing spread of modulars is…well… we can’t really. Skaters who understand the superiority of custom sculpted concrete facilities can’t be in every town to lobby against the playground equipment ramp sales reps. In a way, I still believe a modular park is better than no park at all, but it takes activism in city government to get better concrete parks. Lots of towns don’t have experienced skaters who’ll do the work, and it does take work. Some pre-fab ramp companies already have relationships with city Parks & Rec depts. and even if we do care, and try to get concrete poured by skaters, cities will go with the guys who already sell them swings and monkeybars. The main reason we got any say in my town was because they wanted us to raise $ for it.
bailgun
and what you have is a shitty prefab park that the city didn’t even finish building. because they are giving you guys the shaft. why did they not finish the park because of its own popularity? where’s the rest of the money that was earmarked for the park, but wasn’t used? you guys should be asking those questions…
people are talking about the park, not your scene.
man, our public education system is failing miserably.
Park Local
houseofneil, stfu. i saw him at this skatepark when he was taking these pictures and he couldn’t do shit so don’t talk shit when you don’t know how i skate.
and i have been to other parks. yeah theyre fun but they don’t have that home feeling that this park does. everyone here is like a family and we just make the best of what we have.
the dude
i love to douche and i dont even know what it means. it just sucks cause all you “old carps” are closer to 50 then 20 hahahaha. enjoy those plastic knees.
houseofneil
“the dude”? More like “the douche”.
Oh wait, he probably doesn’t know what that means. . . .
And Park Local, Kilwag could skate better than you 25 years ago, and I dare say he skates better than you today. He can and does skate everything. Can you say the same?
Kilwag
Park Local,
Yeah you’re right. That park is the best in the world. When you get your driver’s license, make sure you never go skate anywhere else because, why would you, they are all full of dumbasses who know how to skate bowls.
Yes, this was supposed to be commentary on a city not having any grasp of how to spend money on a skatepark. Sure, if you’ve never skated anyplace better, you wouldn’t know any better. You’re right, that’s the best skatepark in a five mile radius. Blatant localism at it’s worst.
And as always, if you can have fun skating, you can enjoy it. Certainly that kid Joel was making the best of it. That doesn’t mean you guys wouldn’t have more fun on an actual skatepark that was well made. I doesn’t have to be a bowl either, it could be a decent street plaza.
“they just didn
hollyfarm
Whoa bud, it’s more of a commentary about the cheap and unplanned use of funds for skateboarding.
Mcdev skatepark in Boise ID is one of the most hated skateparks in the city. It was prefab, it sucked. And yet i skated it enough to have fun and understand the lines and complexities to make it cool. I am sure that there are kids who do enjoy ripping up the too slick mini ramp, but i am also sure that they are disappointed in how the skatepark was constructed overall.
Park Local
This park doesn’t suck. I skate here everyday and you just have to know how to skate these kinds of parks.
When those “lurkers” are actually skating we can get a pretty good session going. Also the large extra spaces of nothing were where they were going to add more stuff, but they stopped because while it was closed kids still skated it so they just didn’t bother with the rest of the construction. Usually the miniramp isn’t that waxed anyway, some asshole just waxed it extremely a few days ago. It’s fun if your not a 40 year old dumbass that only knows how to skate a bowl.
brad
…paging Dr. Freud! it sounds like you have “issues” with your home…
the dude
you should shut the fuck up, at least they have a park, the whole world isnt blessed with as many parks as oregon. and they probobly dont grow up to be close minded fags like yourself, skate anything, wood, metal, cement, who cares, as long as you have fun. life doesnt have to be perfect and it never will be.