2 Year hiatus Issue
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contents 4.- 6. Orcas & seattle 7.- 8. Oregon 2010 9. Risers 10. Donald 11. Wez Lundry 12. Planking 13. Dropout wheels 14. Dean lane 15. Evergreen skateparks 16. Zorlac 17. Hemel Bowl 18. Gabrielle 19. -21. Arizona 2011 22. MiniRamp - San Diego 23. Copenhagen 24. 25. Belgium 26. Ireland 27. Playing Place 28. Nice 29. SD Pool 31. barnstaple 32. Birmingham 33. Belfast 34. Bushey 35. plymouth
Issue 3 – 2012
Well this is the final one. Can’t think of doing another one any time soon. Will probably do a blog like my hero Wez Lundry http://wordsofwezdom.blogspot.co.uk/ My words of advice would be along the lines of; When you want to travel the world skateboarding, it’s probably a good idea to have a job for a while first, to earn the money you are going to need to make the trip. The fact that you want to go to all the cool skate spots but don’t know anyone or have any idea where the spots are is going to cause you a few problems. To get the network of people who know the spots, can look after you & who will actually want to take you with them takes effort; I’m sorry to say this shit just doesn’t fall in your lap like all the stuff Mummy has done for you so far.
36. Cates – death Miniramp 37. Duval 38. East london
OK so now this is sounding like the words of a bitter & twisted old bloke, well it is. When I hear a pro skater telling me he just wants to travel the world & be taken to all the cool spots by people who don’t even know him & that somehow because he is sponsored - this is his right. Yeah it makes my blood kind of boil. Get involved, build shit, volunteer, make friends with people who are true skaters. Go on road trips, get your own damned car, make trips on your own, the sky won’t fall on your head, I promise. Friends you make this way will last forever & the fun will be indescribable. As has been said so many times before, every day is a gift, enjoy it.
Jack marsh Lincoln city
COVER Catherine Coulon skating Windells when the big extension was just finished; built with the help of Billy Coulon from Evergreen Skateparks. 2
Grosso is still going strong
BIRDS LOVE DROPOUT WHEELS - THAT’S OFFICIAL
Wez lundry ripping the newer West Seattle bowl, to say he is an inspiration is a bit of an understatement. Later on, we’ll see him in Arizona.
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Orcas Island gets a bashing from Curls. Seems like a long time ago. He has had some adventures on his round the world trip. Â
ORCAS ISLAND 4
The fact that Curly travelled solo to Orcas to meet us at the park at 10 am on the Wednesday morning still amazes me. He is a determined guy & as you can see, he skates nice. He had a few stories to tell; of the guys who had given him hitch-hike lifts to make it there. We saw other interesting stuff on Orcas, the fence chains from a WW2 battleship & the nice pool in the Hotel, also the stained glass windows in the Theatre bit with a lovely view of Antwerp. The English Camp was also awesome. The Hotel on Orcas is amazing, it has battleship chains around the front garden, a pool in the back, which looks skatable & this stained glass window of Antwerp harbour. They say it’s a small world & they are correct.
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Sarah at Orcas
Bainbridge. It did dry out..
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Billy blasting, at Newburg, one of the best parks around.
Newburg OR, the Berg. An example of how to build a park that more than one person can skate at any one time. This is a park-builders favourite park. Say no more.
Love those Brothers! Drive in Coffee Portland style, it’s the future. We even got one here at Stansted Airport, by Mid stay terminal (Starbucks)
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There is beauty in so much around us. Be it in a bucket of trowels, a digger in a muddy field or an expertly floated air.
Billy Coulon, digging.
Gunn, Windells
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When you need risers (your friend gave you a bigger board) & all you can find is some roofing felt & a coke box.. Then follow this simple guide. Sadly it won’t improve your skating though.
Cut roofing felt to size & push on to bolts.
Check you have enough rise.
Same with Coke box cardboard.
Don’t forget to put the nuts back on.
