5 Must Haves For A Wicked Skate Park

Skate parks are the lifeblood of skateboard culture. While skateboard culture is alive and well in Los Angeles on streets and sidewalks, skate parks are where skateboarders push the limit of their skills and imagination.

A skate park open to the public is a breeding ground for the next generation of talented and innovative skateboarders. They are safe havens for developing new tricks and inovations that will continue to drive the sport of skateboarding. Skate parks in drained pools gave birth to some of the most talented skates today.

skate park 5 Must Haves For A Wicked Skate Park

Athletic Magic

The ability for one person to create athletic magic with a skateboard has created a colorful and adrenaline-filled culture. Skate parks are essential to keeping this culture alive. Skate parks are breeding grounds for hungry adolescents looking to prove themselves in the skate world.

A skate park is an athletic facility, catered specifically to skateboarders. A skate park is just as important as a stadium or a gymnasium to being a place of sports recreation. Skate parks also provide youths safe places to congregate and engage in physical activity, while showing off their skills to spectators.

For a skate park to be truly wicked, it should have the following must-haves:

Good lighting
Permanent concrete
A minimum of 18,000 square feet
Beginner to advanced areas for different skill-levels
A street course

If a skate park manages to have all these features, then it is truly a wicked skate park. Good lighting is a must, so that spectators can clearly see all the exciting action. Concrete is the preferred material, so that the skate park requires little upkeep and provides a long-term recreation area for avid skateboarders.

Additionally, for a skate park to be large enough to be of use to advanced skateboarders, it should be a minimum of 18,000 feet. Otherwise, skateboarders are not able to fully utilize their skills in a smaller area. What’s the use of building a skate park if it’s too small be effective?

All-Inclusive Skate Park

Also, a wicked skate park should be all-inclusive. It should be an area where beginners can get their feet wet, and where expert skaters can hone and push their skills. They can also learn and teach one another, while forming a strong community for youth.

And, lastly, for the expert skaters, a course that emulates the street is a must. It should have stairs, ledges, and anything else that a skater would encounter in the street. Railings and other landings also provide unique opportunties for skates to grind and develop creative tricks.

It’s A Lifestyle

The lifestyle of a skater also includes meeting the urban landscape head on, and a skate park should provide a perfect training ground for how to handle those elements. These skate park training grounds will give birth to the next generation of skaters.

If a skate park has all these elements, then it serves as an amazing resource for skateboarders of all skill-levels. An all inclusive park can help the sport of skateboarding for generations to come.

Kellie Swaim is a marketing associate for Kryptonics, the leaders in skateboard and skateboard accessories, learn more at their website http://www.kryptonics.com/.

Photo Credit: MorgueFile

Tags: for, Haves, Must, park, Skate, Wicked

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Turning An Empty Pool Into A Skate Ramp

An empty pool can be surprisingly useful for skateboarders. This is especially relevant on the west coast, where there are many pools and a thriving skateboarder community. They are always looking for fun and new ways to challenge themselves, and that is how Vertical skateboarding (aka vert staking) came to be in the 1960s.

Skateboarding Growing In Popularity

Skateboarding was starting to become widely popular and had started when surfers were looking for something to do when there were no waves to be caught. The discovery of how useful an empty pool could be randomly came to be when a skateboarder’s parents left him home alone.

What happened next would make skateboard history. The son and his friends decided to drain the pool, which lent itself extremely well to skateboarding, with its high smooth walls and the transition from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end. The history of pool skating was documented in the feature film Dogtown and Z-Boys, which critics believe to be one of the greatest skateboarding movies of all time.

Pool Skating

This became known as pool skating and would become a popular pastime for many Southern California skateboarders. An empty pool has even been called the skater’s “nirvana.” This also lends itself to the DIY dynamic that is part of skateboard culture. You can’t wait for ‘the man’ to build you a skatepark, you have to create your own.

Anyone with a pool can turn it into a skate ramp. The water simply needs to be drained and then skateboarders can start practicing their moves. One famous move is known as the “carver.” The skateboarder starts from the shallow end of the pool and does a wide turn where all four wheels remain on the side of the pool.

Empty Pool Paradise

Throughout the seventies, empty pools were the favorite place to practice vert staking. Since the pools were not built to be a skater’s paradise, much of the terrain was difficult to skate properly on. This only emboldened the skateboarders to look at difficult terrain as a challenge.

If a skater was able to conquer a particularly tough pool, then it was a symbol of pride and garnered respect from other skateboarders. Vert staking has bred many skateboarding superstars, such as Tony Hawk, Steven Caballero, and Christian Hosoi. Tony Hawk has turned into one of the most wealthy athletes of all time thanks in part to his hugely popular video game series.

Vert Skating

Vert staking is extremely challenging, and takes a combination of athletic ability, determination, and fearlessness to pull off. This is why skateboarders who have mastered the art, like Tony Hawk, have become superstars in their sport.

The story behind Vert Staking is amazing, particularly that it all stemmed from a kid being left home alone. This shows great and innovative ideas can come from the most surprising and unlikely of places. It also shows that what might just be an empty pool to one person, is a paradise to another.

Kellie Swaim is a skateboarding expert from her time spent as a marketing associate for Bravo Sports makers of Kryptonics Skateboards.

skate ramp pool Turning An Empty Pool Into A Skate Ramp