First off, this is not commentary on the quality of the teams listed on the graphic, so cool your jets. I got an email update about the 4th annual Ellensburg contest and demo on October 6th. It included a flyer with a picture of the Ellensburg, Washington skatepark. I glossed over it at first but for some reason I took a second look and thought, “Man, what a bummer it would be if that was what I had to look forward to skating on.” The contest has a ton of sponsors with more than one skate shop involved, so there must be a vibrant scene. The moral of this story is that you make your own fun. It’s something to keep in mind. If we have any readers in the Ellensburg area, send in some pics from the event and we’ll put them up – poor photography or not. The full version of the flyer is after the jump. I believe I found out about this from a Skateboard Mag email.

The December January 2007 issue of Dwell had two separate skateboard related features. The first one was for an insane conceptual skatepark in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It turns out they actually tried to figure out if they could build it. The second more down to earth feature was in Dwell’s Nice Modernist column, and it was about Rob Dyrdek’s radical (no pun intended!) new approach to skatepark design, the skate plaza. Aside from the Kettering Skate Plaza, the article mentions his recent Shreveport, Louisiana venture which according to some people involved in the project, did not go as well as planned.

Sure, in the 70’s you could have made a skateboard deck in shop class. Now you have more options. Of course there is Paul Schmitt’s CreateAskate that we’ve covered here a little. CreateAskate is for educators only, so what about those of you who aren’t in grade school? Surely there are adults interested in learning how to make their own skateboards. Roarockit has an emphasis on possible use in school programs, but it’s always been available for individuals. Now Roarockit has a permanent facility for learning how to make skateboards. They had a grand opening of their Professional Skateboard Making School last weekend. Sounds like a good idea if you find the task of building your own vacuum press a little intimidating and need more hand holding than the take-home kit provides. If you want to see how skateboards are made the old fashioned way there’s another video and some more CreateASkate coverage after the jump.

[Source: Lumberjocks.com]

I just wanted to babble on about this week’s Shot of the Week, since the standard format doesn’t allow it, and this one is too good to let go. This shot sums up skateboarding in the Midwest during the 80’s for me. Sure, we were rad, but it seemed like our surroundings were holding us back. This is from the Chi-town Shred photo archives. No further information is available, But it was undoubtedly shot on or near Oak Street Beach, which has more concrete than sand. Brilliant. Chicago!

I got an email alert about the grand opening of Sarasota’s Payne Park next Saturday. I got excited because my mother in-law lives in Sarasota and so I visit it on a regular basis. The existing skate park is fun, but nothing to write home about, so a little variety would be nice. It turns out that Sarasota isn’t getting another skatepark, it’s just phase two of the surrounding park facilities, which includes amphitheater, more tennis courts, a walking path (Whee!) and a “skateboard clubhouse,” whatever that means. Then I read that the skatepark fees would be waived for the day of the opening festivities and I really got mad. Sarasota has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the southeastern US, but you have to pay to skate at that park. The land for the park? Donated outright. The construction costs? Paid for by a one percent sales tax. Public tennis courts? I think they are free, but for some reason, a facility that can be used kids from all demographics is pay-to-play. Absurd! It’s already annoying that the damn thing isn’t open on holidays or during school hours! I don’t know what the hell this “skateboard clubhouse” is supposed to be, but I’m guessing it’s part of the reason you have to pay to skate. Guess what Mayor Palmer, kids don’t want or need a skateboard clubhouse. It isn’t 1974 and Kristy McNichol isn’t going to show up. Kids (and a lot of adults) just want a place where they can for free without the bullshit of memberships and restrictive time constraints. Free skateparks open dawn to dusk? The rest of the country seems to be catching on, why not Sarasota? To top it off, it turns out they closed the entire skatepark for the month of August so they could build the rest of the park. That’s third of the time in the year when the park is open for semi-reasonable hours. Way to go geniuses. You can’t possibly even pretend to have the best interests of the Sarasota youth in mind.

Eww.. gross. Get your mind out of the gutter. Joining Blake Nelson’s Paranoid Park is Nick Hornby’s Slam. You might recognize Nick Hornby as the writer whose books get made into good movies like High Fidelity. Slam’s protagonist is skateboarding obsessed and regularly holds imaginary conversations with Tony Hawk who answers in not always relevant quotations from his autobiography. Sounds like an amusing premise actually, if it weren’t written for young adults. Actually, if you can enjoy Harry Potter, why not Slam?. It’s interesting to note (OK, maybe not) that Tony Hawk is so pervasive that his status as a cultural icon can now be a bit supporting character in books much like Elvis was in the movie True Romance. Hornby’s had a few of his books made into successful movies, so maybe we’ll see a Tony Hawk cameo that’s a little better than what he did in Thrashin. While it’s unclear whether or not royalties were paid to the old 80’s wrist guard company of the same name (Haw!), it is clear that skateboarding is a hot topic for those trying to sell to the young adult market. Speaking of being in the market for young adults (what is this Perez Hilton?) the Gus Van Sant adapted Paranoid Park for a movie before it was even properly published. We heard rumors that Paranoid Park the movie was doing well overseas, but we haven’t heard squat about it in the states, or even in Portland where the damned thing was filmed. Hornby’s Slam comes out on October 16th, and for some reason the cover on the US version is skateboard-free while the UK version is what is shown above. There’s a spoiler heavy review of Slam at The Guardian.

Ignition TV has recent (I assume) footage from the grand opening of the Mission Valley YMCA’s new (to them) vert ramp. A bunch of vert dogs were there, Bucky Elastic, Bony Hawk, the French Canadians… There were other people present on deck but they didn’t make the cut, perhaps due to space limitations. Although posted on Metacafe, the clip’s producer is Ignition TV, who is the, uh, leader in action sports fro you mobile phone. You can chose by sport and brand on their web site, so you know that’s Extreme™! Mission Valley’s vert ramp was donated to them by the X-Games. We had one of those X-Games retired ramps in a suburb of Portland for a while, where it mostly sat as a platform for kids to practice flip tricks off of the flat bottom onto the cement. There was a small community of vert riders who would session a couple times of week and chase the kids off the flat. Ask MC about it. They banded together to meet and talk with the park district to ensure and volunteer upkeep, but the district wasn’t interested. As more and more concrete parks opened out here, the already underutilized vert ramp saw less and less use. It eventually started to rot, and so it was removed. Now, if you want to skate a vert ramp you need to go to California. The New York Times has an article about how most of the X-Games competitors and vert enthusiasts in the US tend to live in one area of California. If you think it’s all old men, SignOnSanDiego.com has an article about the aging base of X-Games competitors and a young up and comer named Alex Perelson. [Source: Skate Daily] If you still need to get your vert fix, you can watch the video after the jump. Those guys are doing some amazing things, but to the general skateboarding population they are kind of like the freestyle skaters of the 80’s – most people wonder why they bother to still have contests.

Looks like it’s all poured, some curing concrete under that plastic. Fence work in progress. Click here to see it bigger, Neil, you shouldn’t look, you’ll just get riled. Crappy little Tualatin is just down the road.