One of the owners of a small wheel company recently sent me two sets of wheels to review… the same urethane durometers, but different sizes. He asked if I’d do an honest review of his stuff, so I did.

Be warned, there’s nearly 20 minutes of footage below this text, and a lot of it is me being talking like a geek… but if you’re into that sort of thing, you might just enjoy it. If not, don’t worry… i’s free. Hugs.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Oh yeah, the sprain (mentioned in part two) was received yesterday evening after I got off work. Ankles suck.

I think our stance against prefabricated ramps is pretty well known… they’re overly expensive, typically not designed to challenge a skateboarder, void of any soul of it’s own

Don’t get me wrong, I know that every city can’t have a Dreamland park, but I get bummed when I see these little pens that are supposed to satiate skate communities. From what I understand (local hearsay, I don’t know this for a fact), the current Zachary park is a “phase one,” meaning that this facility is supposed to be a temporary fix until a much nicer skatepark can be built. Let’s not forget however, that BREC has done this before. The Velodrome is a glaring example. It’s been in “phase one” for years now… six years or so?

I digress… the park in Zachary is what it is, and though it has plenty wrong with it, there are some interesting things of note (and please keep in mind that all of this is the opinion of one random dude falling asleep on a keyboard).

From left to right:

There are two 4-footish quarterpipes with what appear to be dog cages strapped to the top. To the right you can juuuust see a little funbox. You can see it better in this pic:

…which leads to a kind of weird collection of centerpieces. It’s like every kind of step up, stair, rail, wedge, euro or whatever else, but miniaturized. You can’t quite see it here, but there’s a five stair over by the white rail in the background… but a weird, tiny five stair… really unnatural, and kind of annoying if you were heading towards it after sketchily landing from one of the quarterpipes that faces it. One more thing about this picture… in the foreground, you see that rectangle with the two little wedge ramps? It serves no purpose. It’s as big as it looks in the photo, too… about three Baton Rouge phone books high, and shorter than your skateboard. The wedge ramps were pretty clack-clkackity.

In the foreground here, you see all the stuff you saw in the last photo… but in the background is what I really enjoyed. Two four foot quarters that hip into a mini ramp on both ends. I found myself just doing repeated transfers into and out of the mini ramp… it was fun, and I’d go back if only to do that some more.

Before I go any further, one word of advice about the ramps themselves (this especially pertains to anyone who really likes to skate transition)… the ramps have really dark surfaces, and when it’s hot, you won’t want to be touching them too long. Also, the surface of the ramps is pretty grippy… when I went, I was riding Bones Street Tech formulas… which is a pretty slick wheel on it’s own. I do a lot of reverts, and I figured with my slippery wheels I ought to be sliding around the transitions with no problem… I was mistaken. The surface seems to grab on to your wheels to prevent slip outs. If you revert a lot, come prepared with a really rock solid hard wheel or you’ll grip to much.

The transitions are mellow, but better than the ones at the Velodrome.

See the pyramid? From left to right, it has five “stairs”, a rail, a euro, and then a half-pyramid. The only problem is, most of the tricks you’ll want to do will result in you rolling into the dirt. This kind of setup teaches kids to skate too slowly (as they’ll land the trick at so slow a speed that they’re able to stop). Speed is very important for a strong skateboarder.

All in all, it’s something that Zachary didn’t have before, which i reckon is a good thing. I will go back to skate the transitioned hips into the mini again when I’m in the area. I mean, if you’ve skated here in Hammond and you know how to handle it, you might feel a bit confined in Zachary. The mini is fun, but really go for the hips.

Here’s a map, yo.

Josh Ew Uh alerted me about this last night… and because I like to do my best to give you all a candid look at what’s going on in the area, I want to give you a full rundown.

The tour coming up next Sunday is a promotion from Warner Brothers in an attempt to push the cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez. It goes without saying, the idea of a tour based on Speedy makes people tilt their heads and say… “huh?” But then again, when you have Danny Gonzalez, Patrick Melcher and the legendary Steve Caballero coming to town, it helps to ease situation a bit.

