Is Midway Skatepark any good?

Can any contractor build a skatepark?

• I'm planning on building a skatepark in Kuwait. Since we don't have anyone that is experienced with skateparks in Kuwait, I'm thinking of hiring a Skatepark construction company to design the skatepark and provide a blueprint with all the details. Can a contractor follow that blueprint and build the skatepark? Does a skatepark look hard? Another thing is that skateparks have ramps that have curves, how can the contractor get the curve right? Will the curve be included in the blueprint?

• Answer:

  In theory, yes. In practice, no. I am fortunate to live in an area that has seen several skateparks built in the last 10 years or so, and the quality of the parks varies enormously. The best parks in my area were all built by a company named Grindline that specializes in skatepark design and construction. It is not a coincidence that Grindline was founded by, and consists primarily of, skateboarders. The worst parks were built by companies whose experience was primarily in conventional construction - buildings, pedestrian parks, industrial facilities, etc. It is easy for a non-skateboarder to design something that looks like a skatepark, but that provides a poor experience for skateboarders. There are many details about skatepark design and construction that are not obvious, even to seasoned skateboarders who have experience riding in skateparks. (If the only oil paintings you ever saw were magnificent, you might think that all oil paintings are magnificent - but the more terrible paintings you see, the more you will appreciate all of the ways that an oil painting can be done poorly.) A good skatepark has a very smooth, polished concrete surface.  When you fall at high speed, you slide. If you're wearing pads, it's no problem to drop to your knees, slide to a halt, and get right back onto your feet. If you fall onto something not protected by pads, you will bruise, and your clothes will get dirty. If you fall onto bare skin, you might also get a scrape or a light scratch, but you typically get a mild burn. It stings, but it heals quickly. A poor skatepark has a surface like sandpaper.  When you fall at high speed, you stick. If you drop to your knees, the surface grabs onto your pads, catapulting you onto your face.  You tumble, you lose skin, you hurt. If you wear elbow pads, the coarse concrete will grab the pad, pull it up or down your arm, and then scrape the skin off of your elbow.  If you fall without padding, it will tear your clothes and then scrape off some skin.  If you fall onto bare skin, you'll lose a bunch of it. It will bleed, it will hurt, and it will take days to heal. Skate parks built by non-skateboarders almost always have surfaces like sandpaper. That textured surface works fine for office buildings, for sidewalks and for picnic benches, but it's horrible for skateparks. But unfortunately, it is very common. A good skatepark has truly radial transitions from flat to vertical (or to 45 degrees, or whatever the maximum angle is), and in the corners of the bowls.  If you look at a cross-section, every transition is a segment of a true circle, which has a single precise center point. When riding, you don't feel any kinks in the transition from flat to steep. Keeping your speed up through multiple transitions like keeping up your speed on a swing-set. You just push and pull and it feels like flying. A poor skatepark is a collection of flat slabs with little or no radius where they meet. Riding is a challenge because you need to perfectly anticipate each kink - if your timing isn't just right, the board's speed will change abruptly and you'll be thrown off (and then the texture of the surface becomes very important to you, as noted above). A good skatepark has coping (steel pipe or rounded concrete blocks) where the steep riding surface meets the level "deck" where riders stand when they are waiting their turn.  The coping sticks up just a little bit, so that when riding you can feel your wheels roll over it (this helps you know exactly where your board is, relative to the edge), but not so much that your wheels have any trouble rolling over it. When the coping protrudes just slightly, it will subtly "pop" the board toward you as you roll over it, which helps keep the board in place under your feet when jumping in to, or out of, a bowl or ramp. A skatepark might have a few areas with no coping, just a rounded or angled transition from the riding surface to the deck surface, but such segments are typically only in areas where riders are expected to cross over them at high speeds. A not-so-good skatepark will have no coping at all. A really bad skatepark will have coping that sticks up so much that your wheels can't roll over it. Jumping in to a bowl is impossible. Jumping out of a bowl is impossible. Pivoting into a 50-50 stance (both axles resting on the coping, two wheels resting on the deck or on the steep surface, and two wheels hanging freely) can be difficult or impossible. At a good bowl-oriented skatepark, there is generally a consistent "deck" height (relative to the bottom of the bowl) with perhaps a few smaller segments of higher deck or lower deck.  The bowls may vary in depth to accommodate riders of varying skill. Riders can go back and forth between any two points on the deck, almost like being on a swing, until they run out of strength or stumble. At a good ramp-oriented skatepark, there is a large flat expanse of ground, with ramps of varying height placed in different areas to accomodate riders of varying skill. Riders can go back and forth between the ramps until they run out of strength or stumble. At a poor skatepark, there's a "high side" and a "low side." Riders walk up to the high side, ride to the slow side, stop, and walk back up. Since runs are short, and interrupted by the need to take a walk, the skateboarders will spend a smaller portion of their day actually skateboarding.  If you have not got a large flat area available upon which to build a proper park, then this sort of park is still better than nothing, but if you have options, this is something to be avoided. At a good skatepark, the overall layout of features promotes long runs where riders can alternate between different features, occasionally adjusting their paths to ride different features. Each time you rise up from the bottom to the deck, you can identify another feature (ideally, you can choose between two or three other features), roll down, roll across the bottom, and roll back up to another deck area. At a poor skatepark, you often find yourself in a position where once you have rolled up onto a deck area, there's really no good place to go.  From A to B works, then to C... and then you find yourself atop a ramp that angles you toward a parked car near the edge of the park.  Or toward a patch of grass.  Or toward a bench with people sitting on it. At a good skatepark, the heights (or depths) of the features varies in proportion to the distance between them, so that after you drop in, you have enough time to make minor corrections to your balance before you have to ride up the far side. But you don't have to cover so much ground that you lose speed, so that when you reach the far side, your speed carries you right to the top. At a poor skatepark, you drop in and almost immediately find yourself rising up the far (not very far) side. If your balance wasn't perfect, you fall.  Or perhaps you drop in, and there's so much distance to travel before reaching the next feature, that by the time you get there, you no longer have enough speed to rise to the top.  So, after two or three features you need to step off and walk back up to the top. If it were not so late, I'd find pictures to illustrate all of these things. I'll try to find some time in the next few days to add some pictures. I have no affiliation with Grindline, in fact I have never met any of their founders or employees. But for the last few years, almost all of my skateboarding has been at  parks built by Grindline. Specifically, these three: http://www.northwestskater.com/bellevuecrossroads.html http://www.northwestskater.com/carnation.html http://www.northwestskater.com/arlington.html (That is not my web site, but I did occasionally meet the author of that site at the Crossroads park.) I've also been to parks in my area that were built by regular construction companies, and I've been consistently disappointed by issues like the ones that I described above. I've just been spoiled by Grindline's excellent design and workmanship. If you can afford to have these people come to your area to work with you on the construction of your park, or even just to consult with you via email, I strongly recommend that you do so: http://www.grindline.com/