austin skate notes

Mark your calendars lovers of anarchy, skateboarding, and vice. The long-awaited documentary, “Who Cares” is going to premiere at Beerland June 1st. This is the same film that has been advertised in all the skate mags as “coming soon” for the past four years or so. Although I try to avoid obsessing on the past of skateboarding, I really enjoyed what Stacy Peralta did with “Dogtown & Z-Boys.” I’m looking forward to the dramatization of that saga in the forthcoming “Lords of Dogtown,” too. But man, I’m hungry for this Duane Peters documentary.

Remember how in the Z-Boys movie, Skip Engblom and his Zephyr team turned that silly contest upside down? Those kooks were doing like handstand tick-tacks and other gymnastics while guys like Jay Adams were so full of energy, they expressed themselves with cannonball hops across the flat. They were out to wreck the anemia that had defined skateboarding up to that point. And they did.

Fast forward a few years, and skateboarding once again had gone commercially lame. Groups like the National Skateboard Association and the California Amateur Skateboard League pushed skateboarding as a wholesome sport, devoid of the revolutionary soul that fired up those articles written by Craig Stecyck years earlier. “Radical!” was defined by Mike McGill. Fortunately, there was Duane Peters headbutting the world of skateboarding. I’m not going to try to claim that DP singlehandedly injected punk rock into skateboarding. But I will say that Duane stands as a strong representation of punk rock and skateboarding merging in the late seventies / early eighties. Besides that, he’s an astonishing testimony to the human body’s durability.

Here are the details–

WHERE: Beerland (711 Red River)
WHEN: June 1st, 2005. Doors open at 7:00pm. Documentary screens at 10:00pm. Skate videos before. Bands afterwards.
WHAT: Who Cares?!? Austin Premiere, Free Pizza by Slices and Ices (2530 Guadalupe St.), Volcom Raffle
WHO: Music by the Ape Shits and the Kodiaks.
WHY: Benefit for the DIY concrete bowl project under the bridge
COST: $5 — all of the money raised goes to buy concrete.

Because of zoning restrictions, Beerland is limited to admission by those 21-and-up, only. Here is a trailer for Who Cares?!?

Twitter This

User Name: Password:

So much to report on and so little time. Can’t even attempt to polish it all up, so I’ll just dump it all out here on the table.

Michael Sieben’s monthly piece in Thrasher just came out again this past week. Great article about the first game of S.K.A.T.E over at Peyton’s house. Some of the best coverage of Sewing Machine I’ve ever seen outside of Austin Skate Notes.

Hung out with Sam, the eldest of the Sewing Machines, on Saturday. Funny fucking guy, Sam is. We skated out at the Red River Slab (aka Town Lake Slab) with Adam, Fletcher, Josh, and some other guys. Looks like a new flatrail showed up out there. This one’s long and straight. Also, someone fixed up the anchoring on that kinked flatrail. Fletcher was going off with nollies to frontside boardslides on it. Maybe I missed the memo, but I just haven’t seen that in real life before.

Stopped by and chatted with Doug King who was in the midst of building a crazy new bowl at the Skatepark of Austin. It’s a short bowl with a big over-vert shell. No photos, but it looks like a bigger radius than the steakhouse at BFR and more over-vert. The design for the bowl is terrific. Two good 45′ hips and a slingshot into the oververt.

While the Skatepark of Austin is improving on its offerings, it looks like the Hugh Jazz skatepark west of Austin is being forced to reduce its size. The landlord upped the rent, so to stay solvent, the HJS is decreasing its square footage by perhaps a half. Way to go, greedy land baron.

Speaking of people hurting skateboarding for the sake of a buck, it looks like Skatewave is bringing their demo team to Round Rock July 19th to promote their prefabricated ’skatepark solutions.’. This is specifically the company used by Dave Carnie to illustrate in Big Brother magazine why Modular Skateparks are Evil. Note to future-pros-in-training: Always maintain an exit strategy for when your pro career is coming to a close. Try to go out a king, not grovelling around the smelly floor of a Greyhound station servicing the nutsacks of however many johns it takes to pay your electric bill.

Twitter This

User Name: Password:

Monday was a pretty busy start to what looks like a hectic week for me. The KUT interview by Larry Schooler was really cool. He did a terrific job fitting so much information into such a short segment. The record should reflect, however, that I never invited Toby Futrell to the skate contest last year. Laurie from Tekgnar set that event up and deserves the credit for bringing Ms. Futrell. It was also nice that he covered the Round Rock skatepark effort in the same story.

After work, I hooked up with Kristin and we went to a reception for musicians at the new City Hall building. I don’t know how I got on the invite list to that, but there was plenty of free beer, chips, and queso. We were all dressed up in our fancy reception clothes, so we decided to stop by at a renegade concrete pour underway nearby. Looking all fancy, we figured it would be a good excuse to keep us out of doing any work. We found a small crew smoothing out a couple of fresh concrete transitions in a ditch. Looks better than their previous installation, which surprisingly is still there. They said people shouldn’t skate this crete for a few days so it can cure properly. That’s why the last stuff was crumbling.. It hadn’t cured properly before we skated it.

A happy birthday goes out to Adam, Kevin, Ben, and some girl Ben knows from England who’s in town this week. An eighties metal birthday party is planned for T1 this evening to celebrate all these people being born on this day.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of experiencing my first Texas Roller Girls event at Playland. I had received a complimentary ticket from a Ms. Kitty Kitty Boom Boom. Good times. Normally, I’m a big fan of sensationalistic stuff, but I wasn’t so much into the girl fights as I expected. I was totally caught up in the athleticism of the competitions. It’s crazy watching those women rollerskate in packs weaving amongst each other. Very impressive. Wish the matches would have run longer. The only thing that bugged me was the ticket price of $12. At that price, it’s a little steep to bring a date or attend regularly. On the plus side, though, Playland is a non-smoking venue. The huge crowd in attendance should reassure bar owners who are concerned about the recently-passed smoking ban. High ticket prices and no smoking (inside) hasn’t conspired to hamper the popularity of this event.

