austin skate notes

Sunday morning I fielded a call from Round Rock’s Darrell Lowrance. He said the park was open, so I made a few quick calls and ran down to Mabel Davis to check out the completed public skatepark with Adam and Shannon. Sure enough, there were about 30 people skating and riding bikes around the place. Everyone was stoked. We rode for about 45 minutes before the cops showed up to tell us the facility wasn’t officially opened. Without taking any names, they gathered us all into a group to issue us this warning saying that they’d arrest us next time for criminal tresspass. They said the park would be open on November 14th. So far as I’ve been told, the grand opening is still scheduled for December 2nd, which coincidentally is the same weekend as the Shut Up and Skate contest at the Pipeline Skatepark in Houston. That’s the place built from pieces of the closed Vans park. Here’s a few photos I shot at Mabel Davis during the unauthorized preview session.

Afterwards, we drove over to the refurbished Banana Farm ramp. Mancub and crew have expended a fair chunk of money and energy replacing rotted flatbottom and replacing worn coping which has really freshened-up the ramp. After some issues with trespassers breaking their gate, they’ve clamped down on visitors to the ramp. It was great riding that ramp again.

Saturday, we also travelled out to Copperas Cove to ride a pool at a motel. It was a cool setup with double loveseats and an easy-to-ride shallow end. Here are some photos from that pool session.

Early voting for the Travis County (public skatepark) Bond Package continues until friday afternoon. Here is a link to early voting locations. You can vote at any of those locations regardless of what part of Travis County you live in. Also, you can skip any of the other issues on the ballot. The key one for the public skatepark is the Parks and Open Spaces item.

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On November 8th, Residents of Travis County, have the opportunity to vote for a bond that will
include more than $500,000 for a public, concrete skatepark in
Northeast Metro Park. The election is on November 8th, but early voting
has already started. Here is a flyer with information about all the items included in the bond package.

The skatepark item is the result of many Austin skateboarders and
BMX’ers attending public input meetings for the bond and asking for
this amenity to be included.

The text refers to an in-ground skatepark in order to ensure that
the implementation does not involve prefab, which is usually described
as ‘above ground.’ The design will be created at a later date, and will
be the result of public input from users of the facility.
Skate plaza? The money will certainly be there for one if that’s what skaters want.

Early voting will begin Monday, October 24, 2005 and end Friday, November 4, 2005. While you’re out there voting in favor of this bond, you’ll have the chance to register your opposition to the Texas state constitution being ammended to prohibit gay dudes from getting married. Seriously, the religious fundamentalists who think gays shouldn’t get married are missing the boat on how this is going to help combat the sin of homosexuality. Like right now, there are a lot of guys out there wearing assless leather chaps because they got sick and tired of being nagged by women, "When are we going to get married?!? When are you going to buy me a ring?" If homosexual marriage is allowed, then all these real queeny guys are going to fill that nagging gap and those Village People greatest hits CDs are going to be dumped at Cheapo Discs by the metric thousands.

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The public input meetings for the Austin city bond were well attended by vocal skateboarders, BMX’ers, rollerderbiers, and even just concerned citizens who want to see parks and recreation offerings that better reflect the interests of Austin’s youth. I wish I had the time to really discuss how valuable this strong turnout was. Unfortunately, I’ve spent far too many hours getting the Austin Skate Notes server back online and need to move onto some other stuff ASAP.

I came home tuesday to find a bunch of my buckets missing and and an odd slush of concrete laying in the driveway. My best guess is that one of my roommates went out and concreted something somewhere. So maybe something will pop up out there somewhere….

The pool coping was installed yesterday (wednesday) on the bowl at Mabel Davis. Looks great. It’s the same kind Grindline used at Kokomo.

Doug King’s work on the Smithville public skatepark is temporarily on hold while Doug is out of town building some other skatepark. His crew should be back onsite in a couple weeks pouring concrete. Here are some Smithville pics Carter Dennis has posted on the Sk8SA.org website.

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The City of Austin Bond Advisory Committee will be taking public input for the last time this evening. This input is intended to help guide them towards identifying the projects to be included in a spring bond election. Since these bonds only come along once every five to seven years, this is a critical opportunity to get more skateparks, skate plazas, and BMX parks sooner rather than later. Even if you don’t feel comfortable speaking in public, your presence at this meeting is extraordinarily valuable. You can scribble your thoughts down on a form and hand it in and you can also contribute your 3:00 minutes of speaking time to other skatepark advocates to use. We had a decent turnout at the last meeting, but we really need to blow this one out if we’re going to get the Bond Committee to prioritize support for skateboarding in this city bond package. This bond is entirely separate from the Travis County Bond input process where skaters lobbied earlier this year. Our strong turnout at those meetings is rumored to have convinced the county bond committee to include somewhere around $600k for a public skatepark to be built near Manor.

