London Pictures of some DIY action sent in by Stefan Hauser of Placed to Ride Skateparks. He stumbled on this project while passing through the UK. Stockwell park, Brixton, London.

This is what we do in the rain. Troy has a nice 20ft wide mini in his back yard, built by John, who has the thing f-ing wired. It’s fun to watch him boardslide and slam into the side of the oververt section before pulling it back in. Well constructed and fun to ride, just not well documented here… Sure, if you’re standing by a hot light it smells like the inside of one of those wax mold souvenir machines, but just barely. It’s a small price to pay for fun in the no-sun!

We flew Mark Conahan on an all expenses paid trip to ASR, and put him up in the most luxurious of hotels… Not really. Actually, he was already going and footing the bill himself, so we asked him to make some observations and take some pictures if he felt like it. What follows is an outsider’s take on the industry show, or in Mark’s own words “I suppose it’s a warning not to attend the show unless you like going to the mall.” Well done Mark. September 9-11, 2005 Action Sports Retailers Trade Show, San Diego Convention Center This is a show to sell paraphernalia related to skateboarding as well as a few unacceptable lifestyle choices. It’s companies selling to buyers from stores. I went to San Diego for the show but mostly to go skateboarding. FRIDAY We landed about 5:00 in San Diego. First thing we did was head to Washington Street to check out the Burnside-style DIY skatepark. really easy to find: just Northeast of the Airport and a few blocks from the rental car place. The session was going off. Omar Hassan was there skating but he wasn’t necessarily the best dude there. I expected the session…

Move a long folks. Nothing to see here. One Saturday I get the call to go goof around on some banks. “Bring your camera, but I’m not going to cooperate for the photos.” Let’s go in the middle of the hottest part of the day with the harshest light. Ah well. Daddy was a bank robber. He never hurt nobody. You the viewer, are about to be robbed of a well executed and photographed feature. This what you want. This is what you get. You can’t always get what you want. 27 frames per second coming to a GVK near you. A burned out van greeted us at our first destination. Was it a harbinger of disaster or just your normal meth casualty? Bum Piss Banks Can you guess what this spot smell like? I think you can. Rockhound Bank Outside a rock shop. Stones, not Rolling Stones. This was a short session because the fence owner got pissed. Church Bank Bone Man – Church bank R&R slide. Jersey Barrier DIY Wes started this project. Expect fancy pictures of this spot in fancy magazines soon.

It’s once again time for the Oregon Trifecta. Outside of the arena events, the Trifecta is the highest profile skateboarding events in Oregon. Last year’s event raised the bar from one World Cup Event to three consecutive days. Trifecta! Duh. When the dust settled in ’04 there were a few gripes about some of the judging and the heavy manners of the Aumsville Gestapo/Police, but the intense skating during the Jam format, particularly in West Linn, made it seem like the Trifecta was finally going to put Oregon on the contest map. With the City of Aumsville preemptively backing out of this year’s event, day three was moved to Newberg, and the biggest possible obstacle to fun seemed to be overcome. Everyone expected bigger and better. However, Volcom covered a large part of costs last year. As a recent new publicly traded company, corporate bean counters decided not to fund the purse as heavily, leaving local scenester Choppy Omega to foot more of the bill.* Highlights: The skating, of course. The local fields were huge this year. So each day witnessed the non-ranked entries being fed through quick jams in meat grinder fashion in order to thin the herds for…

McMinnville, Oregon Skatepark: Posted 8-15-05 McMinnville has a new park built by Dreamland. It’s small park that is mostly street oriented. The street course has transitions on opposing sides and steel coping. On one side there is a channel and extension with pool coping. Nothing fancy, but still it looks fun. Fun enough to get some of the vert dogs interested. You’ll get almost no photos from me, because I was having too much fun in the small bowl in the back of the park. It’s basically a Mickey Mouse shaped bowl, except the head is slightly stretched out like a capsule and the back wall is almost entirely covered by a giant drainage hole. I’ve heard multiple reasons as to why, most having to do something with the park being located in a flood plain. While I’m sure they could have made a much smaller and more managable hole, the folks at dreamland chose to force the locals (and visitors) to push themselves to adapt. The result also makes the bowl more memorable. In a state like Oregon where there are so many good parks, you might be more tempted to go a little bit more out of your…

Florence, the day after the loop challenge in Reedsport. Another day, another Airspeed skatepark, another Concrete Rodeo contest. The sun was beating down hard and the crowd was sparse and slow to arrive. Everyone was burned out from the day before, but a lot of people still had fun. Steven Reeves came in first in the joust again, followed by Lance Leisher, Matt Kline and Rion Linderman in 4th. Nothing out of the ordinary here except that Matt Kline is probably twice as old as the rest of the placers. Good skating. A&W Root Beer with a drive-through in walking distance… The city of Florence still hasn’t gotten around to planting grass over all the mounds of sand butting up against the concrete, which means that frequent broom breaks were needed to clean the park. [Insert sweeper joke here.] The photographer (me) wasn’t feeling it, so you get to look at a bunch of poorly exposed shots. A lot of these shots aren’t even from the contest. Kilwag photography… where we spell quality with a “K”. The locals and kids were coopoerative and friendly though, so here they are. Smile, you’re on the internet! Contest Results: Girls Ashley, Anderson Ruby,…

The Concrete Rodeo contest series tours through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. 2004 brought the series to Airspeed’s newly completed Reedsport skate park and the first ever “Loop Challenge” anywhere. Last year’s event was a blast. The contest was heated, but the main event was definitely the loop challenge. Four people tried it, but for the most part, nobody came close except Josef Hefner, who managed to slam repeatedly after clearing it to around the 4:00 mark. The judges gave him some extra time, but he couldn’t claim the $1000 purse. They did give him $500 as a consolation. So it would remain that Red would be the first and only person to make the loop, as seen in the highly entertaining Thrasher video Beer Helmet. Well that is until a week or two later that 17 year old Lance Leisher from Roseburg made it. A couple of months later, a 15 year old Rion Linderman would also make the loop, remaining the youngest ever to complete a loop. Take that Duane Peters! In late spring of 2005 Hefner, now calling himself Lindstrom, made the loop on four consecutive tries. Then rumors surfaced about a young guy from the East…

Another year, another trip to Klamath Falls. And since I don’t seem to be able to edit well, here are a bunch of pictures of mostly the same guys. We had about 10 people in a crew, and had the park pretty much to ourselves. Click the pics for captions. Rivers Inn Permission Pool If you stay at the River’s Inn, they’ll let you skate their pool! Now that’s skate tourism at it’s best! Klamath Falls Skatepark Yes, the skatepark. The only people there were from out of town. Pretty much just us and one other guy. Weird.

Dallas Oberholzer interviewed by Stefan Hauser 5-2-05 Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a feature on skateboarding in South Africa, Thanks to Stefan and Placed to Ride Skateparks. Give a little background on yourself and the South African skate scene. Our skate scene is only limited by numbers. Skating in SA is a way of life for few in a mostly mainstream kind of community where sports like Rugby are preferred. Skateboarders are mostly viewed as outcasts and social rejects – much like it was in the 80’s in the USA.