Chicagoland tour: Waukegan skatepark

The last stop of the min tour of Chicagoland parks was the Waukegan Illinois skatepark. I believe this was the last of the Chicagoland concrete parks that I hadn’t been to. I was excited by the prospect, and it looked like it had potential (ie. height) as we drove into the parking lot.

Well it’s got one thing going for it right off the bat, and that’s a somewhat cool looking official logo.

The overhead shot from Google Maps.

Here’s the view from the roof of the adjacent park building. Click the horizontal pics to enlarge them.

The parcel of land is sloped. The deep end is at the highest point, making it an uphill travel with no waterfall to get to it.

Here’s a straight view from the top of the park. It’s a 17,000 square feet facility that is mostly flat finished everywhere, except for the brushed concrete on most of the transitions! Suh-weet!

This is the shallow end of the big bowl.

Looking up to the deep.

A couple more looking down. Does it look like that pyramid is going to get in your way? That’s because it will, unless that’s the only thing you intend to hit.

The strange ledge configuration on the pyramid in the shallow.

Another view. In the background, another pyramid with the classic clueless skatepark builder’s steep angle. I’ll bet it looked good in the rendering. You can also see a little bit of the brushed concrete surface in this photo. Not quite as rough as a sidewalk, but lame nonetheless.

Another roof shot.

The super shallow washed out beginners bowl, with a non-beginner’s tight transition at the deepest part.

Here’s one part of the park that they actually did a good job on. The highlight of the park.

More roof action.

Here’s the most popular feature of the park, a shallow bank. This was a definite make.

This kid may not have landed this one.

No bikes or scooters, but apparently nobody cared that I climbed up on the roof.

I believe this guy’s name is Grant. I thought this shot was going to be my street skating masterpiece, but seeing it large made me realize the timing is wrong. It looks funny not being able to see the wheels, but he landed it. Shortly thereafter he recommended going to Gurnee. This kind of skating is hard to shoot without a sequential.

The final word: Wow, what a disappointment. The locals are somewhat friendly, and this is one of the few parks that had females that were skating, although there were plenty of lurkers. The transitions are overall steeper than they should be for the most part. The brushed finish and uphill battle to get to the deep end make it a task to keep your speed, that is if you can dodge the pyramids at all the wrong places. The ledges on the outside are nice though, and the kids dig the shallow inclines. The separate mid bowl with the ledge in the middle is kind of fun. Ugh. Shitty park, but the locals were making their own fun. OK, part of that was make out point, but there were some kids that obviously had some skills, so it can’t be all that bad. Plus it’s close to the heretofore unknown “Amstutz Expressway,” a stretch of state highway that aside from being the only “J” shaped state road in Illinois [source], also happens to look like a movie set for an eastern block country during the cold war.