Spohnranch has a new street plaza opening in the Inglewood neighborhood of Wilmington California. It’s replacing some prefab ramps with prefab concrete. They actually placed the whole park on the existing slab, traced it, and then cut out the concrete and laid the new pieces in place. They predict a lot of communities will be replacing metal and wood prefab parks this way as it allows them to avoid the expense of re-pouring all the flat. Seems like it would work fine for a street plaza. This one was co-designed by Paul Rodriguez Jr. and features replicas of LA spots including the DWP granite benches, Fairfield ledges and LA High banks. They have a Flickr stream of the installation and a short video that you can watch after the jump. Not much to it really. The park is located at 325 Neptune Ave, Wilmington, CA 90744. Opening ceremony is September 27

Drove by this house today on the way to the skatepark for a quick session. I know I’ve driven by it more than a handful of times, but this is the first time I noticed it. It looks more fun in person than it does in the pictures. I blurred the house out because I don’t want to give the owners a headache if they don’t already have one, plus the guy came home as I was standing in the street with my camera, blocking his driveway. I will say that it’s near Glenhaven skatepark in Portland.

This is Gou Miyagi’s part in something called “Overground Broadcasting,” a film by The Far East Skate Network. FESN apears to be based out of Japan, but the video has a lot of European and US footage as well. I was hooked on this video in the first 50 seconds. Watching Gou Miyagi immediately brought to mind Natas as well Patrick Melcher and Richie Jackson. Call me shallow, but that’s who I thought of. Although that may be because that list exhausts every street skater that I can claim any knowledge of having a particular style. I especially dug the shove it Natas spin. I suppose if I don’t say “Mark Gonzales,” someone will rant at me in the comments. There’s a lot of show stoppers in the vid, but I don’t want to spoil them. Just watch it, you won’t be disappointed. Great skating, good editing and presentation as well. I need to track down this video. – Thanks to Casey Morrow for the tip.

First of all, thanks for all the tips, warnings and encouragement I’ve been getting via comments and email. I wasn’t sure how this would go over, so it was a nice surprise. Alright you sissies… Day two. I didn’t have time to go to a skatepark, and I don’t have a ramp in my yard, but I was able to spend about 20 minutes in the street. I figured if the only thing I did was work on the motion of grabbing and getting airborne a little it would still be time well spent, and I think I’m right. The act of reaching down, grabbing and planting still feels foreign to me, so the more I do it, the more it becomes second nature. I decided to work on de-stinkbugging it too, reaching around the front leg instead of between. If I learn them this way I won’t have to unlearn a bad habit.

I practically got crucified by a usually upbeat and positive entity for checking out this spot under the pretense of potential fun. Sure, the asphalt is a little rough, but… Who am I kidding? I’ll never hop that fence unless… Click to enlarge

Pointless Pics. This is Gabe Stoltz transferring from roof to roof. Does that count as street skating? I just noticed he’s got two different pant legs. Click to enlarge.

We’re looking forward to more progress at Brotherhood Plaza in Stockholm Sweden. I may have had a Swedish girlfriend for about 15 minutes once in the 90’s, although I ‘m not sure she’d agree. I’d like to see something like that here. (The DIY street plaza, not my Swedish pretend ex-girlfriend. She said she was some sort of youth sailing champion. Elena, where are you? No, don’t answer that, I’m married with kids.) I did hear back from David Krug, the man behind Brotherhood. He shed a little light on the D.I.Y. street plaza project. There’s a lot of photos on the official site, but not a lot of actual information. In fact I think his short email says more than the official site, at least in English.

One stop on the recent Bacon tour of Sweden was the Brotherhood Plaza (Skarpnäck?) in Stockholm. The big shot above is Tim Johnson as taken by David Krug. David has been the driving force behind the plaza for the past four years. It’s essentially a Burnside-style sanctioned D.I.Y. skatepark, except instead of being tranny-centric, it’s all street plaza. The place looks like a fertile spot for many fun sessions. This isn’t a plaza with existing obstacles being sanctioned for skating, it’s built from the ground up for skateboarding. You can’t get a good overview from the few pictures above, you really need to spend some time checking out the photos and video on the Brotherhood Plaza web site. Bonus: After the jump you’ll find three pictures from Bacon’s visit.

Since the early days of riding in pools, the object has always been to try and make over the light, or death box, or some other obstacle. If an obstacle doesn’t exist, the impetus is there to create your own. This looks like a fun little spot. Jeff doesn’t say where it is, but methinks it’s in or near Charleston, West Virginia.

This week’s Shot of the Week is a spot in the Boston area that was known as the Black Hole ditch back in 1986 when the photo was taken. If I recall correctly, the reason it had that name had something to do with the temperature of the asphalt ditch in the hot summer sun. Nothing fancy, just one of those nostalgia shots. This is on my Boston trip negatives, but for all my lack of geographic knowledge of the area and memory loss, this might have been in the outlying burbs. Check it out.