I ribbed them about the lack of photos we got from the grand opening of the new Dunedin Florida park, and David Adams replied that they are too busy skating to take pictures. Fair enough. He did, however, take the time to scan and send in this 1979 postcard of the now defunct Clearwater Florida skatepark, which he said was the last park of it’s kind (until Dunedin) in the west central Florida area. (Did you know there’s cement parks in North Port and Sarasota?) The caption reads “GBM in full take off mode! Awwwk Awwwwkk!!” David also mentions that Ed Womble, George McClellan and himself were on the Clearwater Skatepark team back then, and are still skating today. If you take a look at this postcard, your first reaction might be “Yuck!”, but man, wouldn’t it be fun to go back in time and skate one of these sprawling concrete landscapes? I wouldn’t want all my parks to be like this, but you make your own fun, and I see fun written all over the place. If you’re in the mood for something newer, Chuck Dyer has some shots from opening day of Dunedin.

I thought we would get a lot more pictures from the Dunedin Florida skatepark opening, but so far all I have is a few from local Ed Womble, which includes a shot of Monty Nolder. You guys must have a poser’s scene down there, you don’t deserve a good skatepark! Haw haw! I kid! Check out the pictures after the jump.

K.D. Waltner was rolling some old-school custom quad rollerskates with wide trucks and sliding rails at Pier Park. He said he’d been out of it for ten years, but it seemed to come back pretty quickly. Must be like riding a bike. I think K.D. Waltner is German he’s working for one of the local shoemakers. You’ll probably see him around, he’s enjoying being back into it.

Funny how rolling quads is okay when inline is not. The guy took his blades to Burnside and got heckled but went back with his roller skates and it was fine.

Photo: Rich Burton

Top to bottom:bug’s eye view of the street section, back of the T.Rex, across the bowls to the big hubba, Gro-Magnon man and the big spinning top volcano, Burke finishing the dino.
Tigard progress 9-21-07 Click here for a better look at the panorama.

Steve Gump has more photos from Saturday here.

I have better detail photos in my camera but I wanted to share this. Click here to see it bigger. The verdict: it’s not great work, in fact some of it totally sucks. But it is kind of fun. The park has lost some dignity.

The town hired a non-skatepark contractor to put in wheelchair ramps and extend the park. The miniramp no longer ends in gravel. They did a good job adding a rounded hip to the end of the pump-bump. There is non grindeable metal coping embedded in the new stuff. The finish is bumpy and the shaping is pretty uneven. At least they didn’t mess up anything that was already there.

Are you sick of Oregon Trifecta coverage? You’d think we would be. After I made a flippant comment (Who, me?) about the conglomerated Extreme™! sports nature of the Banquet web site, I heard back from the site’s content manager Cody Whitman:

We started banquet as a resource for filmmakers and photographers (we sell downloads of DVD’s and are in the process of helping photogs sell stock photos) and this is why there are a variety of sports on our site. It is true that “conglomerate” sites don’t make sense in a lot of ways within action sports (or whatever the hell you want to call them), but in some respects they do. We are all filmmakers, photographers and writers as well as participants in our respective sports and whether you are shooting skating or skiing there are commonalities. We understand the differences between the cultures, clearly there is no such thing as a shared lifestyle across these sports or even within them for that matter. But the truth of the matter is skating is a three man sport, the skater, the photog and the filmer…. Maybe there aren’t similarities between a skater and someone riding motocross but there are between the people creating the media surrounding those two sports. And we are trying to be an outlet for those people.

So Cody has a point there. Banquet is not really aimed at the individual audiences that enjoy those activities, but more so at the kinds of people that enjoy documenting them, or want to buy and sell that documentation, I guess. So enjoy banquet’s photo and written coverage as provided by Kyle Bunker, who took all the photos above. I think Screech pukes at every contest.

Lincoln City
Portland, Pier Park
Battle Ground Washington
Bonus: Colin Bane’s Oregon Trifecta editorial

Looking for something to do in the Salt Lake City Utah area this weekend that doesn’t involve the Dew Tour? Check out the informal invitational Bomb the Beehive contest and BBQ on Friday September 21st at the South Jordan Skatepark, about 20 mins south of downtown Salt Lake.

