#skateable

[wolverinepng]

some pics from yesterday

[aviel]

PlayLab Builds Sterling Ruby-Inspired Skateable Structure for Frieze LA

[ashtrayfloors]

Though, also worth noting...is that skateboarding, at least between the mid-eighties and mid-nineties, was one of the (many) places the gift economy was in radical action, by which I mean in practice. It was just the case that whatever you had extra—and skateboarding, with its many components (decks, wheels, bearings, trucks, bushings, riser pads, rails, Rip Grip, bolts, etc.) made for extra—you passed along. Most of us had a bucket of some sort where, when someone needed something, we dug around to find it. I never once heard anyone express it as an ethics (sharing, redistribution, commonwealthing), though if you tried to keep your extra to yourself, if you spoke to no one of your bucket, and then it got out you had one, and gleaming like gold in that extra Independent truck was the kingpin one of us needed to skate that day, the reaction would be an ethical one: Yo, that’s fucked up, man.      Also worth noting is that skateboarding’s reemergence, at least in the US, is almost perfectly concurrent with a new gilded age, a grotesque accumulation and celebration of wealth, deregulation, the dismantling of the welfare state, mass incarceration, NAFTA, taking the solar panels off the roof of the White House, privatization of everything, further enclosure of the commons, and the unabashed, unapologetic, mongering sanctification of hoarding. Of the hoard.

...

...the only limitation to what might be skated, or made public, or commoned, or shared, is the imagination.      Which, yeah, leaves some marks sometimes. Though the residual polyurethane script of previous wall-riders, the frenetic black rainbows streaking a white wall, to me indicates possibility, skateability, to maintenance, and most definitely to the owner of the building, they are a headache, and might even hit ‘em in the wallet if they want that wall real clean. To the owners, everything is a headache, or a potentional headache, which is to say: a threat. And to the skaters everything is skateable. As you can see, this is an endless loop that results either in criminalization (and the once ubiquitous Skateboarding Is Not a Crime sticker), or the very pristine and perfect skateparks municipalities have taken to building as a kind of legal protest corral, helmets and recycling strongly encouraged.      It is so odd to be old enough to catch myself saying things like “I’m so glad they didn’t have that then.” You know, cellular telephones. Homework. Schedules. Parents. Bottled water. Strange to say, but skateparks, too, I’m so glad we didn’t really have. We had the thing behind 7-Eleven on Maple Ave., a little rough but still nice. We had the drainage ditch up behind the car dealerships. We had the car dealerships. We had the loading docks behind the supermarket. We had Herbert Hoover Elementary School, which included the roof. We had that jarring bit of transition behind Burger King, and the culvert behind Mindy’s Skateshop. We had those sexy, long, slippery, connected parking curbs at the school near where Georgie moved over in Fairless Hills. Another ditch, kinda steep but good, behind the Posh Nosh and the Clemons, where they carried Transworld SKATEboarding magazine. We had dumpsters we could flip over, and washing machines or dryers left by the dumpster we could boardslide and grind. We had those ramps we built of good wood we found at local construction sites in the middle of the night. We had the SEPTA station in Penndel, the park bench and that indecipherable hunk of wood Harley and I pulled from the trash and skated for hours. We had those high yellow curbs over the sewer grates. That ramp we took out of the driveway of that kid Steve who wouldn’t share his bucket. We skated and ollied off the wooden boardwalk and steps of Seafood Shanty. Ledges, the fountain, the speed bumps, the smooth yellow curbs at the mall. We had that little course we built from a stash of railroad ties and some scavenged plywood in the janky, netless, heavenly smooth tennis courts at the apartments, until they banished skating from the premises with threat of eviction. Of course they did.

—Ross Gay, from “Share Your Bucket! (Skateboarding: The Fifth Incitement)” (Inciting Joy, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022)

[everydayhybridity]

Article from The Conversation on our Chicano Park research.

Urban wellbeing is increasingly tied to what urban planners term “green” and “blue” spaces: the parks and waterfronts that our towns and cities may include. Residents are also encouraged to leave the city altogether, to seek out the healthy calm of forest bathing, fell running or cold water swimming. 

