UPDATED 3-30-5

Clay, Adam, Aaron the Kid, and I skated the best public skatepark in Texas for Easter weekend. That would be Ingleside, Tx. Five minutes from Corpus Christi. About four hours from Austin.

Jimmy Gonzales @ Ingleside SkateparkWe ran into new local Aaron of North Skateboard fame. He’s got his own furniture store in Corpus. He said he misses Barfly’s a lot. I’m sure it misses you, too, Aaron. Another local, Jimmy Gonzales, ruled the amoeba bowl. I had so much fun skating the park that I didn’t shoot photos until the end of the session on the second day. Same with video footage. Now on to the review….

Ingleside’s public skatepark is unarguably, the best skatepark in Texas. This park was designed and built by Site Design of Arizona, which to date, hasn’t done a lot to brag about in Texas. Abilene was the first Texas skatepark designed by the company and left much to be desired in terms of challenge, speed, and excitement in general. Then they won the contract for the El Paso skatepark where they designed a pretty fun bowl and a large street course. Midland was the third Texas city to implement a Site Design concept and got a pretty good skatepark out of it. Thanks to RCMC (the actual builders), Midland’s skatepark boasts the smoothest finish of all public skateparks in Texas. Ingleside, however, was the first fully-implemented Site Design skatepark where the company designed and then built the finished product.

Site Design is new to the construction end of the public skatepark business and Ingleside was one of their learning experiences. For starters, the whole park is built above ground-level in a large mound of compacted dirt. Even so, the soil wickes water up from the water table and seeps it through cracks in the concrete such that there are a couple of perpetual puddles in both the bowls. This may have been averted through the use of a poly-liner of some sort. These puddles aren’t that big of a deal, though, and probably won’t lay around much in the heat of the summer.

Word from those involved in the project is that Site Design didn’t assign skilled finishers to the project. The skatepark is generally rough compared to the smoothness of Midland and parks in the Pacific Northwest. But it’s hard to really complain about it slowing your skating down because the local kids blaze their balls off in the bowls while riding shitty, worn-out wheels. Visitors may want to bring a few different sets of wheels to figure out what will work best for them.

The coping is terrific. Pool coping surrounds the entire amoeba bowl while a combination of the proper guage of steel pipe and pool coping encircle the flow bowl. At some spots in the flow bowl, the pool coping tends to stick out too far, but skateboarders can adjust for it and deal.

The street course is generally pretty good. The pyramids are perhaps the best in Texas. They have a proper feathered toe at the bottom and the correct steepness to snap big ollies over. The hubba ledges are way too tall. Sure, there are some kids that are going to pop ollies to 50-50s down them, but forget about switch ANYTHING or even kickflips to ANYTHING. And why Site Design thought it would be a good idea to build two identical hubbas right next to one another is quite the mystery. Street skaters will also be thanking Site Design for years to come for putting a crack at the critical ollie spot at the top of the steps.

Hubba Ledges @ Ingleside Skatepark

The real attraction to the Ingleside skatepark is the bowls. The flow bowl offers plenty of variety including an over-vert pocket, several channels, and a fun pump-hump shallow corner. The channels are my only complaint about the flow bowl. On paper, the channels look like they’ll be fun because you could do tricks from low-to-high or across them. If you were skating a halfpipe, these channels would be plenty of fun because you’d approach them straight-on. I’m guessing that’s how the designer was thinking when he threw them in there. But in practice, the big channels take up valuable wall space when you’re carving and wanting to travel horizontally. You have to pinch your carves lower to avoid the channels, thereby reducing your speed potential.

Clay Towery @ Ingleside SkateparkThe amoeba bowl is phenomenal and justifies the 4-hour trip from Austin all by itself. Not many public skateparks sport real pool tile, and the effect in the amoeba is terrific. People have said that after Salba skated it on the grand opening he complemented it as the best skatepark ‘pool’ he’s ever ridden. I fully believe that. It’s a really good balance between the challenge of a backyard pool with vert and the smoothness and proportions of a skatepark structure.

The local radio station that is best to play on your jambox at the Ingleside skatepark is called "Xtreme Radio". Don’t know what channel it is on, but if you are flipping through the stations at 9 minutes after the hour, they’ll have "Metallica on the 9" playing. Unfortunately, it’s usually some recent Metallica garbage, although they did play Seek and Destroy on Saturday morning at 11:09 am. Speaking of the jambox, be sure to bring yours and an extension cord. The Ingleside skatepark provides an electrical outlet, but it’s about 70′ from the amoeba bowl.

Other amenities at the skatepark include a concessions stand, bleachers, attendants, and a teenaged smokers lounge surrounding the front entrance. Admission is $4 a day for non-residents, and $2 for locals. Helmets are the only mandatory safety equipment. Bikes and razor scooters are not allowed in the skatepark.

It was a blast for all of us. No real slams. Lots of speed and fun. Here are the Ingleside photos.

I’ve also hastily thrown together this video footage in a 5mb quicktime download– should download fast as crap. Words of warning– the audio is unexpectedly loud. The URL at the end is incorrect, too. Should be .org, not .com. Wish I would have had more footage of Jimmy Gonzales skating and even just a minute of Aaron the Kid ripping. Aaron took off before I broke out the video camera and what you see of Jimmy is at the end of 2+ days of heavy sessioning.