austin skate notes

While setting up for one of his trademark backside smith grinds on the broken neck mini-ramp, Dave Watigny caught a piece of wood and slammed into the oncoming transition Friday evening. With the wind knocked out of him, he sat down away from the ramp to recover. An hour later, he found himself increasingly dazed and unable to even tell people what his name was. He didn’t hit his head in the fall, but his friends took him to the hospital emergency room. An x-ray identified that during the impact, his body landed on his elbow, which pressed below his ribcage. The pressure caused his spleen to rupture which in turn began re-routing his blood from its typical course into his abdominal cavity. He had internally lost 2.6 litres of blood. The doctors performed an emergency operation to remove his spleen and clean up the mess inside his stomach.

Now he’s recovering in Brackenridge with a morphine drip, a cup of ice cubes, and a foot-long incision down his belly. It’s expected that he’ll be able to leave the hospital in a few days, but he won’t be able to lift things (i.e. work) for as long as two months while he recuperates. Lacking insurance, he has been racking up a horrific debt to his care provider.

I asked him if this was the worst injury he’s suffered through skateboarding. He hesitated and then didn’t really give me a conclusive answer. He referenced a hernia he received while jumping down a set of 12 stairs some years ago. I think he said this was the most expensive. Then there was some talk about how painful catheter insertion is.

In the years before he volunteered at Patterson helping pour concrete, Dave has been building skate spots, backyard ramps, skateparks, and scenes in Austin and around the country. It’s rather ironic that someone who has given so much to skateboarding would have to pay such a high price while enjoying skateboarding. Hopefully, skateboarders will step up to support Dave with fundraisers as he has stepped up to help others so many times in the past. (more…)

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Since the demise of the Skatepark of Houston on Orange Grove, it’s been a difficult sell to get me to visit Houston. Even the grand opening of Grindline’s recently completed mammoth public skatepark was a ‘maybe.’ In the late eighties, I’d drive from Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Houston in the rain just to skate the indoor mini-ramp. But with all the cool stuff around Austin to skate, there hasn’t been much of an incentive for me to take a skate roadtrip in a while. Closer than Amarillo and Orcas Island, the new public skatepark in Houston has now returned Bushwick Bill’s hometown to the top of my skate roadtrip destinations list.

This $2.75 million concrete skate behemoth is the largest privately fundraised public skatepark in the nation. It’s also Houston’s first concrete public skatepark (as opposed to its many prefab crap facilities), which has introduced much hysteria and concern on the part of city officials. As a response, Houston’s Parks and Recreation Department is running it like a public swimming pool and is staffing the skatepark with supervisors who will enforce a rule requiring visitors to wear helmets. Even so, it’s an amazing facility complete with lights for evening skating (closes at 10:00 PM) and a great view of the downtown Houston skyline. Although street purists will fault the facility’s lack of a plaza aesthetic, the layout does have a wide variety of terrain. There are banks, hips, quarterpipes, bank-to-jersey barriers, sloped manual pads, rails, mellow bowls, godzilla bowls, cradles, and a very accessible kidney pool replica.

In spite of the typically brutal Houston heat, the grand opening ceremony was phenomenal. A bunch of pro skaters on the Independent 30th Anniversary Tour showed up along with most of the Black Label team and an unknown number of ripping amateurs and old-timey Texas pro skaters. It was cool to see Hosoi snap backside ollie tailgrabs in the kidney pool, but I was more impressed to see the family reunion session of Ken Fillion, Jason Espeseth, Gene Hare, Troy Chasen, Bryan Pennington, Dave Donaldson, and Chris Gentry all skating together in the Kahuna-esque combi-bowl.

I came back with a ton of content, which I’ll add to ASN as I get it all edited. For now, I’ve posted a video teaser from the kidney bowl session and a few photos over on the APSAC website.

Before visiting, you’ll want to check the directions, hours, and rules for the Houston Public Skatepark.

The Skatepark of San Marcos is holding it’s first birthday party this Saturday. Stop by to skate June 7th to enjoy free hotdogs, gatorade, and cake.
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