austin skate notes

Doug King, the man who has done more for Central Texas Skateboarding than any single person I can think of, drove Cary Jackson and Jason Schmale down to the dilapidated ghost town formerly known as the Skatepark of Houston this morning.The three-man salvage crew found no ramps in skateable condition on Orange Grove, but a wealth of sheet metal.

Cary said he and Jason had travelled all over town yesterday shaking skaters down for cash to buy this used metal. Thanks to these generous donations, they arrived in North Houston with $750, which was enough to persuade Cliff to let them load 50 sheets of metal onto Doug King’s trailer, 47 of which are 4 X 12’s. Nice! These 12′ sheets will put the seams in the flatbottom instead of stealing speed on the transitions. They were also able to grab several 15′ lengths of pitted and aged 3" steel coping… some of this might have even provided grinds on the famed Kahuna ramp back in the mid eighties.

According to Carjack, work will begin ASAP to apply this metal to his ramp. If you happen to come across Doug King, be sure to give him big props for again stepping in and helping make something kick-ass happen for the skate scene in Austin.

I spent this evening skating with some of the Southern Star crew. Looks like Grapes has put together a pretty cool website for their operation. Check out the videos if you need something to click on and stare at. Andy Mac reported that there was a really strong turnout for the game of S.K.A.T.E a couple weeks ago in Peyton’s driveway. Competition was fierce with many disputes erupting over the judging. Dave said something like 5 guys probably want to kick his ass for being such a strict judge and disallowing toe drags and step-offs disguised as pushes. The next one will be April 8th, or next friday if numbers are bumming you out. I’ll have more details posted here as they become available.

In other Southern Star news, the tv station, A&E is filming (probably videoing to be precise) a reality tv show about the TX roller derby girls. Peyton said he stopped by Sarah’s house the other day to find Rafael running around in cowboy boots, a pink speedo, and a cowboy hat while an A&E dude video taped him. So now basic cable subscribers have that to look forward to.

Oh yeah, so the Make a Film in a Weekend festival was last night at the Real theater. It was the first opportunity for me, John, Adam, and Kevin to see our film, the LBJ Tapes, since we filmed it three weeks ago. We were incredibly relieved to see everything work out the way we wanted it to and even synch to the soundtrack in most of the critical spots. On top of that, it won top honors in the festival. We were way fucking stoked last night.

UPDATED 3-30-5

Clay, Adam, Aaron the Kid, and I skated the best public skatepark in Texas for Easter weekend. That would be Ingleside, Tx. Five minutes from Corpus Christi. About four hours from Austin.

We ran into new local Aaron of North Skateboard fame. He’s got his own furniture store in Corpus. He said he misses Barfly’s a lot. I’m sure it misses you, too, Aaron. Another local, Jimmy Gonzales, ruled the amoeba bowl. I had so much fun skating the park that I didn’t shoot photos until the end of the session on the second day. Same with video footage. Now on to the review….

Ingleside’s public skatepark is unarguably, the best skatepark in Texas. This park was designed and built by Site Design of Arizona, which to date, hasn’t done a lot to brag about in Texas. Abilene was the first Texas skatepark designed by the company and left much to be desired in terms of challenge, speed, and excitement in general. Then they won the contract for the El Paso skatepark where they designed a pretty fun bowl and a large street course. Midland was the third Texas city to implement a Site Design concept and got a pretty good skatepark out of it. Thanks to RCMC (the actual builders), Midland’s skatepark boasts the smoothest finish of all public skateparks in Texas. Ingleside, however, was the first fully-implemented Site Design skatepark where the company designed and then built the finished product.

Site Design is new to the construction end of the public skatepark business and Ingleside was one of their learning experiences. For starters, the whole park is built above ground-level in a large mound of compacted dirt. Even so, the soil wickes water up from the water table and seeps it through cracks in the concrete such that there are a couple of perpetual puddles in both the bowls. This may have been averted through the use of a poly-liner of some sort. These puddles aren’t that big of a deal, though, and probably won’t lay around much in the heat of the summer.

Word from those involved in the project is that Site Design didn’t assign skilled finishers to the project. The skatepark is generally rough compared to the smoothness of Midland and parks in the Pacific Northwest. But it’s hard to really complain about it slowing your skating down because the local kids blaze their balls off in the bowls while riding shitty, worn-out wheels. Visitors may want to bring a few different sets of wheels to figure out what will work best for them.

The coping is terrific. Pool coping surrounds the entire amoeba bowl while a combination of the proper guage of steel pipe and pool coping encircle the flow bowl. At some spots in the flow bowl, the pool coping tends to stick out too far, but skateboarders can adjust for it and deal.

The street course is generally pretty good. The pyramids are perhaps the best in Texas. They have a proper feathered toe at the bottom and the correct steepness to snap big ollies over. The hubba ledges are way too tall. Sure, there are some kids that are going to pop ollies to 50-50s down them, but forget about switch ANYTHING or even kickflips to ANYTHING. And why Site Design thought it would be a good idea to build two identical hubbas right next to one another is quite the mystery. Street skaters will also be thanking Site Design for years to come for putting a crack at the critical ollie spot at the top of the steps.

The real attraction to the Ingleside skatepark is the bowls. The flow bowl offers plenty of variety including an over-vert pocket, several channels, and a fun pump-hump shallow corner. The channels are my only complaint about the flow bowl. On paper, the channels look like they’ll be fun because you could do tricks from low-to-high or across them. If you were skating a halfpipe, these channels would be plenty of fun because you’d approach them straight-on. I’m guessing that’s how the designer was thinking when he threw them in there. But in practice, the big channels take up valuable wall space when you’re carving and wanting to travel horizontally. You have to pinch your carves lower to avoid the channels, thereby reducing your speed potential.

The amoeba bowl is phenomenal and justifies the 4-hour trip from Austin all by itself. Not many public skateparks sport real pool tile, and the effect in the amoeba is terrific. People have said that after Salba skated it on the grand opening he complemented it as the best skatepark ‘pool’ he’s ever ridden. I fully believe that. It’s a really good balance between the challenge of a backyard pool with vert and the smoothness and proportions of a skatepark structure.

The local radio station that is best to play on your jambox at the Ingleside skatepark is called "Xtreme Radio". Don’t know what channel it is on, but if you are flipping through the stations at 9 minutes after the hour, they’ll have "Metallica on the 9" playing. Unfortunately, it’s usually some recent Metallica garbage, although they did play Seek and Destroy on Saturday morning at 11:09 am. Speaking of the jambox, be sure to bring yours and an extension cord. The Ingleside skatepark provides an electrical outlet, but it’s about 70′ from the amoeba bowl.

Other amenities at the skatepark include a concessions stand, bleachers, attendants, and a teenaged smokers lounge surrounding the front entrance. Admission is $4 a day for non-residents, and $2 for locals. Helmets are the only mandatory safety equipment. Bikes and razor scooters are not allowed in the skatepark.

It was a blast for all of us. No real slams. Lots of speed and fun. Here are the Ingleside photos.

I’ve also hastily thrown together this video footage in a 5mb quicktime download– should download fast as crap. Words of warning– the audio is unexpectedly loud. The URL at the end is incorrect, too. Should be .org, not .com. Wish I would have had more footage of Jimmy Gonzales skating and even just a minute of Aaron the Kid ripping. Aaron took off before I broke out the video camera and what you see of Jimmy is at the end of 2+ days of heavy sessioning.

Adam called me at work today inviting me to a session at the Banana Farm. By the time I got over there Travis was winding his session down, and Adam was not far behind him. So it ended up mainly with me and this fellow named Kyle keeping the session alive. Kyle’s a cool guy that I hardly ever see. Little known fact: Kyle used to work at Custom Sounds in Houston and once assisted in the installation of a stereo system in two of Scarface’s cars. That was back in the late eighties, though, before the Geto Boys got huge. As Travis describes, "Back when Bushwick still had two eyes."

Clay Towery is driving me down to Ingleside tomorrow. We’re going to skate until closing, drink margaritas, then skate some more on Saturday. I hope to have a full report on the new public skatepark with photos up shortly.

In the meantime, there’s this fun skate video trailer to watch. It’s for a skate video by the skate colorado folks. Lots of great skating at a crapload of different skate spots you never see in other videos.

I received a flurry of phone calls yesterday evening on all forms of telecommunications devices that are piped into my house. Almost all of them were from Cary Jackson trying to get ahold of me, Kevin, and Adam. Suddenly, he’s located a source of precious metal with which to surface his monstrous South Austin ramp. Things are moving quickly and he needs to raise about $800.00 to purchase 50 sheets of metal. This is an unbelievable bargain because the going rate for metal right now is somewhere around $60 per sheet. The window of opportunity, he said, is narrow. He’s got to get his hands on the money for this metal by Tuesday of next week so that he, Doug King, and Jason Schmale can travel to pick up the materials. If you are interested in riding a monster mini-ramp this summer, you would do well by donating to this cause.Call Cary Jackson @ 512-689-3230. Here are photos of the ramp. You can mail money to Cary via this address– 2008 Prather Lane, Austin, TX 78704.