Anyway… last night, Josh informed me that the official tour website (located here) had our part of the tour labeled as New Orleans (see for yourself). As everyone in this state knows, we love New Orleans with all of our hearts… but we aren’t New Orleans. We’re not even considered part of the greater New Orleans area (something I tried to explain to one of the marketers last night, something that I believe fell on deaf ears). All of us here in Hammond have busted our collective asses in making sure that Hammond was known as Hammond… and I think every skater in the state understands that we have our own thing going on. As always, we invite everyone to take part in what we have going on, but the differences between our scenes and the scenes in other areas of the state are very clear.

Mr. Marketer was trying to tell me that they were making an attempt to cater to the “New Orleans market,” which simply doesn’t make any sense. That would be like having an event in Los Angeles, yet claiming an attempt to cater to a market in San Francisco (as far as cultural identity is concerned).

We have a very special relationship with New Orleans, we have all the respect in the world, and more friends, family, and roots there than I can count… so I don’t want this to come across as even remotely negative to my people over there, because it’s not. This is a matter of pride regarding who we are… we’re Tangipahoa Parish, dammit. We’re Hammond, Louisiana.

Last thing: I’ve been in regular contact with Steve Caballero about various concerns we’ve had with these marketing types, and he’s been 100% supportive of us… then again, he’s a skateboarder. I don’t want any negative criticisms here to appear like a critique on any of the pros that are coming… it’s not them, it’s the uninformed marketing people that work as desk jockeys all day that I have a problem with, and I’ll continue to have that problem with them until they give us the recognition we deserve.

If any of the marketers involved in the tour are reading this right now, it’s spelled H-A-M-M-O-N-D.

Grrrr.

Word has it that a certain “action sports” store here in Hammond decided to film a commercial at the park early this morning. The shop’s owner (if you haven’t guessed) is pictured here:

Ok, maybe it’s just a photo of a leech, but there’s really no difference, is there? Word has it that the leech decided to film a commercial at our park at 6 o’clock this morning… why so early? Because the leech is afraid of most of the skaters in this city. He knows that if he attempted to film a commercial during a regular day (at normal hours), he’d be forced to run away like a wounded dog with his tail between his legs. It’s the same reason that he doesn’t walk over to the park on any other day… he’s just doing what he always does, he’s using our park to make money, nothing more. I mean, it’s not as if he cares about skateboarding… he doesn’t even understand it… all he knows is that skateboarders=customers, and he can milk a buck off of the occasional skater that doesn’t know any better.Well we know better. We know why you’re here, and we know why you need to stay in Mandeville.
A personal message to the leech himself: You suck at life. Seriously… you’re a bottom feeding scumbag. You don’t give a damn about any one of the skaters that walks into your store… you may pretend to, but you know the truth. While we’re actually doing things for the scene here, what are you doing for skateboarding in Mandeville or Slidell? Nothing. You can’t name one single thing that you’ve done for the skate scene that hasn’t involved you making a quick buck. I’d call you a scam artist, but that might imply that you’re clever in some way… and I don’t want to do that… you’re just really good at being lame. Please, take that personally… because it is.

Question: Why do half of the locals here have “Gary don’t skate” written on their boards?
Answer: Because it summarizes one of the many things wrong with biggest parasite that Hammond skaters have ever seen.

I almost feel bad about comparing you to a leech… I mean, I feel bad for the leeches.

>Neal

This is a thank-you note to all of the wonderful people, skaters and non-skaters, that have taken it upon themselves to use the skatepark as their very own personal boxing ring.
I’m so happy that the police are being forced to come to the park and treat us like the criminals that they already think we are… I mean, I think it’s f’ing awesome that after all the things that skaters have been through, we get a three quarter of a million dollar skatepark, then a few people go off and ruin it for the rest of us that simply want to skate… that’s so utterly great!

I especially love the fact that when two people decide to square off, instead of breaking shit up, everyone else decides to egg it on so they can watch a great fight! You know what my favorite thing is, though? Locks! I love it when the city puts locks on the gates… I mean, who wants to skate at night anyway?

