You’re looking at massive portable and reconfigurable concrete bowl made by Spohn Ranch. In much the same way that you’ve seen Tony Hawk’s metal framed vert ramp carted along in pieces to assorted demos and Boom Boom Huck Jams, except it’s concrete, and more complex. It’s a pretty amazing from a technical standpoint, something that heavy than can be set up, then torn down and transported on regular roadways, to be set up again in a different configuration. The current incarnation is still in beta. As it is now, the waterfall and intermediary walls are poured in place on each stop, but plans are to get those fabricated and surfaced for reuse as well. The rough sketch for the bowl (shallow 7′ 6″ , deep 12′) was conceived by Chris Miller before being worked over in CAD to engineer it. The individual sections are laser cut, with 3/16″ of steel between every other section. It’s supposed to be precise enough to not feel the seem on rollover. A CNC cut floor template helps everything fit together. The coping is modular as well. The goal over the next 5 years or so is to build a giant library of sections to keep it fresh.

As rad as the X-Games park looks, all these giant sports spectacles are just big business at heart. They don’t really give back to the skateboarding community in any direct fashion. At best they just pad the pockets of some of the pros on the circuit (nothing wrong with that) and lend a little bit of respectability to our public image. I’m completely in favor of corporate responsibility. Building giant temporary skateparks for single events is incredibly wasteful. I say build it and leave it, or make it portable and reusable like this one.

Check out the Portable Concrete Bowl web site or Flickr stream for more info.