Amarillo SkateparkGrindline has finished the Amarillo public skatepark. Tim Kirby has sent Carter Dennis these pics. Their work crews are avoiding the Austin heat and dispersing to more northern projects for the time being. The estimated time for their work to begin at Mabel Davis here in Austin is mid-September. In the meantime, Grindline continues work in San Angelo where the city of is already feeling the pain of having built a public skateboarding facility for its youth. Local skaters have tagged the skatepark with graffiti on almost every part of the park. The response from the city will be to sandblast the graffiti which will likely damage the glass-smooth Grindline finish. The response from nearby Texas cities considering public skateparks is probably going to involve pumping more funds into baseball and soccer fields.

Speaking of graffiti, a street skater named Jason tagged the Best Banks over on 183, so now the property manager turns the lights off at night in the hopes that skaters won’t be able to session there 24/7. I guess the next step would be to request more police patrols.

Continuing this shitty-news streak, rumor has it that Texas Ski Ranch sold its prefab albatross. I wonder which dumbass thinks they got an awesome deal…

DIY concrete Bowl constructionHopefully this will brighten your day-after-freedom-celebration… The heros of the revolution showed up in force on Sunday to work on the DIY bowl project. Skaters and BMX’ers worked side-by-side constructing retaining walls and general earth-shaping. The momentum behind this project is unbelievable.

A S.K.A.T.E. tournament was held at the Alpine house. Josh won with some crazy pressure flip against a newcomer from Florida named Chris. He just moved to Austin after being kicked out of Axl Rose’s new band. I would have shot more photos, but I think my flash was distracting the competitors.

James’ customer appreciation party at the Skatepark of Austin was a major blowout. A contest was held in the new mini-bowl. Mancub broke his foot in the oververt during a backside D attempt. Now he’s pushing around on a walker we got him at Goodwill. Here are the results:

  1. John Altman
  2. Josh (aka Shortbus)
  3. Adam Young

A work session is being organized at the Red River slab for this Saturday at noon. The agenda includes building a concrete manual pad and cleaning the place of the various tags that have begun to appear at the site before they get the spot shut down. Tell your friends.

Austin SKATE contest