3 Comments

This was a great piece.

I couldn’t agree more about many of our skateparks being too cluttered with creative or extreme obstacles in a way that deters or inhibits beginners.

And as you pointed out, even us more experienced skaters are quite happy with more beginner/chill type obstacles.

I’ve been skating for 20 years and recently, instead of going to my local park I’ve found a nice smooth underground carpark where I can skate at night and just play around doing flat ground tricks and it’s been great.

Point is, I would be stoked to skate a park that was designed like the one you shared in your piece.

Thanks :)

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Thanks Michael,

Glad you enjoyed the piece.

Underground car park instead of a park clustered with all kinds of different obstacles. Amazing. I was having a similar experience when I started to have the first thoughts that eventually lead to me writing these articles. Just found it really strange and interesting that I preferred a space with minimal obstacles that weren’t intended for skating when there was a skatepark full obstacles meant for skating nearby. It’s counterintuitive but it’s true for a lot of skaters.

I enjoyed your article about doing dry wall in the airport. I do a New York centric form of manual labor for work. I dress sets for photo shoots and commercials. So I’m familiar with the manual labor hierarchies. I didn’t know the drywall system panned out like how you described but that makes sense. The part about your dreadlock getting caught in the orbital sander was hilarious but sounded painful as well.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

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Your so right — it does feel counterintuitive to be more excited by a space with minimal obstacles that weren’t designed to be skated than a skatepark! How interesting. I guess many skaters of our generation also grew up skating on our parents driveways or the end of the street before we ‘graduated’ to the few and far between skateparks that were around at the time — so maybe a part of it is us trying to reconnect to that feeling we had as kids — who knows...?

Either way, I think your idea and your article is really interesting and I look forward to reading the next one when it comes.

And thanks, I’m glad to hear you enjoyed my piece. That is much appreciated :)

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