Austin HalfpipeIn the spring of 2004, a race was born between the north and south austin skate residents. Who would be the first to finish a colossal ramp project? The Banana Farm crew embarked on an ambitious design the likes of which no one had ever seen. Jason Schmale, Cary Jackson, and some other south austinites set out to build a huge ramp similar to Jason’s old ramp, but on an even bigger scale. After the framing and plywood was assembled, both ramp projects stalled out awaiting the sourcing of sheet metal. For a while, a real sarcastic writer from Thrasher Magazine threatened to write an article mocking both ramp efforts predicting that neither of them would ever get finished.

As history has written, the Banana Farm Ramp was completed later in 2004, but the future of Cary Jackson’s ramp has been in doubt for some time. Especially with the price of metal and plywood escalating due to China’s rapid industrialization. Then Jason Schmale showed back up on the scene and suddenly hammers are making noise again down on Prather Lane. Doug King recenty showed up and helped bend the steel pipe coping for the corners and also did some welding. Here are some photos I shot of the current state of the ramp today.

But that’s not the only ramp erection Austin is experiencing right now. Schmitty is living up past the Arboretum off 183 and has launched his own backyard project. His is a modest pursuit– a 24-ft wide miniramp similar in dimensions to the ramp Thomas built in his backyard earlier this year.

The cool thing about this new spurt in ramp construction is that the guys from the Banana Farm are helping out on both the other projects.

In other skateboarding news

The City of Austin banned skateboarding around the new City Hall building. The newly-cut limestone ledges had already fallen prey to skateboard trucks and were showing wear. On the plus side, the city is pretty sensitive about banning skateboarding and is trying to remind skaters that they should have a public skatepark finished in late 2005. Following that, the City is working on plans to build another skatepark near the ACC Rio Grande campus.

James is down for the count. He reinjured his knee at the Skatepark of Austin last weekend and he’s off his skateboard until he can get surgery.