The potential of play within the urban environment, however, is often overlooked.

Skateboarders have long been invested in what I call “grey” space: the overlooked corners, edges and surfaces of the built environment. Skateboard magazines and videos routinely explore the social and architectural histories of sets of stairs and stone benches. 

These spots, largely invisible to the general public, are richly symbolic. In seeing them as ramps and launchpads, skaters transform unremarkable bits of the city into ritual places of magic and wonder.

Recent research conducted with my colleague, Andrea Buchetti, shows that skateparks are sites of unstructured play and community, as well as remembrance and ritual. Otherwise banal and polluted locations are afforded layers of meaning and depth.

Skatepark memorialisation

The Chicano Park skatepark in San Diego is nestled below the imposing, blocky concrete columns of the on-ramps for the city’s Coronado bridge. 

Built in 2015, the skatepark features four vibrant murals (by artists including Ricardo Islas) that draw on both the indigenous heritage of this ancient northern Mexican region and skateboard iconography. In memory of lost friends, local skateboarders build shrines at the foot of the paintings using broken skateboards, rocks, cacti and cut flowers. 

The five-lane highway bridge above it stands 61 metres tall, allowing safe passage for ships bound to the nearby naval base. Completed in 1969, it links downtown San Diego with the smaller city of Coronado across San Diego Bay. 

The space beneath the bridge has long been contested. When built, its route divided a longstanding Mexican American neighbourhood, Barrio Logan, that had already been disrupted by the construction of the Interstate 5 in 1963. Over 5,000 homes and businesses were destroyed in the process.

The state had promised the community a park by way of compensation. But on April 22 1970, Mario Solis, a local student, noticed bulldozers where the park should be, and found out the city was, in fact, constructing a highway patrol base there.

At Solis’s urging, more than 250 residents gathered with shovels and pickaxes to reclaim the land. They planted cacti and trees to create a communal park. After three months of protest, the city conceded to work with the community, and Chicano Park was officially established.

Local artist Salvador Torres was one of the people who lost their homes. In 1973, he galvanised the community into painting murals on the imposing chunks of concrete built in their stead. It was a form of creative resistance. The motifs referenced the cultural heritage of this ancient northern Mexican region, from Aztec symbolism to indigenous plants and beasts, and also Mexico’s colonial experience and revolutionary struggles. 

The park is now a protected historic space and landmark. People gather there for annual celebrations on April 22.

Skateboarding as culture and community

Research has long shown the connection between sport and religion. Fans make pilgrimages to stadiums and worship athletes like gods. 

Just as a football fan might worship at Wembley stadium in London, a specific neighbourhood curb might hold great significance because of a connection to a famous skater or a historic event. I have shown how skateboarding functions as a lifestyle religion. In the way they observe, perform and organise their communal activity, skateboarders derive spiritual expression and identity from both the physical act of skateboarding and the places in which it is conducted.

Some skateparks have dedicated plaques and permanent memorials designed into skateable features. When legendary San Francisco skateboarder and chief-editor of Thrasher magazine, Jake Phelps, died in 2019, a sculptor in Los Angeles made a concrete tombstone feature to install in the Lower Bob’s DIY skatepark in Oakland. He mixed some used dental floss Phelps had left behind into the concrete. “We don’t got his cremated body,” the artist told Thrasher, “but we got pretty much all the DNA we’re gonna need.” 

London’s Skateboard Graveyard on one of the supports of Hungerford Bridge, on the South Bank, is another salient example. For years now, old boards have been thrown down from the Golden Jubilee footbridge in memory of Timothy Baxter, one of two skaters who were attacked and thrown into the river Thames in 1999. 

Baxter died as a result and the juvenile attackers were convicted of manslaughter. Many of the skateboarders who take part in the ritual might not know that this is how it began, yet they persist in offering their broken boards to the site.

RIP epitaphs

In 2023, the skatepark in Sacramento’s Regency Park was renamed in honour of Tyre Nichols, a skateboarder who was beaten to death by police officers in Memphis, Tennessee.

