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.
