Found on The Tactics Grind:

City Council Meeting Monday April 13, 2009 at 7:00 p.m

As you might know, the City of Eugene has committed $292,000 for the W-J Skatepark, but we still need to raise $250,000 in matching funds to make this vision a reality. HOWEVER, the City Council needs to hear from the Eugene Skate Community that we need their continuing endorsement of this project. Please bring your skateboard and your friends and show up to this VERY IMPORTANT City Council meeting, located at 777 Pearl Street, so they can see how much this skatepark means to us.

Our goal is to have at least 200 skateboarders, friends, and family in attendance. This meeting is very important. We need you to be there.

More details at skateeugene.org

Peter DiAntoni has a show opening tomorrow in Milwaukee (I assume) titled Salad Days: Turf 30th Anniversary. It’s all photos of Milwaukee’s Turf skatepark that also has an earlier run as Surf & Turf, before taking a brief rest while serving as a strip club. I guess they build wooden platforms covering the bowls. Sadly, it’s been permanently destroyed now. Pete D. was the proprietor of Clueless Zine, of which I have a couple issues, but haven’t yet added to the 80’s zine archives. Dang, I need to get on that. If you skated in the midwest in the 80’s you went to the Turf at least once. A lot of people travelled there from other parts of the country. It also appeared in some Santa Cruz and Gullwing videos, possibly others as well. For some it was a travel destination, for others it was more like a home. Mr. DiAntoni will be screening Turf shirts on site at the opening, and if you have your old park ID you can get one for 1/2 price. I wonder if that works via mail order? – Thanks to Matt Grasser for the tip.

April 10th 7-10pm
Vetter Denk Building 161 s. 1st (corner of 1st & Pittsburgh) Milwaukee, WI

[Source: WiSkate]

Here’s my video wrap up of our mini tour of southern Oregon skateparks that I made with Rich and MC on the occasion of Matt Kline’s BBQ session fundraiser for his bowl in Grants Pass Oregon. With apologies to Steve Grover, because I wouldn’t have brought my video camera if he hadn’t called me up and told me to shoot some “Spring Break” footage. When I lost the photos from this trip I was only able to avoid completely losing my mental health by the calming realization that I at least had some fun video footage. My apologies to the park locals who cooperated for the still photos. Chances are Rich might have some of you if you were in Winston, Matt’s Bowl, Myrtle Creek or Harrisburg. Yes, I am accepting donations towards a steadicam…

I was in the Seattle burbs over the weekend. I did get in a couple sessions at the Sammamish Wa skatepark, which was overrun by scooters and bladers on both occasions. That park sucks. I think I was way to generous in my first review. Still, part of the fun in that park is figuring out how to have fun at that park. One day I happened to be in the neighborhood of the the new Seattle Center skatepark (replacement for the demolished SeaSk8) so I decided to check it out. So far it’s just a flat slab of concrete, which is not what I expected at all. It makes it look like the elements are going to be prefab. But hey, I don’t know anything about skatepark building, except that the only other street plaza I saw under construction still looked like a conventional dig site. There were a couple of guys there who looked like they were painting a ledge that went around the perimeter of the park, something that doesn’t show up in the renderings. All in all, I’m confused. You can check out some not very enlightening photos after the jump, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I went on a really fun road trip last weekend. I went down to Grants Pass for a fundraiser party/session at a private bowl. Along the way I stopped at three brand new skateparks in Oregon, including, Winston, Myrtle Creek, and Harrisburg. I even went to the old Grants Pass skatepark for the first time. I took a little over 200 pictures, and lost them all to a corrupt memory card. Unfortunately, this isn’t an April fools joke. Those three up top were the best I could salvage. I don’t want to hear any arguments about why film is better, because I’ve had catastrophic failures there too. Rich has some shots up from the bowl party, Harrisburg, Or and Winston, Or. I imagine he’ll be doling them out over the next week or so. Still, it could have been worse, I could have broke my leg like Shane Bell did.

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.

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Peter Diepes over at OMSA. It’s a shot of Txus Dominguez with a one footed carve at the Hagen bowl in Germany, and yes, it’s a make. You can catch it on video over at EuropeSkate. Txus Dominguez has been accused of trying to turn Spain into Oregon as one of the principals behind a skatepark building company called Zut Skateparks. You don’t see teh one footed carve grind much, unless you’re a Northwest Skater like Dan Hughes.

There’s a full frame version in the gallery. Check it out.

Everyone seems to think this is the Gurnee, Illinois skatepark, but I think it technically belongs to Warren Township, which is adjacent to Gurnee, home of Six Flags Great America and the lovely accompanying ditch. What’s the scoop on this park? Keep reading.

I’m in Chicago for a few days, actually flying back home by the time this post goes live. I went to the Northbrook skate park on Friday. It was a little bit chilly, but there were a handful of people riding. I actually met this guy named Pete (Hi Pete!) who was there the last time I was at this skate park back in August. I didn’t take many photos, but I did get this shot of Trevor with a little bit of board slide action. I can’t believe I got the exposure right. While I was there a cop showed up to give the boot to some BMX riders. They were ineffectually whining at the cops saying they should be allowed to use a public park, and the cop replied “If I had it my my, neither of you could use it, and there would just be an empty parking lot here.”

Went to Ed Benedict today, had a lot of fun. It’s kind of boring because every bank is exactly the same, but on the converse side, there are lots of places to work on things, be you regular or goofy foot. Some complete assholes appear to have stolen a granite slab and some of the pool coping. Classic. I encourage a supreme level of narcing on the guilty parties if anyone ever sees it. I took two pictures of Kaden, and because I can’t edit myself, you get to see them both.