Sorry, I had the wrong town in the title. Okay, how many of you bastards knew about this and didn’t tell me? I had to check out the Sleestak blog from the earlier post today and found this. Another Dreamland park in the area? One more for the cannonball run: Pier Park to Tualatin to Donald to Newberg to McMinnville to Lincoln City.

photo: Rich Burton The Donald bowl is one of my favorite things to skate. Last weekend I planned an excursion that avoided Pier Park. Marek, Smay, Rich, Fendick and I planned to skate West Linn skatepark and then some of us would continue on to Donald.

Milton Keynes is pretty progressive when it comes to sports. Heck, they even have korfball facilities(?!). After achieving a high level of success with a street park built at the Central Bus Station, the city or village or town of Milton Keyes (UK) decided to build a bowl park, and apparently traveled back in time to the 70’s to do so. Then there’s the strange metal rods sticking up in the middle of the shallow. Bike racks? I don’t know. Must be street style. Seriously though, this is tragic. The bus station project was unique in that they added marble skate structures to an already popular skate spot that was not meant to be. That’s a great approach. Instead of cracking down on street skaters on public property, lets make the spot more attractive. It’s been done before, and I’m all for it. Feeling emboldened, they (Milton Keynes )… I’m at a loss for words to explain this. [Source: Crossfire]

In an article titled Granny’s donation fuels funding for skate park, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that Jean Berlin has donated $200,000 to an Englewood Florida skate park fundraising effort, helping to fulfill a long time dream she shared with her late husband. No only is she Oyster Creek Skate Park’s largest benefactor, she’s also topped the previous record private donation (that we know of), which was a mere $161,000 in stock. As well it should, the donation has made her a local celebrity with skaters, earning her a spot as a judge in a contest. She mentioned she wasn’t really qualified, but it didn’t matter since nobody landed on their feet anyway. Sounds like kickflip syndrome to me! She also stopped the contest to chastise an entrant for dropping the F-Bomb. Speaking of grandmothers, Have you seen the AARP commercial with a Buzzcocks soundtrack?

Dan Hughes has posted some recent shots of progress on the Battle Ground skatepark here.

Nice overview shot of the DC Rob Dyrdek Skate Plaza posted to the Skaters for Portland Skateparks skatepark poll area by someone calling himself Paul Rodriguez. Okay, I get it. Looks like a nice place to eat my lunch.

Forgive me dear readers, it has been over two weeks since my last Glenhaven update. I promise to do Pier Park grinds as penance. Looks like they are getting close to pouring the Mark A. Conahan Street Plaza. You can find a couple more images on Skaters for Portland Skateparks.

Saturday there was snow in the big bowl. I heard that it was dry on Sunday. I went Monday afternoon. Nice sunny afternoon but the park was wet everywhere the sun didn’t hit. It was mostly unskateable. Smay went to West Linn and found the same thing. I skated the pipe for a while, then I went to get a weedburner. I wasn’t going to get shut out like that again.

I hadn’t been out to the Beaverton skatepark since we tore the old vert ramp (image at top left for reference.) down. I decided to drop by the other day and I felt physical pain when I saw the crap they put where the ramp was. Well, my sides hurt from laughing. I’m sure that’s just what all the kids wanted too. It would be really hard to descride the funky-ass ledge configuration and ledge-and-bank around the perimeter of the park. I hope some kid post up some footage on YouTube so I can see what the hell you are supposed to do with it. The centerpiece of the new section is a big intersecting-squares-two-level manual-pad thing. A couple of those low rails that the kids like so much rounds out the experience. Judging from the quality of the concrete work I’d guess the maintenance guys built it themselves or the THPRD had a Come Play in the Mud Day! Congratulations on your new facility Beaverton!

Yeah, we cover the local beats just on the off chance that someone official in Bonner Springs Kansas might read this. Hey, it’s happened before! Mayor Clausie Smith is running for reelection. One of his past term accomplishments was the construction of a skatepark. I couldn’t turn up a picture of the park anywhere on the web. The parks web site describes it as “Skate Park – 90′ x 60′ pad with speed ramp, quarter pipe, Euro-gap, and grind rail.” Hmm. Speed ramp? OK. Sounds fun, but not according to Escapist Skateboarding: DESCRIPTION: Pretty much identical to Rosedale Skatepark, same playground equipment “skatepark” company. Although miraculously this one manages to be even worse due to the asphalt surface so you don’t even get the flatground blissfulness of Rosedale. PROS: Uhhh…it’s free? CONS: Artists. PADS: None. COSTS: They should pay us to ride it Skaters of Bonner Springs! Arise and join the revolution by voting out Clausie Smith. Suggested chant: “Ditch Bossy Clausie!” Slow news day.