Here’s a video from a shop in Atlanta called Stratosphere. These guys went on on a road trip to a land of magical concrete that looks amazing, I wish I knew where all these parks were…. Oh yeah. Dang that Lincoln City looks fun. Check out the vid after the jump. – Thanks to Eric Fleming for the tip.

Paul Fujita over at Cal Skate was telling me about a kid in the shop who wanted to buy the “Mr D” board up on the wall. Turns out he was talking about the Merde board. This is technically the first “feature” I’ve posted for 2010, considering the last one was just leftover pictures from the 2009 Trifecta. Some things that used to be “features” now end up as blog posts, but then again I haven’t been doing a lot of the more in depth stuff this past year. On top of that, none of what I’m typing right now is very interesting. I think the only reason Egbert submitted this was because he heard me call out everyone out who professes a serious interest to contribute and then disappears after a month. Don’t let that stop you from checking out the Merde Summer 2010 roadtrip story.

Polson, Montana was my last stop on my mini Montana tour. Again, much smaller overall footprint than I thought from seeing previous pictures. I almost forgot to mention in all this, when looking up all these skateparks in Montana, the first link to come up was usually NorthwestSkater.com. Want to see what I mean? Try Googling “Polson Montana Skatepark.” Polson Montana’s skatepark was built by Dreamland, and it’s a fine park. I remember somebody, somewhere bitching about the hood on that cradle, saying it was a waste of money that could have been spent on something else. I’m pretty sure that was in the same conversation that someone was complaining about Whitefish…

I’ve been staying at a ranch out in the middle of nowhere, Montana. One of the staff heard me mention wanting to travel into Missoula to check out the skatepark. Turns out I could cut my drive time down from one hour to 15 minutes. The little town of St Ignatius, population 811, has a skatepark. St Ignatius is near the Flathead Indian Reservation, and in fact Native Americans made up approximately 40% of the population in the last census. St Ignatius received a Tony Hawk Foundation grant in 2006. That grant helped fund phase 1 of the park. Phase 2 of the park was completed by Dreamland on July 8th.

Check out this sometime blurry, but often rad video of the Small Beating crew touring Santa Cruz. – Thanks to Freakbeatfuzz for the tip.

Nothing epic here just some average skating. It is the 3rd annual Fall Road Trip this year we went to the desert. Stage #1 Irrigon Pendelton Milton-Freewater. These parks were fun and wide open as you can see from the footage they were Ghost parks. Stage #2 Bend Madras And Redmond with the Sharps and the Kilwags The footage is boring but it was a great trip maybe you can join us next year. Grover out.

I don’t know exactly where this park falls in the Dreamland timeline. I think it happened after the initial Lincoln City park, but before Newberg. In fact, the park isn’t listed on the Dreamland web site, (Update: It is actually. – I think wasn’t there at one time, and I was going from memory.) and the physical sign on site credits “Mark Scott Construction LLC.” I’ve heard a lot of smack talk about the Redmond park, so I was prepared for something hideous, but it really wasn’t bad. You can tell it’s early on in the evolution though.

I forgot I had taken a few photos at Madras until the one of the kids in the pics emailed me and asked for them. So here you have the Madras, Oregon skatepark, built by Dreamland. It’s a nice little park about an hour outside of Bend, Oregon. The combi bowl is fairly deep, but everything else is pretty small. There’s a nice spine and plenty of odd bits of skate terrain to screw around on. The locals are colorful and friendly. There’s also a bathroom and electrical outlet. Not a destination park per se, but if you are anywhere in the area you should definitely check it out. Don’t get too excited about the Black Bear Diner. The onion rings were really tasty, but the rest of the food was dry and bland, and the waitresses look like they subscribe to Sensible Women’s Wear Daily. I don’t know what that means, except to say that if you’ve ever seen the HBO show Big Love, think of the compound.

I was excited to get an invitation to join Wally Inouye, Chris Strople, and Bryce Kanights on a four day trip to the Treasure State. Wally and Strople were childhood heroes of mine and I have been meaning to get up to check out the Montana skateparks for the last several years. Read the story at Antigravity Press

This is a shot of a Salem local named Billy who was visiting the Redmond, Oregon skatepark at the same time we were there over the weekend. Enlarge-o-rama.