Australian graphic design expert Dan Johnston has identified RIP epitaphs as one of the most common types of skateboarding-related graffiti. He cites messages he has noted on the steel ramps and concrete bumps of skater desinations in Singapore, Paris and south Australia – RIPs and Miss Us scrawled in white correction fluid, marker pen or spray paint. 

Despite skateboarding’s recent ascent to Olympic status, for many skateboarders it is more a culture – or even a cult – than a sport. It brings diverse people together for unsanctioned play, recasting obstacles – an impassable buckled road in Wiltshire, say – as toys and tools.

In their provocative curves and surfaces, skateparks embody this creativity. They mimic the city beyond, showing how the built environment cannot just be conceived of as a framework for economic activity. Grey space – and grey times – can be transformed if communities, and the DIY cultures they give birth to, are allowed to flourish in the city.

[sunskate]

aww Yahli and Jeffrey skated clean - she was so relieved at the end. warm hugs from the coaches, especially Tanith- they've been through it this season, so it's good to see the support

their music cut slows down Under Pressure at the pattern, too, from 116 to about 104. the Peals slow Janet down- the songs lose a little energy and tension, but these weren't over the line. learning how much they manipulate the tempos to make them skateable

the Peals looked disappointed - he had a bobble on a twizzle, but movement-wise they seem more developed than say Hauer/Starr, but H/S had 7/8 key points and higher levels than anyone except Neset/Markelov, who deserve a sizable lead here -

this was interesting because N/M skated really well, but their energies didn't match - he was giving 110% - everything was just a bit bigger, more intense, a little more fiery. but i'm curious how this will develop, because he's doing some signaling big more than emoting big. it feels a little telegraphed rather than embodied, if that makes sense. he's not quite arm flinging, but there's something about it that's close. they're such a talented team, i hope they don't go that route

[abernant]

oh this song is so ice skateable <- has never skated in volts life

[suenita]

Because the eyes skating endows one with are surviving eyes, dreaming eyes, repurposing eyes, multifunctioning eyes, metaphoring eyes, analogous-ish to my eyes for unused or underused buildings that might be converted into basketball courts. They are a dime a dozen, really: retired industrial facilities or, even better, old community centers or churches, whose ceiling on the sides are low enough you’d have to adjust your shot, the way we do on those snug courts with the overhanging trees. And you know, I’m being fancy: what about milk crate hoops? Shopping cart hoops? What about those guys at the corner of Twenty-seventh and Brown in Philly who bungeed a little rim to the phone pole? What about a line on a wall? What about a line in the air?

How often I see a paved gully on the side of the road and think, almost like a mantra: skateable. A marble bench in a courtyard: skateable. The not-totally-verticle wall at the almost brand-new and heavily endowed Global & International Studies (the world-is-a-market studies? International theft studies? Same shit, different name studies?) Building on campus: ooh, very skateable. Or, the other day, riding my bike to the community garden, I followed the enticing scent of newly poured asphalt (this toxic affection a skaterly remain) to a new local food hub about to open, and emerging from that soon-to-be-very-smooth parking lot was an old waterpipe, about six inches in diameter, slick, bent at maybe a forty-five-degree angle, ending four or six inches from the newly painted (white) wall, which would, be, for a skater maybe not me but maybe, I’m thinking grind the pipe up to a wallride (this sentence is an alibi for when the smudgy black rainbows arrive): damn, so skateable.

And the damn so skateable thing (yeah, it’s called, often, a spot, which is something like a stain) the skater stumbles upon is almost never kept to themselves. Remember that bucket. Share your Independent. Rather, after a test run or two, word is sent—in our day, if Sugar was around (so named because he liked to snort Smarties), he was dispersed on his Santa Cruz Slasher, like Pheidippides; these days people probably resort to the cellular phone (good use for such a devilish device!)—to the hordes, big or small, to join us at this new spot, this new stain, this wreckage, this abandonment, this ruin, this commons, this c’mon.

Ross Gay, Inciting Joy

[uclamikefranks]

Jane Jacobs would approve.

