austin skate notes

This Saturday from 1:00 PM until midnight Austin will feature arts happenings throughout the downtown area. Yeah, it comes off as an overt attempt to ‘keep-austin-weird-but-not-too-weird‘ and at the same time a great opportunity to do and see some cool stuff. For instance, there’s going to be some folks doing chalk murals on one of the bridges. Veteran pool skater, Johnny Walker, has been commissioned by the city to set up an installation in Town Lake called ‘floating dragon’. There’s also supposed to be a float in the parade that honors the late singer of the Big Boys, Biscuit.

In other news, Steve Kessler has a broken ankle which was self-inflicted while skating the 69 bowl at SPoA. Mancub is off the broken foot list, but Fletcher got on the sprained-as-crap ankle list while skating Mabel Davis before it opened.

Several Austin-area amateur bird watchers have reported sightings of these two rare lovebirds flitting about through the trees. Keep your eyes open, Ornithologists from the University of Texas predict the male will probably migrate to its southern coastal habitat in a few weeks.

My digital camera is officially dead. Fortunately, the manufacturer has acknowledged the problem is widespread among this model and is agreeing to repair it for free even after the warranty has expired. The other plus side to this situation is that my friend from highschool, Brandon, is visiting Austin and has picked up the slack in the ASN photo workload. I’ll be posting some cool photos he’s been shooting shortly. In the meantime, I’m shooting some video phootage myself.

Had a session at Banana Farm last night. lil’ Moot was frustrated by the coping being all janky as well as the platforms and many sheet metal issues and has organized a work session for Saturday. He’s asking for volunteers to come out and help restore the ramp. Show up at 11:00 am Saturday morning. You can also just drop off a sheet of plywood and that’s cool, too, he said.

I’m in Louisville visiting all my family for the holidays. I checked out the site and saw that Seth didn’t put up anything for the holidays, so I thought I’d at least put up a headline that was festive.

Hope you made out with a good haul for Christmas or Hanukkah or Festivus or whatever. I’m looking forward to the Liverpool soccer game against Newcastle United on Boxing Day.

I didn’t get anything skate-related in any of the gifts I got. I could have used some new wheels.

Happy holidays. I’m off to my Uncle Morris’ house to see lots of relatives.

The Think team members who were hanging out in Austin for the past few weeks seem to have run into trouble down in Ingleside. They wanted to demo at the public skatepark, but didn’t want to wear helmets. So they copped an attitude and told Roseletta to fuck off. This is the pad nanny at the park who also was largely responsible for getting it built by the city in the first place. The crowd of skaters got agitated and the cops were called.

I hate the helmet rule and skate fees they charge in Ingleside as much as anybody. It sets a bad precedent that other cities may follow. At the same time, these non-skating city leaders did take skateboarding seriously enough to build a cool facility for skaters and as a comprimise have required users to wear helmets to put their concerns over safety at ease.

Here’s an article in the Corpus Christi-Caller Times about the Think Skate Demo incident. Use this login / password for access– seth@austinpublicskatepark / beavis

Joe Torres, a 16-year-old skater in San Antonio, was killed on Tuesday by a pickup truck driver while he and a friend were skating down the sidewalk on their way to the LBJ Public Skatepark. The pickup truck driver fled the scene and turned himself into the police 24 hours later. This is a tragic loss for Joe’s family, his friends, and skaters across Texas. Carter and Reagan are preparing to hold a fundraiser for Joe’s family sometime in January. I’ll post details as they become available. Below is an article from the San Antonio Express about the tragedy.

Skateboarder dies after pickup hits him

Web Posted: 12/21/2005 12:00 AM CST

San Antonio Express-News

A teenager was killed and another youth was injured when a pickup jumped a sidewalk and struck them both Tuesday night, police said.

The driver of the pickup fled and had not been found late Tuesday.

The incident occurred at about 7:45 p.m. when an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old were riding skateboards south on the sidewalk of Bulverde Road near Thousand Oaks Drive.

A white pickup traveling north veered onto the sidewalk, hitting them, according to a San Antonio police traffic detective.

The 16-year-old boy’s leg was shattered, and he died from the impact.

The 18-year-old man was taken with a broken arm in good condition to Northeast Baptist Hospital.

Police did not release the names of the two youths.

Investigators still were trying to identify and find the driver of the pickup, which had a broken headlight and a broken bug guard.

Here’s a follow-up story in the Express.

Mancub, Rylander, Shannon, and Adam went out to skate the new Smithville Public Skatepark built by Doug King and his Rex Ramp crew. Their impressions were hugely positive. Mancub came back talking about some weird interactions he had with the local skaters at the park, which he’s typed up and I’m posting below. If you’re interested in checking it out, here are the directions: East on 71 from Austin past Bastrop. Take the first exit for Smithville and head south. Just before the first railroad tracks, turn left. You’ll see it on the left. If you get lost, ask any random person on the street, everyone in Smithville knows where the skatepark is.

"do you skate"
(asked while Mancub was rolling around on his board)

"don’t you wish you were a minority, that you had some
authority" This was said to me while i stood on the
platform.It came from nowhere. The kid looked at me
and said it with such conviction i thought he made up.
But upon further thought i decided its probaly a
green day song.

"You can’t go that way because your goofy." For some
reason the kids wouldn’t allow me to go through the
bumps "the wrong way" because i was goofy footed.

"This one is up this one is down." Referring to the
banks on both sides of the stairs.

The kids at smithville were some of the angriest
individuals i’ve ever met. You’d think since your
older and from out of town they would be cool. Fuck no
these little cunts will kill you and bury you under
the sewer ride. Another odd thing I noticed on saturday was the
alarming number of young firecrotch skaters at
smithville and mabel davis. Who let all the gingers out?

---

Brown Skateboards will premiere its new promo video December 18th at the Ritz (upstairs). All ages. Here’s a flyer.

If you’re into street terrain built for skating that doesn’t scream ’skatepark’ you might want to check out this implementation of a concept called a ‘skate path.’ The idea is to create a linked series of skate spots along an already existing path that people use to travel through a large public park. There are photos on that page, but check out the videos for a better idea of what’s going on. Oh yeah, check out their skate plaza, too. Talk about a hubba, that sucker on the right is like a mile long.

Oh, these myspace photos are getting out of hand. If you want to use some photo from this site on myspace, that’s perfectly fine. Download it from here and post it somewhere else. You can even pretend you shot it yourself. But if you’re linking directly to these pics, that’s not going to work for you much longer. (Cary Jackson, I’m looking at you.) So, consider this a heads-up.