This post was originally static HTML, it was backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Arizona Road Trip By Dantallica – May 2005

So I had a whole week off and decided to make the 23 hour drive down south to Tucson AZ where my friend Enrique Felipes just moved. He had been telling me tales of ditches and long downhill streets and I knew of all the parks near Phoenix so I packed up the family and headed down south.

Day 1 With the possibility of rain in the forecast for days 2-4 we decided to take part of the afternoon of a sure day to drive up to the Phoenix area to hit a couple of parks. Our first stop was Coolidge, a small town off the beaten path, which offered a Site Design park for our pleasure. The park was easy to find and we probably had the most fun here out of any of the parks we skated that whole day. The place consists of a fun bowl about 4 feet tall in the shallow and about 8 in the deep with some good steep transitions and steel coping. This bowl felt a lot like a real pool since it was kind of inconsistent in its construction. Some of the walls were steeper than others but it flowed really nicely and was a challenge to do some basic tricks in. The other half of the park is a small street course with some big banks, rails and ledges, pretty standard design and it was very functional. This place felt a lot like the Donald, OR park, small town, bowl, no daycare center feel. We stayed here for a good hour before we decided to head a little farther north to check out Chandler and Gilbert. On the way out of town we stopped at the Safeway for some supplies and the checkout girl practically threw herself at Enrique, I thought she was gonna skip work and come home with us, too bad your married bro. It must be nice to be a 6′ 5″ blond headed guy cuz the girls are always flirting with this dude.

Our next stop was Chandler, I had wanted to stop here to ride the park and compare it with what I had felt about the place 5 years ago when I first skated it. Man I was blown away by how much flatbottom everything has and how lumpy and slow the bowls are. (again I realized how good we have it here in the NW). The last time I was there I thought it was the greatest place ever, its good to see that parks are evolving in general design and that Site Design Group is improving their skills. The park was fun for a little while but we didn’t stay long since it was more like a daycare center than a skatepark, next time I wont go at 2 in the afternoon during spring break week.

Gilbert was the final stop of the day, that Arizona sun was brutal on me, I had to be the whitest dude there and I was definitely the only one wearing a straw hat so my delicate skin would not get burnt. Gilbert was a rad park with some really fun bowls, the street course was kind of standard and flowed pretty much back and forth. My favorite obstacle was the 30 foot long curved bench at one side of the park, I tried and tried to grind the entire thing but I always seemed to run out of speed with about 2 feet left, one time I pushed through the grind which made a few local kids scratch their heads. The bowls were really a lot of fun especially the telephone bowl, it was nice and tight with good transitions and nice depths, any pool/vert dog would have fun in it. The other bowl section was a spined pair of bowls with a couple of extensions and some fast carve lines, I would have liked to stay there longer and figure this one out but I was exhausted. It’s amazing how many cops we saw at this park and Chandler, they seemed to be lurking around every time I looked up. Beer consumption definitely had to be under the radar.

Day 2 We started the morning off with a wake and bake and by doing some longboarding around the neighborhood which quickly turned into a pool hunt. We were able to spot quite a few pools but unfortunately only one that was empty and the owner happened to be building a fence next to it at the time so we were out of luck. Nonetheless longboarding through the neighborhoods was a blast since everything was downhill and all the curbs are small carvable banks. After longboarding we went back to get the car and hit some small ditches built into some neighborhoods, these were the most fun yet. Some of these dtches were kind of hidden in between houses and fenced off with no skateboarding signs. The kids in this hood were damn lucky to have these ditches built right between their houses, we had some good fun there.

In the afternoon we went to a pre-season baseball game where we proceeded to drink enough beer that the only skating we were able to do the rest of the day was to cruise the hood on longboards and try to scope out some more pools. During this session we took a walk out into the desert for a smoke break and came across a jackrabbit. This thing looked huge, it had to be about 2.5 feet tall with the ears up, I was amazed since I’d never seen one, the desert is weird.

Day 3 To start the day off we headed down to the pet store for some dog food and spotted a nice looking ditch near the shopping center. This ditch curved around a corner going downhill and at one spot it had a nice roll-in to pick up a ton of speed on and get high up on the steep walls. After skating it for about 25 minutes we decided to split since the cleaning ladies across the street were getting suspicious. From here we decided to make a short drive to check out the little park in Marana. Marana is one of those parks that could have been good except everything is way too small to be of any challenge and many of the street elements block lines that could be had in the flow area. The coping was insanely slick as well, obviously someone went wild with the wax. Needless to say we didn’t stay for more than 20 minutes.

Day 4 Early in the morning we made the trek up to Mt. Lemmon to some site seeing and we stopped at a Mexican place in Tucson for lunch. While leaving the parking lot we noticed a number of run-down motels on this street so we did some pool hunting. Several of the pools looked skateable but most of them had a couple of feet of water in the deep ends and there were many sketchy people hanging around the motels so we decided against trying to bucket them out, maybe next time. Later in the day we decided to get in some more longboarding, we found a nice bike trail that sloped downhill for about 4 miles. This had to be the most fun that we had all week, the hill was fast in spots and slower in others but it there was basically no pushing needed. We spent about 3 hours doing downhill runs and finishing off some beers that we brought along. About halfway through the session we pondered the idea of heading to the YMCA park in Tucson but decided against it since it’s a pay to play park and we were having a blast bombing hills.

Arizona is a rad place to skate, not only are there good parks (some of which I missed this time around) but there’s lots of other types of terrain to find there such as pools and ditches. If I didn’t already live in a skaters paradise I’d consider moving to AZ. I’m not sure which is worse, the 5 months of rain in the NW or the scorching heat of AZ but I was sure glad to see rain the day I got home. Get yourself down south and experience some desert style skating, you won’ t regret it

– Dantallica

Arizona Road Trip By Dantallica – May 2005

Skate and Annoy Scene Reports
Where: New Mexico
Submitted by: Faye Richards 
Report Date: 4-27-05

This post was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Editor’s note: Still coming in at the staggering pace of one scene report every other month! I don’t care if it’s a scene report on your backyard ramp, send it in! -K.ed

Skate and Annoy Scene Reports
Where: Wichita Kansas 
Submitted by: Eugene & Stacey Lardizabal 
Report Date: 4-27-05

This post was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Editor’s note: Faye is on her second one you slackers! Let’s hear from someone else!! -K.ed

This post was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Thanks to Tito from Team Pain for sending in these construction pics of a park being built in Cocoa Beach Fl. Be sure to check out Team Pain’s crazy flash site. Yes, that’s Team Pain. They build skateparks you see, and this one is due to be finished sometime in May.

This post was originally static HTML, it was backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Well see, there’s this square pool in Portland, and here are some pics.

This post was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

So I had the opportunity to spend a nice quiet, romantic getaway with my pregnant wife in Beautiful Palm Springs California. Unfortunately, there was a skatepark there, which ruined everything. Instead of sunset strolls in the dessert oasis, we had sunset photo sessions in abandoned empty pools. What a drag…

But seriously folks… Palm Springs has a bitchin’ skatepark built by Site Design Group, and they did it right. The “street” area has some nice banks, and lots of tranny with some ledges and stairs around the outside. Not exactly a street plaza, but be fun enough for street, bowl, beginners and advanced skaters to all enjoy. The other bowled area varies in depth from around 5ft in the shallow to plenty deep in the deep end and the pocket extension. That’s right, I didn’t do a good job of surveying, but you can look at the pictures. The shallow waterfalls into the deep. Rounded corners everywhere with the exception of one sharp hip. Metal coping except for pool coping complete with tile in the extended pocket. The jewel of the park is a Nude bowl replica, but it seems smaller than it does in my memories. Check out the two photos of the tribute and the original.