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Where the Quack is Donald?
Gun Culture
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11th Best Ramp Skater of 1988 in front of 3rd Starbucks in the world. Note 2 & half fingers only; kids be careful when working on the rear suspension of old motorcycles...
Strolling in AZ. Always a good collection of pools. Look out for the sticker on the top step
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Planking, all the rage in Portland. Boardslides too. Matt Spinney shows how. Just round the corner from the new DIY minipark on Brooklyn St.. Zach is showing some hippies how to grind below.
Portland Bridges, there are plenty of them. On one & leaving on a jet-plane, from above.
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Advertisment Feature - DROPOUT WHEELS
Zach Connolly, started DROPOUT wheels a few years ago, they are rock hard & wider than the average wheel. Buy them from your local dealer. UK see me, USA see Zach & Lincoln Nass.
Dietsches knows how to skate pools, he also likes Dropout wheels, he is a very nice man.
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The Deaner, Dean Lane, Brizzle. Call it what you will. It is an historic skate spot, now it is all shiny & new. These snaps were taken a year or so ago.
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Integrity; quite a word. When you look it up in my dictionary, it says *see Billy & Catherine Coulon*. The work Billy has done in getting Windells built, initially as Six Feet Under & then as Evergreen, also building Commonwealth along the way, speaks for itself. There is no finer Park Building Company. Maybe this is a biased view? Nah. Just one little story to relate. In Shrunken Head, Billy walks in & a young skater is in the shop looking at everything under the glass counter. “Hi, what are you looking for”. “Wheels, mine are worn out”. Also he needs a board, his is knackered. Billy gives him a new set of wheels & gets a hardly used board out of the van for him. I think he did buy something else from the shop, but to me this is how skating should be. I guess he will remember Billy & the kindness for a long time.
h
Mount Hood, Windells is down there. 15
ZORLAC
What can you say about the Kingpin of UK skateboarding ? Well he gets the job done in so many ways & if everyone had 10% of his passion for skating, the world would be a far better place. Hemel, what a lucky, lucky man he is. No luck I know, but that place is awesome & he doesn’t live far away... 16
Zarosh & Soup came over to UK in 2010 to build a bowl at Dick’s place. It got the subscribe page in Thrasher with Cates dressed as a bee. Dick’s bowl, one of the finest skate spots in the land. Built with the assistance of Zorlac. Some amazing things have happened here; Dickfest being one of them. What can be achieved when you want something badly enough....
Dick – Double Trucker 17
Gabrielle – Method Air
Lovely ladies in Gabrielle, How often you see 3 good lady skaters at a park together? No thought not. 18
Slappy Sunday at Fountain of Youth, skate here to prevent ageing.. Mikey shows how.
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Land of endless summer. Countless unbelievable pools; all of which are so much harder to skate than they look. There are strange characters too.
ARIZONA ARIZONA
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For someone who grew up in a small town in Essex, this was pretty mind blowing. Everything about Arizona is awesome, the pools, if you have a good guide, are unbelievable . This is the Spanish pro golfers pool. A permission skate, but getting harder to access. Livi’ is a skater some will recognise. He shows no respect for these walls.
Travelling down & back from Oregon to Az, some random sights
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From AZ back alley to SD back yard. Sweet, sweet pool coping
Andy’s ramp. Visiting Andy’s in San Diego was great, we spent 2 days building this little mini. Sadly the day it was ready to skate, it rained. The coping was collected from being dumped in an alley in Tempe, AZ. It has a far better home here. Andy enjoyed the skating we did manage to do.
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Copenhagen, a place where McDonalds & Burger King can’t compete with a pretty girl. A place where you can skate an indoor bowl for free in a hippy commune. I miss my old job a lot.
Mechelen has been upgraded a great deal in the last few years & is a must visit spot in Belgium now. It is at Dounaplein, by the railway tracks.
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Antwerp in Belgium. Make sure you go past Eindhoven & Kortrijk on way there / back & don’t forget Mechelen. Any how, the place is a skaters paradise & going for a beer run with Koen & Steevo was one of the serious highlights of my year. When you see Koen shred the Team Pain Pool, your eyes may fall out, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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Koen in Antwerp Team Pain Pool. Big Wheels.
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IRELAND – BUSHEY & WATERFORD
Bushey, built with help from Airspeed. It shows. As is often the case when you get to a nice park. You need to skate it dry as you haven’t bought a broom with you.
Greystones. If it isn’t raining now it will be soon.
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Playing Place needs no introduction. If you are in Cornwall, look it up. Take a broom!
Nice Tattoo’d pig 27
Nice is very nice, the seafront is great for skating & the general vibe is so mellow. There are loads of cool ledges & benches just opposite this apartment block. My camera was drawn to this side of the road more though.
Good pavements are something to be really appreciated. There are Nice ones here..
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San Diego has some nice spots. This one has a camper which almost looks OK to stay in. The area is a bit of a bust & care is needed to get in & out. Zach & Nate showed me how to skate this one. While we had rationing in the 50s, places like this were being built on the other side of the world.
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We stopped for gas here, the scale & quality of this ditch spot is hard to imagine, it was very hot though.
Random Pools
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LoMo drops in on Wez Lundry. Duval is up there. At the west Seattle bowls LoMo was killing it, he knows those bowls very well, like most skaters from the NW he just seems so mellow. “Yeah I have got a few lines in here – I used to practically live here & must have done over a thousand laps.” The coping at Duval is amazing, it’s that firecracker stuff with gravel sticking out of the blocks. The deep end is way deeper than it looks here & LoMo’s roll in & general skate ability is insane.
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West Seattle Bowls, Lundry is grinding one on page 3. Hallowed ground
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Birmingham, England’s second city; it is big & has parts you wouldn’t want to be alone in at night. One such spot is this one. Recently completed when I went there. Hopefully a little skate community has sprung up to keep it nice. This is one I would not expect to flourish. Please prove me wrong people of Whitacre Rd. You are so close to Heartlands Hospital - so it won’t be far to crawl when trying to loop the loop... Just looked on Sidewalk Forum, no joy so far.
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Belfast, boom & bust, it has seen it all. There are some nice spots at the harbour, the banks above & steps below are on each side of the Hilton Hotel. There is still a lot of surveillance equipment around & the city feels a bit shabby to me. There is a nice new skatepark under the road bridge now.
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DropOuts now available in 58s.
Plymouth did have this skate park, I believe it is now gone...
Truro, in case you haven’t seen it. There is a nice miniramp, but apparently it was gonna be vert, but then the vert bit didn’t get built so it has a too mellow a transition really. Just saying.
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Dan Cates is a fine artist.
The House of Doom has a miniramp, this is not a state secret, it was in very poor condition last year & the task of rebuilding it was carried out by volunteers. At the beginning of the job Andy Vost & I ripped the flatbottom up & Nick got a load of wood delivered. Fixing up a rotten ramp is not a pleasant job & it took a good few months before it was back in this condition of rude health. There was a Sidewalk photoshoot here on this day & Crazy Pete & Dan put on a show.
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East London, a fine part of the world, what with the Olympics this year & everything. Come Visit! The skateparks have increased in number; the secret BMX park in Tottenham is now not so secret. Hackney Bumps are still there. Vicky Park has been jumped across by the Essex grown Ben Reamers. Clissold Park has a cool deep bowl & shallow small bowl, was full of old guys on roller skates when I went. Mile End has a skate shop at the park, nothing stays the same. I have never been to Mudchute. There is also a new nice little concrete park near the ROM, not seen that yet either.
This is a spot for big wheels & not recommended when the kids are out of school.Hackney is a real upmarket area now. Vicky Park 38 is so close by, you wouldn’t realise how bad things used to be here.
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This is one of the best bowls in AZ. 40