Progress on the Mabel Davis Public Skatepark in Southeast Austin is cranking along. The street section is almost finished and the Grindline crew is pouring the bowl transitions at a rapid pace. Officials from San Marcos came by the worksite today to check it out and hinted that they may have as much as $300,000 set aside for their skatepark project.

Chris Carrasquillo wrote in with this wrapup of the game of S.K.A.T.E. that was held this past Friday…

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I missed Friday’s game of S.K.A.T.E at Red River Slab due to a birthday party. But on Saturday night I got word of a renegade slalom contest going down in East Austin just an hour before it began. So I headed out there with my camera to find about 15 guys winding between cones down a sloping parking lot on special slalom setups. The event was lit with halogens run off a generator. They even had a timer deal with sensors taped to the asphalt.

It seemed to be an invitation-only event, but hopefully future ones will be held in a more open format. Everyone was having a blast. I don’t have the results, but Cary Jackson told me he got 5th in what was his first ever try at slalom. Gumby won, and also placed 9th with a run he skated switch (or fakie as it were). Here are the photos.

Earlier in the day I hung out at Mabel Davis as the Grindline crew finished up some rebar work on the bowl. It looks phenomenal. As does the street section. The tentative grand opening is to take place November 19th, which is when the pollution cleanup should be finished in the other parts of the park. As a full-package facility, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this is going to be the best public skatepark in Texas when it’s done. Sure, Allen’s larger. Amarillo has a fullpipe. But the street stuff in both those parks is really not very contemporary. It’s still flow bowls with staircases descending into them. I also think this bowl is going to be as fun as Amarillo’s, even without the fullpipe/cradle config. Here are some photos I shot of the bowl.

For those who stopped by Banana Farm on Saturday and missed the work session with Adam, his tools were locked in a garage he didn’t have the keys to, so nothing could be fixed out there. I believe he’s rescheduling it for this saturday. Kevin Trayhan and BMX trail builder, Sunday, have already signed on to help fix the flatbottom over there.

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As rumors swirl surrounding the expected lifespan of the Red River Slab, skaters are squeezing every last drop of fun out of the spot. Brandon and his Electric After Party crew held a cool barbecue there on Saturday with a great turnout. Friday, Oct. 7th, Brown Skateboards / Find and Grind is hosting its monthly game of S.K.A.T.E there. Here are some photos I shot at the barbecue on Saturday.

I was woken up at 9:00 am that morning by a woman calling me asking what clothes she should wear. Christ. That’s a no-brainer. "Wet t-shirt and a thong," I replied. I guess she realised this was my back-pocket answer for any woman asking me that question, because Donylle Green showed up at the Austin City Bond Public Input Meeting with a button-down shirt and jeans on. The rest of the skaters who had come out to advocate for skateparks being included in the bond were similarly well-groomed. They were also extremely well-spoken. Jared Ficklin hit them with numbers and stats on the popularity of similar facilities in other communities. Nathan mended fences with the Mexican-American Cultural Center folks by thanking them for our intrusion on their property with the Red River Slab project. Kevin Mouton answered the assumed question of "how big is necessary?" by telling the Bond Committee Members, "No city has ever said they built too big of a skatepark." Afterwards, the committee members seemed very receptive to the concept. One more input meeting remains.

Following the meeting, Nathan and I drove out to CFAN ditch where we caught the tail end of the fundraiser contest for building the San Marcos public skatepark. Lots of people were rolling around out there, but I forgot my camera’s memory card, so I could only shoot crummy photos with my cellphone. That high-tech gadget was performing double-duty at the ditch as Carjack called me to ask who he should kill over the Duane Peters demo cancelling after he had already cut his massive roadtrip short by a few days to see it. Shit, the guy hangs out for 3 days with naked techno-hippie chicks at Burning Man and he’s crying about missing a skate demo?!? Shouts go out to Red Army Clothing and Conspiracy Skateboards for sponsoring the fundraiser contest.

A few more barbecue photos added to the gallery. Also check Aaron’s superior photos from the CFAN ditch contest and backyard fullpipe session.

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