Also occurring next tuesday is a screening of the super-8 film I shot a couple of weeks ago. It’s part of the Make A Film In A Weekend (MAFIA) festival to be held at the Real Theater 7:30 pm Tuesday. Something’s wrong with the ASN skate calendar, so I’m posting this event here. It’ll probably cost $5.00 to get in, but that’s but a small price to pay for the information contained in my movie, "the LBJ tapes."

James Juneau is still injured and out of commission with a wrecked knee. His current plan is to save a bunch of money so that he can travel to Thailand to have some kind of orthopedic surgery performed. While explaining this to me last night, he was unclear as to whether his choice of locale was based on the cheapness of the procedure or the skill of the child prostitutes performing orthoscopic knee surgeries in Thailand’s dirt-and-feces covered alleyways.

He still is in (k)need of several thousands of dollars to get back on skateboard. To accomplish this, he’s working like a demon on people’s cars. If you’ve got some repair work you need done on your vehicle, I couldn’t give a better referral than Mr. Juneau. Call him @ 736-8729. The guy is fully ASE certified and the most reliable and trustworthy mechanic I’ve ever known.

I spent this past weekend out near Fredricksburg participating in an annual Jeep Jamboree held on a remote ranch. While I was out scrambling over enchanted rocks in full-on 4 X 4 mode, other Texas skaters were down in Ingleside celebrating the grand opening of a new public skatepark. There has been a lot of anticipation surrounding this park as it looks to be the best public skatepark in Texas for the time being. Screaming Lord Salba was hired to demo at the event while the following retired Texas pros skated for free– Ken Fillion, Troy Chason, and Todd Prince. Comer, Jason Esperseth, the Alternator, Rainey, Chaz Pineda, and a bunch of other folks also sessioned in full force. I’m definitely heading down there for a weekend ASAP. Maybe this weekend… I’ve actually got a pretty nice little Saturday, we’re going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don’t know, I don’t know if we’ll have enough time.

Here are Carter’s photos from the Ingleside grand opening celebration. Wish I could have gone.

While on the topic of beachside skate terrain, that behemoth skatepark in the Cayman Islands appears to be completed. This gargantuan piece of concrete is on an island way far away, just like Orcas. Damn. (note, the picture to the left is not the skatepark in the Cayman Islands — it’s Orcas. Click the link above to see a jaw-dropping photo of the biggest f-ing skatepark in the world.)

I’m not even sure this is newsworthy, but a fellow stopped by my house this morning and picked up a massive industrial pump I’ve had for a while. It can move 38,000 gallons per hour. The man said he’s got a large body of water he’s looking to move. If anything comes of this, there’ll be photos on this website documenting the results.

The other night I went to see a movie at the Paramount called "Kung Fu Hustle" by Stephen Chow. The movie was part of the SXSW movie festival. The longer I live in Austin the more I dislike SXSW. I guess the film festival isn’t so bad, but the music festival really gets my goat. To make it worse, the only band I went to see, VAZ, cancelled. So anyway, I went to see this Stephen Chow movie with Jessica and Billy Wood. While we were looking for seats, Seth spotted us and handed Billy a DVD copy of most of his short movies. I guess that’s an appropriate thing to do at a movie festival. They say that wearing bizarre clothes is appropriate for artists and film makers; Seth must have been playing a real artist that night, because the outfit he was wearing was totally fucked. He had on overalls and this hat with a wide brim that folded up on both sides and was fastened to the sides of the hat with snaps. He was also wearing rope sandals and a bunch of toe rings.

While we were waiting for the movie to start, Billy diagnosed my girlfriend with a rare illness and we learned that Seth had never seen any Stephen Chow movies. Chow has made a ton of movies, but I’d only seen "Shaolin Soccer" (which you’ve probably heard about) and "Gods of Cookery," which is a story about a wayward kung fu student and kung fu gangs in an Iron-Chef-style universe, where a dish called "exploding pissing beef balls" is the mightiest dish in the land. You have to rent it because it’s fucking amazing. (P.S.—Jessica doesn’t really have anything, it’s just that Billy has recently gone back to school and he thinks he knows a lot.)

Stephen Chow’s movies consist of severe kung fu fighting, Abbot-and-Costello-style, slapstick stunts, Monty Pythonesque absurdity, fart jokes, and the like. Kung Fu Hustle is his best film yet. It spoofs a bunch of recent films, has some high-quality potty humor, and top-notch special effects. The kung fu is fierce. Before the movie started we were told that the movie is going to be released nationally in April. There’s no two ways about it, you have to go see it.

LINKS

• Apple trailer—http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/kung_fu_hustle.html
  
  NOTE: The Apple trailer is great. The trailer at the official site ain’t so hot.

• Official site—http://www.sonypictures.com/intl/cn/kungfuhustle/site/index_en.php