Spohnranch has a new street plaza opening in the Inglewood neighborhood of Wilmington California. It’s replacing some prefab ramps with prefab concrete. They actually placed the whole park on the existing slab, traced it, and then cut out the concrete and laid the new pieces in place. They predict a lot of communities will be replacing metal and wood prefab parks this way as it allows them to avoid the expense of re-pouring all the flat. Seems like it would work fine for a street plaza. This one was co-designed by Paul Rodriguez Jr. and features replicas of LA spots including the DWP granite benches, Fairfield ledges and LA High banks. They have a Flickr stream of the installation and a short video that you can watch after the jump. Not much to it really. The park is located at 325 Neptune Ave, Wilmington, CA 90744. Opening ceremony is September 27

This week’s Shot of the Week is courtesy of Dylan Davies. It’s a nice 4×5 camera shot of Grant from New Zealand at the Bonsor skatepark full pipe in British Columbia, Canada. Every time I see pictures of this park it makes me think it’s some old relic, but I guess it’s actually from this millennium. You gotta admire the skate photographer who uses a 4×5 view camera. You need to lug the camera to the location, load the film in a true dark room,none of that red light cheating, do your metering, focus on the ground glass and pop the film back onto the camera. Then you slide the slidey thing out (it’s been a while) and hit the shutter release. Then slide it back in, take the film back off and bring it to a dark room to develop, one negative at a time. That’s a lot of hassle to get a decent shot. Not something you’d want to try on a kickflip variation that might be a bust on the first 20 tries. Check out the full frame version.

Cannon Beach is a sleepy little beach town that is just about 10 minutes south of Seaside, Oregon. Cannon Beach’s new park opened in May of 2008. Placed to Ride built a new concrete park on the site of the old one which was essentially just a steep “E” shaped asphalt banks on a flat spot. It was the kind of spot that would be fun if it occurred “naturally,” but was pretty disappointing as something purpose built for skateboarding. (Sam, don’t take down those old pictures!) The new park is very small in both square footage and height, but it’s packed full of skateable terrain including pool coping, ledges and bank variations. I don’t know if money was the object or what, but it there sure is a lot of adjacent space that looks like it could have been used. In any case, it’s has the potential for a lot of fun. If I had to say something critical it would be that I thought I noticed a spot or two where the transition was a little wonky, which is highly unusual for PTR. I really didn’t ride it much. My body was wrecked from the day before and…

Team Pain is about halfway done in Colorado Springs. Catch three pictures of the bowls after the jump. What’s next? The street area, of course. Thanks to Tito for the pics. How are those inverts coming?

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Carl Warren, and it’s a shot of Tom “Wally” Inouye with his wheels at the edge of the coping on the hip of the bowl in Donald, Oregon. Check out the full frame version.

The City of Gresham, Oregon released a request for proposals yesterday. Some items of interest: The RFP calls for a covered skatepark. Descriptions of obstacles and features describe a street plaza style park. The first half is supposed to be complete by December 2009. It’s about 15 miles out from Portland.

“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” -Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 On August 29th, Derek Anderson (Mark Conahan’s age) committed a breach of peace when he scaled a 300-foot crane located in the beer garden of the Doghouse Public House.  This act of civil disobedience was an aim to shed some light on a particular subject: the Dudhope Skatepark, pictured above courtesy of Google Maps user ihatetechnology,  in Westport, Dundee, UK.

OK, the last of our 2008 Oregon Trifecta coverage has finally come straggling in. That’s Bacon’s Tim Johnson in the shot above. Check it out.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Chris Miller going over the mouse hole at Pier Park, making it look effortless, and it comes to us from Rich Burton who has more shots from the same session EPM. Just yesterday Miller was still being talked about at Pier Park. I’d like to see him enter the Trifecta just once. Do you concur? Even though I know it’s incorrect, I’m getting a strong Gull Wing magnesium truck vibe from his setup. Must be the color of the trucks. This is a close up of the image, you can catch the full frame version after the jump. Check out the Shot of the Week.

I’m continuing the recent trend of having visitors from other states sending in photos of skate spots in my own geographical proximity that I am apparently too lazy to shoot on my own. This time it’s Hidehiko Fujiwara who went to Marginal Way and did some surveillance.