Locals? I met a couple, but it seemed like the visitors far outnumbered the locals. In fact there was a contingent visiting all the way from the UK on their annual skate trip in the colonies. They were staying with some guys that they knew via internet magic of Middle Age Shred, which has separate UK and US sites. Most visitors were from closer regions. Apparently I just missed the Cohort Skates crew by a half an hour on either side of their visit, but Chris sent me a couple pics from the day that I was there. Everyone was pretty friendly, and the park was generally less than crowded. And it’s not even summer yet. The heat beat down on me as cloud dwelling Northwesterner, but it wasn’t that bad. There are supposedly three skateshops in town, but Industry seems to be the only one anyone could tell me about.

It costs 5$ a day to skate. You get a wrist band and can enter and exit as often as you want, except if it rains they might not reopen. In Oregon we’re used to sitting out the rains on the off chance that it will dry up again, cause it often does. In Palm Springs, even though it’s arid, once it rains too much to skate, they close it down for the rest of the day. Some kids showed up and got to skate less than five minutes before the park got shut down and they were out 5 bucks. Helmets and full pads are required, but only the helmet rule is enforced with any regularity. You could skate with cutoff socks or nothing for elbow pads, and knee pads, but if the helmet came off the very bored security guard would stop watching his portable TV long enough to amble over and request the helmet. Of course, my experiences only come from a 4 day trial. Your results may vary.

Empty pools?

In the 80’s when I visited I skated a couple empty pools in town with the help of a local. I wasn’t sure if I’d have the drive to figures this out on my own during my short stay, but the very first time I decided to look behind a wall I found one. It was a square pool and pretty much a one hitter, but skating a pool is almost always more fun than not skating a pool, no matter how good it is. I made a few other passive attempts to find pools and spotted another potentially fun ride from the street. Unfortunately, it must have been ridden heavily at one point because someone had gone through the trouble to scar the entire surface with a backhoe, leaving only the tile, coping, and a single tile bearing the pool’s maker. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to make a pool un-rideable. I don’t think it can be resurfaced for swimming, but maybe some of you more experienced pool pirates can provide more background. Although Palm Springs is a destination for the rich and frivolous of L.A. and a bit of an expensive tourist trap at times, there are an awful lot of vacant buildings on the main strip, and more than the usual amount of boarded up homes.

Ditches

There are ditches around town and the surrounding areas. I didn’t check any of them out much besides taking a picture, but there were some piddly streams in them, probably because of recent rains. This is nothing like Arizona or New Mexico, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to have some fun with a longboard and a set of soft wheels. Also of note are the “Bank banks” which may have a different name to the locals, but they are banks on a building that is a bank, hence the name. There is an on site security guard, so it’s undoubtedly a bust.

Whoo hoo! Palm Springs! Spring break! Uh yeah. Definitely worth checking out. A very fun park. You could spend a weekend without getting bored, skate wise. I still have some comprehension problems with the pay-to-play issues. For example, you could spend all day on the surrounding basketball, tennis and baseball facilities for free, but for some reason you need to pay a slacking security guard to make sure you wear a portion of your required safety gear. I think the parents in the area tend to think of it as day care, a nice supervised place where you can drop off your kids. I’d be surprised if the guards had even taken a rudimentary first aid class. Come on people, if a city like Louisville KENTUCKY can be progressive about a 24 hour a day unsupervised skate park, certainly California should be able to get it’s act together, for Hosoi’s sake. What? Oh yeah. Go skate Palm Springs! See ya next year.

This post was originally static HTML, it was backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

NHS Mini Tour By Rob Parker – March 16, 2005

This story came to us from a random reader, and by god, that makes us happy people. Rob Parker took a little bit of time to write up a couple paragraphs on what it’s like to geek out at the factory of one of the icons of the 80’s heyday skateboard companies, Santa Cruz. It’s short on pictures, but I figured everyone was sick of reading what I write. Readers Unite! Carry the flag that Rob has raised, and enjoy this. – k.ed.

