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 Berkeley,
California (Wednesday, August 23, 2000)
– Let the fun begin! Berkeley
skaters and citizens will be proud when the much anticipated
premiere SkatePark they helped design opens this October!
On
Tuesday, August 22nd, crews began excavating the much anticipated
Berkeley SkatePark to be located at the new Harrison Street Park at
5th and Harrison Streets in West Berkeley. By the end of the
month, subdrains will be in place and the construction team, along
with local skaters will be shaping and forming bowls, funboxes, and
flatbanks. Locals
not only lobbied for the new park, they helped design it, they'll
help build it and they have set a new standard for SkateParks in
California.
With
the help of Friends of a Berkeley Skatepark and skater/architect
Mike McIntyre of Site Design Group, Berkeley skaters spent the rainy
afternoons of last winter designing their ultimate skatepark.
Street skaters argued with pool-riders over what was a better
feature: flat banks or
transitions. Old school skaters reminisced about their
favorite SkateParks of the late'70's, while the new schoolers
mentioned their favorite video parts.
Skaters
came to the conclusion that most California parks were sorely
lacking in deep bowls, grindable coping, and lights.
Berkeley's final design includes:
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a
HUGE 8 1/2 foot deep combi-bowl
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a
kidney pool
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two
street bowls connected with a snowborad-style kicker
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a
spine
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and,
a beginner streetcourse
The
kidney pool will resemble the infamous Cancer Bowl, and most of the
street features were place on the deck surrounding the entire
skatepark so that flow lines will not be compromised.
Once
you enter this park, you won't have to push until you want to
leave! And, you won't have to leave at dark because
lights have already been installed as part of the larger Harrison
Street Playing Fields Project. Just think, all those days
where you got off work at 5 PM and had to go find a lighted parking
lot to skate....those days will soon be over!
To
ensure the park is constructed properly, Friends of a Berkeley
Skatepark representatives will be working with the construction team
on a daily basis. since the contractor had never ridden a
SkatePark, he was flown to the legendary Burnside SkatePark in
Portland, and to Arizona where more than six cutting edge parks have
been built in the last year. He was impressed, but pledged to
make the Berkeley SkatePark the best of the bunch.
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