Thanks for screwing everyone over, fellas! The rest of us really appreciate you ruining it for the rest of us!

A few months ago, I sat with 225 Baton Rouge Magazine and spent some time talking about the state of skateboarding in Baton Rouge versus the one in Hammond. BREC, the Recreation & Park Commission for the parish of East Baton Rouge, is the worst thing that could have possibly happened to the city (in my opinion), and I was able to tell the reporter just that.
See, a number of years ago, BREC spent somewhere in the area of $23,000 purchasing ARC ramps… some of the worst ramps ever made unless you’re a brand new skater… and you’re three years old. The problem isn’t so much that BREC wasted thousands of dollars on a shoddy product, the real problem is that more street skaters get prosecuted (persecuted, even) for skateboarding in a city when there’s a park in town… “now ya’ll don’t be skating here in downtown! We dun built ya’ll a park, now ‘yer gonna use it whether you like it or not!!!” The fact is, years after the park in BR was installed (versus being built), crackdowns on skaters in the city escalated (at least from the stories I heard while I lived in BR). On top of that, Baton Rouge, the capital city… home of a much larger skateboarding population than we have, needs a skatepark built for a capital city.

You get the idea. Anyway, I basically spoke my mind, and was stoked to see that in the article (link below), Mayor Mayson Foster, Tony Licciardi, Joey keener, and the City of Hammond got all the props they deserved. More props go to Gary Patureau (the head of the Skatepark Association of Baton Rouge, he’s pictured in the article wearing a sharp tie), and big Reno (owner of Urban Nine and a close, personal friend of many of us here). I think everyone did a great job at clarifying the problems with BREC, and if I come across as bitter in the article, it’s because I was. Lucky for me though… I live in the best skate city in Louisiana.

Click Here to Read the Article

Before we begin, I want to be clear that I’m not menitoning the name of, nor am I picking on the skater involved with today’s subject… we actually know him, and he’s a good guy. I blanked his face out because I don’t want there to be any confusion… we have no beef with skateboarders, especially not the skateboarder in the image below. Having said that, I’d like to take the opportunity to point out some funny things on the cover of “Clipper Magazine,” something you may already have a copy of if you live in the region. For those that aren’t familiar, Clipper is basically a coupon book… for around $1,200, you can get the cover, as Go Big has done below. I numbered a couple of things of interest:

1. “In action for over 10 Years”. Actually, it should say inaction for over 10 years, since Go Big hasn’t done anything for the skate community since it started… other than accept money from skaters. You’d think that in 10 years, and with the money that Go Big and Mandeville have, there’d be a really nice skatepark in St. Tammany parish… hell, even a crappy skatepark for the locals to ride on (public or private). Well don’t wait for Go Big to do anything… rather than creating a scene, they’ve chosen to latch onto ours. Morons.

2. (a) Noone wears Go Big shirts at the park. Seriously… not even Go Big’s employees wear Go Big shirts on a normal day of skating at the park. The reason? Because they’re ashamed of being associated with the place. Sure, the skater in question is wearing the shirt for the ad, but on a normal day, it just doesn’t happen. Go Big’s own employees are too embarrassed to represent the place they work for… hell, some of the employees won’t even work at the Hammond location because they know how lame it was for Gary to open it in the first place.
(b) You’re welcome for the rail. If it weren’t for Small Time Skates, the rail in the above photo wouldn’t exist. A perfect example of Go Big’s parastic philosophy… let other people do the work, then exploit it like the jerks they are.

3. Tricks over blades! C’mon now… you have a guy on a board doing a trick over a rollerblade? That’s so terribly sad that it’s funny.

4. Our shoes get free publicity! Yeah, you guessed it… those shoes came from Small Times.

Make no mistake, everyone… Go Big is not a skate shop. They sell skateboards, but the shop’s mission isn’t to support skateboarding or skateboarders… they don’t care about you. Not only does the money not go to skateboard-related causes, it doesn’t even stay in Hammond, it goes to Mandeville. As it stands, Small Time Skates is still the only skateshop in Hammond… and it happens to be locally owned. Stay Small.

