Unearth the Turf

Guess what? It’s Turf week on Skate and Annoy. All Turf, all the time.

We have a campaign going to help save Surfin’ Turf/ The Turf skatepark here in Milwaukee, WI. We even went so far as to dig out one of the bowls last night and made it on the 10:00 news.

Details about whats going on, a video of the news story, and most importantly what people can do to help save the park are all at beercity.com.

More information and the video after the jump.

UPDATE: It’s been filled in. I don’t know how this effects the big picture.

The video is interesting because the newscasters don’t fall for the same tired schtick that usually accompanies news stories about skateboarding. In fact, one of them practically falls all over himself trying to get help for crew of diggers.

UPDATE: Another shockwave video bites the dust. Here’s a link to a different video from the same time and the same Fox 6 news outlet.

Here is a brief history of the park for anyone that is unfamiliar with it.

Surfin’ Turf/ The Turf was an amazing indoor skateboard park that was opened in the late 70’s and then closed in the early 80’s. It opened again in 87 and then closed again in 94. When they closed it up all the concrete bowls were filled with rocks and they put a cement floor over it.

A place that built patio decks bought the building and was there for some time. Now the State of Wisconsin Traffic dept. has bought the land along with a bunch of other land on Loomis using eminent domain. They plan on putting a park and ride were the skatepark once was. In order to do that they had to demolish the building and then tear out the concrete floor.

After they tore the floor out they noticed that there were these outlines of the bowls that were filled with rocks. So they started digging in one of them to see what this was all about. Once they reached 6 feet they had to stop. The reason being an engineer needs to be brought in now so they can figure out what they need to do. If they just left the bowls there with rocks in them and paved over it there may be problems when semi’s and other heavy vehicles drive on top of the parking lot.

So now that they had to stop we ( meaning skaters all over the country) are going to try to convince the state to dig out the bowls and restore them so people can come and skate them again. This is not only an excellent skatepark that with a little work could be restored , but it is also a historical landmark. Being that its over 25 years old and one of the few surviving concrete skateparks built in the 70’s.

SK8 TOUGH F.S.U.
Mike Beer

From an earlier post, Luke suggested:

Please contact the Wisconsin DOT, as they are currently in charge…
Here is the phone #: (608) 266-1114
Here is the email: Frank.Busalacchi@dot.wi.gov

Take 5 minutes and shoot them a friendly email, note the historical significance as well as the potential tourism dollars.