[skateable0]

Skateable Spaces: Unleashing Excitement at Every Event

Skateable Spaces Pvt Ltd creates dynamic skatepark for events, offering a thrilling fusion of sport and entertainment. Specializing in designing and hosting skateboarding events, we provide versatile spaces that cater to adrenaline enthusiasts. Our innovative approach ensures unforgettable experiences, combining the thrill of skateboarding with the excitement of events. Elevate your gatherings with Skateable Spaces—a premier destination for action-packed, memorable occasions.

[dedicatedlongevity]

If you just randomly put in a 35 stair at your property and say "skate it, I dare you" you will probably have few people skate it but otherwise it'll probably go untouched... Add a handrail that's skateable and you will see more activity but I don't see why you wouldn't want to always encourage self growth as long as it isn't damaging to the community

[potenthockey]

Synthetic Ice Hockey - Potent Hockey

Synthetic Ice Hockey, Hockey Synthetic Ice, Hockey Floor Tiles. Experience the cutting-edge innovation of Potent Hockey Skateable Synthetic Ice Tiles, the ultimate hockey training aid that brings the feeling of real ice to any location.

[lunatic-harness]

i get SO jealous seeing skate videos filmed in jakarta and kuala lumpur like. how come they got the skateable capitals and we got US-style car oriented infrastructure with barely any space or thought for pedestrians

[thebonesofhoudini]

One of my new favorite hobbies has become building DIY skate spots for fun. Sometimes building them using whatever is existing in a parking garage such as curbs with quikrete, or just picking spots that would be nice like a ledge that isn't quite skateable and making it skateable using a rub brick, laquer and wax.

My next project is to make a DIY ledge using concrete cinder blocks, liquid nails and an angle iron from home depot.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure

This highly corporate title converts Renaissance-era Disney locales into skateable parks. We'll focus on the Gamecube release, played via Dolphin Emulator.

Extracting sounds

Disney's ambience DTKs are located inside the music folder. These can be converted to WAVs using vgmstream.

To get level-specific sound effects, we'll use a pair of QuickBMS scripts: one for the game's PRG archives, and another for the HED/WAD pair. This game is built on Neversoft's popular Tony Hawk's Pro Skater engine, so many tools are theorhetically available for extracting the latter - although I can't guarantee they all support Disney.

The HED/WAD pair will give you voiced streams. A handful of these are played back as random ambient sounds, such as the Olliewood supermarket announcements.

Each level's PRG archive contains its positional sound effects. Extract using the corresponding BMS script, and once again use vgmstream to convert the assets inside e.g. sounds\dsp\pizza.

Capturing footage

Widescreen

Enable 16:9 widescreen display in the game's settings. This is presumably anamorphic widescreen as Disney was released on 6th generation consoles. See the note about THUG Pro below if you want higher resolutions.

Levels and free camera

Enter the extremepassport cheat to unlock all levels. Since level selection is restricted for Disney characters, I recommend playing as one of the kids.

We can use Dolphin's Free Look to position Dolphin's camera wherever we like. As always, be mindful that level geometry will be culled using the game's camera, not Dolphin's. Position and rotate your character accordingly.

Hiding HUD

We can use Dolphin's custom texture loading to hide our HUD. After choosing a character, enable texture dumping and start a level. The HUD assets for that character will be dumped to the GEXE52 directory.

You are looking for the SPECIAL indicator and the score meter. You'll need to identify and override both the bitmap and the corresponding mask asset to completely hide the HUD.

THUG Pro

If you're interested in Andy's Room, you can load it using vanilla THUG Pro, which offers free-look tools and native widescreen options of its own. It's likely possible to import the remaining Disney levels to THUG Pro, but I didn't experiment with this.

Putting it all together

Overlay your captured footage with your base ambience DTK, positional DSP sounds, and any applicable voiceover clips.

[pennskate]

Emerica skateable bench. 53 inches long, 18 inches wide. Chip on the one side, pic included. Please send your offer to pennsk8r@yahoo.com with E-BENCH as the subject. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnex1nmu1Xr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=