The Dew has prelims on Thursday and Street/park finals on Sat night and vert on Sunday, so not only is it a second chance for the guys who don’t make it but two days before finals for any of the vert guys who want to make it down. Been getting a good response including Benji G and Mike Peterson both who said they’ll be around for it.

It going to be more of a fun event, an old style BBQ jam with a self judged format. Way its going to work is a BBQ and bowl session starting around 5pm then there will be a determined “judged session” from probably 7:15-8 where after wards everyone skating is given a ballot with all the names on it and circle the three names who skated the best with one being a tie breaker. Whoever gets the most votes wins, speaking of which its not huge prize money but $1000 for first. Its supposed to be more of a fun event than a full on contest scene.

I don’t understand the Beehive reference either. Looks like this is quite the weekend for BBQ, at least if you are in Seattle or South Jordan.

The Marginal Way project is having thier annual BBQ and fundraiser this weekend, but their generator gave up the ghost, so be a local hero and contact them if you have a temporay generator hookup for the event. If you can’t bring a generator, bring your board and support the scene.

Oh yeah it’s that time again, the end of the summer Marginal Way Skatepark 2nd annual BBQ. Come down and see the progress of the park. we have been doing some cool stuff over the past year. hopefully this next year we can continue to make more rad shit. the BBQ is going to be fun food, skating, game of CRETE (our version of SKATE) and music. Plus our pal Quincy Quigg illustrated a cool new shirt for us that will be for sale during the event. come down and see what going on at your local Seattle DIY park and help us celebrate and make some money for the start of Fall 07.

Marginal Way Skatepark BBQ
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2007 1:00PM
SKATEBOARDING, MUSIC, FOOD
GAME OF C.R.E.T.E (REGISTER AT 10 AM)
SUPPORT SEATTLE‚S D.I.Y. SKATEPARK

..for their cheese! Haw, har! But seriously folks, Dreamland just broke ground on a small skatepark in Lake Delton, Wisconsin. Secretary for the village of Lake Delton, Kimberlee Czuprynko is trying to organize a demo for opening day in Spring of 2008, but she’s been met by silence from everyone she’s contacted. Midwest companies, this is your chance to step up. Beer City and Character Skateboards are the closest neighbors I can think off the top of my head. The folks at Midwest Bowlriders might have a few ideas. Maybe even Indy’s Toast Skateboards could get in there. Lake Delton is excited about the new park. They’ve been updating the village web site with progress pictures (in annoying pdf documents) almost every other day since construction began. They’ve even been keeping tabs on how many members of Deamland crew are in town. If you think you can help with the grand opening, contact kimberlee at charter dot net or 608 254-2558 ext 225. More info: Skatepark site, Press release with park plans.

A comment in yesterday’s post about the Skate-Ball ramps got me thinking about an eBay auction I saw a few years back. The parts for a complete fiberglass skatepark were listed with a $30,000 opening bid, and as I recall, nobody bid the minimum. I saved the images because I thought they were interesting. These were relics of the 70’s rotting away in a desert somewhere, and for some reason I find that stuff fascinating. Someone spent the time and money necessary to make the molds for these giant prefab pieces, and maybe sold a few and then lost a bunch of money. Fiberglass seems like it would be not quite the best surface for a skate park. A little web investigation reveals the park in these pictures was likely Thrasher Land park in Glendale Arizona. At some point in time they tried to incorporate modern street skating elements into the park, and the end result makes Frankenstein look suave. The domain name (thrasherland.com) is parked at a hosting company and the phone number has been reassigned. A web forum reports that the whole facility has recently been razed. It’s amazing that they weren’t demolished in previous decades. So what do you do for the sake of history? Sk8parklist.com appears to be the only skatepark directory with actual pictures of the park, but even then, they barely show the telltale blue ramps. Concrete Disciples has a listing with no pictures. How can you not take pictures of giant prefab blue fiberglass ramps? It’s not like you run across them all the time, or even, ever.