Hailing from Seattle, Washington, Chris Hildebrand has designed concrete skateparks built around the world. For skaters who have travelled the country on skate tours, their top ten favorite parks lists don’t include parks designed by Chris. Their lists are made of Chris’s skateparks. Think Orcas Island, Trinidad, Carbondale, Bainbridge Island, West Linn, Milton, and the Ballard Bowl. Yes, many, many hours of driving seperate 78704 from a Hildebrand creation, but not for long. Austin and Corpus Christi have already contracted Chris to design skateparks which should both be completed in 2005. It’s looking like San Marcos and Lockhart might also do right by their skating communities and bring Chris onto their projects.

Hildebrand was in Austin for a few days consulting on the design of our public skatepark with the city’s Parks and Recreation officials. He gave them a presentation wearing jeans with holes in the knees, a Vans t-shirt and Vans shoes. The Parks and Recreation people were wearing button-down shirts and ties. His presentation featured pictures and videos of their projects and construction techniques. Everyone there was really impressed. I think they were also excited to have done something right and see our reactions.

So the next day I brought Chris to the Banana Farm for an afternoon session before he had to catch a plane back to Washington. I was curious to get his impressions about this ramp which has been described by several of my friends as their favorite skate spot. What would a professional skatepark designer think of this insane plywood creation? The following interview was conducted by me during and after our two-hour session at the ramp. Unfortunately, I lent my camera to my girlfriend and wasn’t able to take any photos of Chris ripping. Use your imagination.

So, what do you think of the Banana Farm Ramp?

This place is sick and second only to Skatopia as far as backyard skate shit that I’ve seen.

What are your favorite aspects of the ramp?

Uhhh.. The coping is perfect. It’s sick because the trannies are different on every wall. It’s got a bunch of unique hips. Multiple hips. 50-degree hips. 90-degree hips. Extensions all over the place. It’s epic. Super solid. Really well-built. It doesn’t move at all when you skate it. I don’t know. It’s fun. It’s got some bigger stuff that’s a little scary but most of it’s pretty mellow so it’s just fun times. You know, whether you’re skating hard or just fucking around, this place is probably a blast.

What do you think of the assortment of things integrated into this ramp?

It’s not too tight or crammed in, either. There’s plenty of flat so it’s not crammed. It’s really sick, too, with all these transfers with quarter pipes up on the decks. Those are really cool. It’s the kind of thing you put them on as an afterthought and put them where they fit. It’s cool. I like it.

What do you think the impact is going to be on backyard ramp building now that the cost of wood has risen so much? Are people going to more seriously consider backyard bowls over ramps?

Yeah, backyard concrete is coming up in a big way. There’s a lot more people talking about it than doing it. But there’s a lot more people doing it than there was before. More than ever before. Nah, I don’t think backyard ramps are going away. I think there’s going to be a revival– a rennaisance, actually. Because even though the wood is expensive, it’s still so worth it. It’s accessible. Anyone can mess with it. And you can do something small and add onto it. I don’t know. Most skaters rent so they can’t build permanent things. It’s getting harder to build these wooden ramps, but I don’t think they’re going away at all.

Tell me more about your thoughts after having skated the Banana Farm.

It’s epic. It’s great. I don’t know. Those aren’t very creative words to describe something that amazingly creative. You know what I really like about it? Like a lot of my favorite spots like Washington Street in San Diego have the feeling of like hand crafted, you know, loveliness. Like every square inch was built with care and artistry. Craftsmanship, basically. The whole place hums with the work that was put into it. When something is built by a really good, passionate, builder, like a building or anything, you can tell every square inch vibrates with something and that’s what that’s got. Obviously it was made piecemeal with a lot of different people probably arguing with each other about what should go where. And you can tell that probably sometimes some guys got their way and other dudes got their way at different things. There’s some weird shit in there. There’s some stuff that’s kind of questionable. But you know, that’s cool. There’s some stuff that’s really hard in there. There’s some gnarly transfers and there’s some really easy ones. I love that fifty-degree hip. It’s got that escalating corner right after a fifty-degree hip. That’s really cool. I love it. That crazy sunken-in over-vert pocket is really epic. That’s actually the same thing we designed for Corpus Christi- we’re going to make a concrete one like that with hips on the sides and sunken in the corner and over-vert on a 90-degree spot.

What do you think about that coping?

The coping is the best part about the park, probably. The coping is perfect. Awesome. Super chunky, you know. Fast. You know, it’s fast, but not too fast. It’s perfect coping. You can’t really relax with it, either. Everytime you stop paying attention, you’ll stick on a grind. You gotta grind it for real everytime, but it grinds good.

If you were going to add anything, what would you expand it with?

Bowl off that one mini-ramp side. The crossed ramps side– bowl that thing off. That’s what I would do. If that thing were more complete, and going off.. People don’t obviously skate that side very much because it’s not as good as the other part. But if that were bowled off and made to be its own good thing, that would be real epic. Then two people could skate it at once.

I really like that you have those transfers up onto the decks and shit. I wish I would have fucked with that a little bit more. I didn’t even try it. But that looked like a lot of fun. And I love that stuff where you can ollie out of something into another bank up on the deck.

We were driving on Lamar and some interesting banks to curbs caught Chris’s attention.

There’s a lot of good skateable shit streetwise I’ve been noticing in Austin. There’s banks everywhere. All this concrete shit that was build in the seventies and eighties. Looks like a lot of good, natural terrain.

POSTSCRIPT: As we were driving from the Banana Farm Ramp back to my house, a lunatic driver ran a stop sign and nearly collided with Chris’s rental car. Here is an audio clip documenting the dramatic moment.