For vacation this year my wife wanted to visit the San Francisco/Napa region in California. This may not sound too exciting for some, but if you look closely at a map, you will find that Santa Cruz is just south of San Francisco. So, I told my wife that we needed to go to Santa Cruz for a day to visit a skateboarding company. She wasn’t too excited about visiting a skateboard company, but it was something I wanted to do. I have been skating Santa Cruz decks since the mid 80’s and now I had a chance to see where they were made. After a month and a half of calling and e-mailing NHS I finally received a response back from a guy at NHS the day before my vacation starts. The guy tells me that they do not regularly give tours to the public, but since it was just my wife and I, he reluctantly agrees to a tour and schedules a 3:00pm tour time on Monday March 8th.

This post was originally static HTML, it was backdated and inserted in the blog. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

So, they had this Skate The Mountain contest at Windells, which is this Woodward-type place near Mt Hood in Oregon. It was kind of strange because they had a decent purse – 2k for first place and a thousand for second – but it wasn’t promoted very strongly. In fact, Windells’ own web site made no mention of it. It’s like they didn’t want people showing up. In any case, it was a good time. Everyone was relaxed and riding hard. We showed up during the “Pro” qualifiying runs, having missed the younger kids and the girls division. I took some pictures in a very lazy fashion, and it shows. Some of these pics are not from actual contest runs, so sue me. Hey, it’s the interent. Who cares? Before the semi finals there was a best trick contest for $100 in the street area that I didn’t pay attention to. Also, I can’t remember all the names in the results, so I won’t tell you any of them*. Except Ben Krahn came in second. If you can help me out with any names for the photo captions, send an email (kilwag at skateandannoy dot com) and I’ll fix it. Try and tell me which page you are talking about (copy and paste the url). Other than that, the only thing I need to mention is that when the contest ended some guy on a crotch rocket made a big show out of revving up his engine and leaving in as loud and fast a manner as possible, which made it all more amusing when everyone drove by him on the way back west and saw him getting a ticket from the fuzz…

– kilwag

Stop the presses! New and improved photo captions and results provided by Tom “Wally” Inouye, with some additional help from Mike Estes at sk8pdxdaily.com who would like me to remind you that 17 year old contest winner Vincent Del Valle is from Seattle and Skates for DC. Scroll down to see the results. Tom also mentioned that this year’s event was put together on short notice, and next year’s event will be better promoted. I hope it isn’t promoted too well, because it had a nice local feel to it.

Skate The Mountain 2005 At Windells Results

Girls:
1st place Zea Page
2nd place Kristin Ebeling
3rd place Shalako Lee

16 & Under:
1st place Oudulay Pilauanh
2nd place Alex Dinwiddie
3rd place Mark Cooper

17 to 29:
1st place Tony Distrola
2nd place Andre Cameron
3rd place Collin Wright

30 & Over:
1st place Kirby Phelps
2nd place Tom Inouye
3rd place Jake Gaynor

PRO:
1st place Vincent Del Valle $2,000.00
2nd place Ben Krahn $1,000.00
3rd place Matt Beach $500.00

Skate and Annoy Scene Reports
Where: Columbus Ohio
Submitted by: Kevin Krahel 
Report Date: 2-2-05

This post from our short-lived series of Scene Reports was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Editor’s note: Here they come at the staggering pace of one scene report every other month! What’s round on the end and tall in hte middle? O – Hi – O! Even though it contains no Devo sightings, we’re happy to post our first report from Ohio. I know there’s more of you Midwesterners out there, so let’s hear from you. -K.ed

Skate and Annoy Scene Reports
Where: Denver Colorado 
Submitted by: Ash Truesdell
Report Date: 12-07-04

This post from our short-lived series of Scene Reports was originally static HTML. It has been backdated and inserted in the blog because it was too small to pretend it was an actual feature. And yes, this does hurt my OCD! Can you believe I used to have to hand code this? I integrated the blog into this site in July of 2006.

Editor’s note: This is our second scene report. This one from Bad Egg editor Ash. So far we’ve got Kansas and Colorado. I’d like to hear from some of the non-square shaped states too! -K.ed