I have seen some terrible skateparks in my day. Seriously did anyone actually talk to a single skater when they designed the Temecula Skatepark? I skated it one time. It’s a shame that so much money was invested and on any given day there are literally no skaters in the Temecula park, generally just a couple little kids on scooters.

The problem with public skatepark design is that it is generally out of sync with progression. The skatepark designs being built are a reflection of skating progression from 20 years prior. The people that design them are older than the skaters defining today’s progression and style and they are out of touch with what skaters want.

When skate parks started getting traction in the late nineties they all seemed to have a bowl. A big bowl. An there was usually about two guys in any given town that spent any time actually skating the bowls. 95% of the skaters were looking for street and park designers and builders were handing us bowls! All of us who were setting the progression for our time those of us 16-24 years old were looking at each other and asking;

“Who the hell designed this crap and why didn’t they ask us?”

I’ll admit, I grew up skating in the late eighties and early nineties when the only parks to skate where leftovers from days gone by; complete with snake runs and zero ledges to grind.

Here’s an example of a skatepark in Lockart Texas. An amazing bowl was built that will barely be utilized when all the kids who will actually be using the park on a daily basis want to do is skate the street area which is barely and afterthought and given a tiny little space on the deck of the bowl. The skaters who want to session the main handrail have to run it out on grass after landing. Weak!

We wanted EMB and they gave us a backyard pool. Thanks for nothing.

My time has finally come, at 32 years old skate parks are starting to reflect the style of skating I grew up on. That is to say that they now incorporate a lot of street style. But I have to ask; are they what the kids setting the progression want?

I will add that the three parks in my town that I frequent were all built in the last 5 years and they all have bowls that are too big and no one skates.