Our very own Josh Ew Uhh has commented on this before (click here), now there’s a good thread in the forums about the very same thing. Now we have police involved in the matter.
If we really love the place, we need to treat it that way. If we’re willing to get our hands dirty by riding the park, we need to be willing to get our hands dirty while cleaning it. Let’s do our part… if not so we can say “thanks” to the city for helping us get this park, then at least so we don’t get our wheels caught on a Gatorade bottle.

Stay small.

Skateparks are not new to our landscapes. They have been around for over 30 years now. The skateboard community has grown exponentially. However the pace of new quality parks has not. In our quest to appease skaters we have by in large taken many shortcuts. This has led to sub-par skateparks that fail to adequately serve the public. These parks fail to retain the riders because of design, availability, and lack of understanding. We here at Skaters Alliance wanted to know what makes a viable skatepark. With this question, we set out to talk with those that ride these skateparks.

When posed the question “What makes a skatepark good?” The number one answer was “flow.” This simply means the ability to ride around the park from one obstacle to another without interruption. These interruptions can be anything from a misplaced trash can, a wide seam on the skating surface, or an obstacle that creates a blockage to another obstacle. Skaters rely on unimpeded motion to achieve satisfactory riding momentum. There is also another aspect of “flow” that was commented on. This usually equates to smaller parks. The lack of lines to skate. We most often see this in small modular parks where obstacles are placed opposing each other. Doing this only allows a simple back and forth approach to riding, which becomes stale in a short amount of time.

The next thing we hear is “We need a mix of riding terrain.” Skatepark terrain comes in many different forms. Terrain usually consist of Street elements such as “Stair Sets”, Ledges, Banks, Rails, Parking Blocks, and Raised Pads and Transition elements such as Bowls, Full Pipes, Cradles, Half Pipes, Quarter Pipes, and Round Corners. We are now seeing a more equitable mix of these two, but still have a ways to go. No skater wants to be limited in what he or she rides. They want multi-disciplined spaces. This allows them to have a greater creative outlet in their parks. We want a skatepark to bring all riders together, not exclude one or the other. This can only be done by providing a good mix of terrain, therefore bringing all skaters into the mix.

In line with Terrain, Skaters recognize the need for multi-skilled opportunities. A good Skatepark will accommodate beginners, intermediate, and advanced riders. We all have to start somewhere, but we normally don’t stay at a beginning level for long. Having a park that allows you to hone and advance your skill levels will certainly retain you as a rider. We have found that Skateparks that allow for progression through specific skill levels better serve the community.

Availability was also mentioned by most skateboarders. Skaters are not just kids, but vary in their ages. With most peoples busy schedules, getting to the park for exercise can be hard at times when hours are limited. Limited hours diminish the users recreational opportunity. Opening beyond normal business hours is a definite advantage. This allows for increased usage and opportunity. In many locations weather can dictate usage, due to heat in the summer. Having hours that go beyond early evening allows a more comfortable riding opportunity. In addition, opening early allows riders a chance to ride and not compete with a large skating crowd during prime hours.

Last but not least, are creature comforts. These would include ease of access, benches to rest, water fountains, shaded areas, and restrooms. Having such amenities is often overlooked. When riders or spectators have to leave to use a restroom or get a drink, it reduces participation. A Skatepark is Public space and we should try and accommodate the public with basic facilities to create a more conducive opportunity. Ease of access and visibility are also important to a well rounded Skatepark. Putting a skatepark in a visible place ensures safety, and awareness. They should never be tucked away somewhere off the beaten path. Doing so segregates riders, and participants, and ultimately invites trouble. Being visible also allows for passive observation by the general public, to ensure safety, and show that the park is an active facility for a wide range of users.

In conclusion, Skateparks are not playgrounds. They are and need to be well planned and designed community facilities. Anything short of that is a failure on our part as Advocates, and Public Officials. The key to bringing legitimate skateparks to our communities is public education, supported by credible data. Working together we can effect positive change in the mind set of the general public, and our elected officials.