We finally got our hands on the new skate video, Beer Helmet. It’s fantastic. Get it ASAP. It’s got the best Lance Mountain footage of any video I can think of. There’s also more footage of Carbondale Run in Beer Helmet than in the Thrasher KOTR video, which is also really good– way better than the first KOTR video.

Twitter This

User Name: Password:

With the steadily-rising price of plywood suppressing new-ramp construction, it looks as though 2005 might be a breakout year for DIY concrete skate projects. In Austin alone, I’ve seen small additions made to that slab by Town Lake and that ditch. Meanwhile, skaters in Houston have succeeded in getting the city to officially designate the EZ-7 ditch as a public skatepark and they’ve got the go-ahead to build skate extensions at that spot. They’ve already built the cool transition-to-wall setup pictured here. Not to be outdone, some Austin skaters have now begun a covert project beneath a bridge that looks to have the potential to become a TexMex Burnside. Sam, the eldest of the Sewing Machine Brothers, is coordinating that project. Interested contributors should call him @ 773-6549 to participate.

Following the skating-on-concrete thread… While Austin has been moving glacially slow to build the right kind of public skatepark, Round Rock seems to be supercharged to build the wrong one. Upon reviewing a video tape of the City Council meeting I spoke at two weeks ago, I’ve found out that after the skateboarding representatives left the meeting, a pretty insane concept was revealed by the Parks and Recreation representatives. Round Rock Parks and Recreation, a department within a city that is absolutely FLUSH with cash and resources, is seriously proposing that the city purchase the used prefabricated playground equipment currently being called the Texas Ski Ranch Skatepark. Setting aside the long and rich history of problems with that facility, I find it astonishing that Round Rock would buy USED playground equipment for its kids. Are they shopping Goodwill to equip the highschool football team with used helmets and shoulder pads? It’s hard to believe how they’ve marginalized skateboarding and chosen to elevate baseball and other team sports that only allow participation by the most athletic of students. Any Round Rock citizens who care about getting a street plaza or other type of quality public skateboarding facility up there must hook up with Darrell (djlhome(at)gmail.com) to rally support for Round Rock doing the right thing for its skateboarders.

On the plus side of this Round Rock craziness, San Marcos skateboarders could really come out ahead. Not only will they soon have the San Marcos Public (concrete) Skatepark built by the city, if Texas Ski Ranch can palm that albatross off on some penny-pinching town, rumor has it that they’re planning on replacing it with a street plaza styled concrete facility.

Twitter This

User Name: Password:

Saturday was a busy day in Austin. Just the night before, a game of SKATE at Peyton’s found Ryan Holloway as the victor with ATX’s Carter coming in a very close second. I had tried to premiere Drew Pickle’s "No Fun" skate video after the contest, but the borrowed projector was too dim for anyone to be able to see it. Whoops. Technical difficulties likewise sabotaged my digital camera, so I don’t really have any good photos from the event.

Saturday, Kevin and I voted in the city election. A lot was at stake. For starters, the leading environmentalist city council member, Daryl Slusher, had resigned, so this election would allow voters to select his replacement. Developers were looking to replace him with a pro strip mall / big-box candidate. It was essential that anyone concerned about the aquifer, Barton Springs, the greenbelt, etc. vote in this election. Fortunately, the politicos in Austin pulled a brilliant move to mobilize younger 20 & 30-something voters to come to the polls. They put a massively divisive initiative on the ballot that would ban smoking in bars. FINALLY. Something that would get apathetic proles to recognize that voting affects them. This was like the gay marriage issue for republicans in the November ‘04 election. As a result, the ‘keep austin weird’ constituency showed up in stronger numbers than ever before and elected Lee Effingwell as Daryl Slusher’s replacement. The smoking ban also passed, which will bring breathability to Barfly’s.

After the voting, Kevin and I visited the SPACE gallery on Airport Blvd. adjacent to I Luv Video. There was an opening for a photo show by Peter Beste. He hung out with all those Norwegian black metal guys and shot all these really great portraits of them.. Pretty excellent photos. Following up this photo show is a related documentary screening at the Alamo Drafthouse for $1– Metal Storm: The Scandinavian Black Metal Wars on monday @ 9:45 pm. The art show will run through the 21st of April at SPACE.

Twitter This

User Name: Password:

In the cross-decade effort to bring a public concrete skatepark to Austin, a huge landmark was reached this afternoon. Beginning at 8:00am until 3:00pm, construction companies were allowed to deliver sealed bids to the city of Austin proposing prices they would charge to build Austin’s first concrete public skatepark. Because of long-standing regulations, this contract would go to the company which had submitted the lowest bid. Normally, lowest-bid selection could result in a dangerously inexperienced contractor winning the project. Fortunately, the Request For Proposals written by Austin’s Parks & Recreation Department tightly defined the qualifications necessary to submit a successful bid. The company would need to have five years of experience building concrete skateparks and have completed three or more projects during that period.

The winning low-bidder through this process is the same company that designed the skatepark– Grindline Skateparks of Washington. After Amarillo and San Angelo, Austin will be the third Texas city to boast a Grindline park. Groundbreaking is expected to take place in June.

For those who haven’t checked their calendars lately, SKATE will be played at Peyton’s carport tonight. Show up at 7:00 pm or so. This is that monthly competition you’ll be reading about in a major skateboarding magazine soon.

Twitter This

User Name: Password: