You’re looking at massive portable and reconfigurable concrete bowl made by Spohn Ranch. In much the same way that you’ve seen Tony Hawk’s metal framed vert ramp carted along in pieces to assorted demos and Boom Boom Huck Jams, except it’s concrete, and more complex. It’s a pretty amazing from a technical standpoint, something that heavy than can be set up, then torn down and transported on regular roadways, to be set up again in a different configuration. The current incarnation is still in beta. As it is now, the waterfall and intermediary walls are poured in place on each stop, but plans are to get those fabricated and surfaced for reuse as well. The rough sketch for the bowl (shallow 7′ 6″ , deep 12′) was conceived by Chris Miller before being worked over in CAD to engineer it. The individual sections are laser cut, with 3/16″ of steel between every other section. It’s supposed to be precise enough to not feel the seem on rollover. A CNC cut floor template helps everything fit together. The coping is modular as well. The goal over the next 5 years or so is to build a giant library of sections to keep it fresh.
As rad as the X-Games park looks, all these giant sports spectacles are just big business at heart. They don’t really give back to the skateboarding community in any direct fashion. At best they just pad the pockets of some of the pros on the circuit (nothing wrong with that) and lend a little bit of respectability to our public image. I’m completely in favor of corporate responsibility. Building giant temporary skateparks for single events is incredibly wasteful. I say build it and leave it, or make it portable and reusable like this one.
Check out the Portable Concrete Bowl web site or Flickr stream for more info.
11 comments
sk8ersbus1
Though I’m certainly no fan of Pre-fab skate park components, there is a time and place for them: in X-games, dew tour, or similar events. But now there’s Maloof and Street League and they typically unveil a picturesque concrete plaza. IT’s a sight to behold…….. but OOPS!!! It’s only temporary. I was LIVID when I found out that Maloof’s 2009 course was destroyed after only a weeks use. That is an ABOMINATION!!!!!! (However, the following year they donated the plaza to whatever city it was, and in Newark NJ the Street League donated parts of it to the city for a park.)
I just want to be clear that though the pro skaters may be stoked to skate a pristine concrete setup for such an event, the fact that it gets destroyed (partially of fully) should utterly overshadow any glitz-n-glam that encompasses the event for the rest of us “rank and file” skaters. There are infinite people worldwide starving for food (and unfortunately there are people that would rather throw perfectly good food away when it’s in their power to instead give it to a needy person) so likewise, There are multitudes of skaters (either without an adequate place to skate or have only a sub-standard park) that would KILL to have a concrete skate plaza a fraction of the size. It makes the group putting on the event look BAD when they build the plaza only to destroy it a week later- only the “elite few” benefit and that is NOT giving back to skateboarding!!!!!!!
I say all that to say this: If X Games wants to build a huge half pipe or whatever temporary pre-fab set up in Newark’s Prudential coliseum, fine. But if Maloof/ Street league does an event requiring a concrete plaza, either have it an existing plaza or build one in such a place that after the event, it will STAY there and get put to good use!! Just like Cory says, that is the BEST way to give back to the skateboarding community!!!!!
yep
i woke up this morning and had the thought that shipping this big bowl around the country on trucks is not very “green.”
stoke
while agree its super corporate, i have to disagree about the “doesn’t directly give back to the community” part.
i’ll bet a lot of people that love skating and work in supporting fields like planning, building, production, web, film, photography etc got some work and experience out of it.
not to mention all the people that it’s broadcast to. hopefully it continues to attracts new people to skateboarding. back to the future wasn’t very core, but it still got me hooked!
Concretin Nik
I’d bet one of the big hurdles of permanent “donations” is red tape. We’ve ALL experienced the long wait and feet dragging of local politicians and city administrations an NIMBY interference… They need to get started NOW in order to be ready to build and donate a park for an event next year, or more likely 2 years from now. Maloof got it done, why can’t Alli and ESPN?
But anyway… the bowl comp was absolutely INSANE! I cannot skeet. At all. Pedro can skeet. A lil’ bit.
Polly Styrene
I wanna be antiseptic, I wanna be a frozen pea / I wanna be litigent-ous, In a conshumer society… is probably what it comes down to as to why advertising sponsors are a bit gunshy about the permanent advertising upside… but I’m sure that a well meaning municipality could work things out with them… especially if it were to be a free park.
English nazi
Whoa, careful there; if you write gun shy as one word people might not recognize it as a compound, and just assume it’s an unfamiliar word. And I just could not stand another Calapropism like “eggy” for “edgy”, so I might kill people were I to start hearing that something was “gunshee”.
RH
Well, I actually hate the x-games skatepark event a little regardless of it’s impermanence, cuz their park just doesn’t have the full slingshot effect of a bowl like this… but just imagine if a bowl this long WAS donated to somewhere and you had to wait around while various kids piddled around the bottom and then took awhile just to get out. Might get old fast. Might be best if municipalities had to match it with a kiddy bowl, or had to buy a prefab concrete mini ramp from this company in order to receive a donation of a big bowl, so that there would be a place to gently shoo the publicly-fakey-back-and-forth sorts to.
Tom Miller
In fairness to Alli Sports, the entity that makes the Dew Tour happen, Alli has previously expressed to the City of Portland a willingness to contribute financially to Portland’s downtown park with an understanding that the park would host their event. They want to contribute to a permanent community-owned park. This approach was explored with Maloof as well.
kilwag
That would explain the rumors I heard. Maloof’s donation in NYC seemed to have gone over well.
Cory
I totally agree with you guys, all these beautiful contest parks should be built as permanent structures, that in itself would be one of the biggest ways to contribute back to the skating community.
ssk
That is amazing. I’m impressed. I wonder what the budget is for that thing?