This is the third glow in the dark park that I’m aware of, and the second one by Korean artist Koo Jeong A. Incredibly, this concrete park appears to be a temporary installation at the Triennale Milano in Italy. What happens to it after the exhibit runs its course from 26th of November 2019 to the 15th of February 2020? It probably ends up in landfill. I love art. I have a degree in art. I love skateboarding too. But, for fucks sake, it’s 2019. Stop building temporary, disposable concrete skateparks! This installation was poured byControl Z, but it’s not their fault. The event is in conjunction with something called the Academy of Skateboarding, which near as I can tell, is a skate school for kids created specifically for this exhibit. It’s tough o tell, there are all sorts of Academies of Skateboarding on the web, but the Italian translation turns up a curiously titled link: “Academy of Skateboarding featuring bastard.” Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, after all, my Italian is… non-existent. If you can fill in some details, please leave them in the comments and I’ll add it to the main post.

Located in Everton Park in Liverpool, England (insert gratuitous Men in Blazers reference), this is second glow in the dark skatepark in existence. Korean artist Koo Jeong A, who came up with the concept had some pretty lofty goals: “I devised extremely steep, sharp angles, which would be a challenge to the most courageous and skilled skaters,” Jeong A told The Guardian. “It was as if they would be the great mountaineers that the rest of us would admire. And with its glow-in-the-dark surface, I hoped the Wheels Park would offer an experience of contemplation.” Maybe a glow in the dark skatepark that looks like a stealth battleship will inspire contemplation that will hopefully result in kids picking up their energy drink cans, cigarette butts and Big Gulp cups. It’s not clear how much she actually has to do with the main skate terrain aspect of the skatepark. It would be incredible if a non-skating artist had free reign in skatepark design and somehow managed to design a park that wasn’t a disaster, twice. [ Source: The Guardian ] – Thanks to Boy Ipoh for the tip.

Turns out that the Otro skatepark we showed earlier this year is now coated with phosphorescent paint. So now it glows in the dark and possibly gives you cancer if you knee slide without pads… Other sites are reporting that the concrete itself is phosphorescent, but on the architect’s site it mentions the paint. I can’t imagine how much radium it would take to make the concrete glow, so painting seems the obvious choice. OK, Ok, they probably don’t use radium these days, but it makes for a good pun. [Source: Cnet] Thanks to Seth Levy and others for the tip.