PDX plazaage!

The rain stopped just long enough for a nice Glenhaven session today; on the way home Ben  and I stopped at the new street plaza park being built by newline skateparks out of Canadia.

The rain-drop ledge above was a submission for a skateable sculpture, appropriate for a city with 180 days of measurable rain a year, no? It looks super fun.

Here we have T ledge, railage, and peep the barcelona style ledge into bank in the background.

This looks half done, but its actually the finished crete, I think they are going to put some trees and marsh steez grasses to finish it off. I cant wait to early grab the shit out of those kickers!

Standard Plaza-age, looks like the hubbas gonna get a slab of granite. VERY NICE, I LIKE!

Woop-dee-hop ledge still under construction.

Manny padage

Ditchage

Granite 3 set ledge, "Oh Love Park- why did they kill you?..."

 

Scoping lines.

In true PDX style the street plaza has some sick tranny too.

One of the cool things about the rain is seeing this once or twice a week. Dude on dude on double rainbow anyone?

Back to school...

Over the past month I have found my Clark Park/West Philly replacement in Portland. PSU's campus is in the middle of downtown on the park blocks which has a similar setting (urban yet lush); there are also definitely enough smelly hippys, fresh out of H.S. college kids and of course anarchists to make me feel right at home.

Contrary to popular belief P-town has seasons, here is fall.

Bike parking is pretty rough, but thats kind of awesome.

Paine park dudes: peep the use of died concrete in this plaza, each color even has its own size of square giving the ground a different texture. Pretty dope example of a cost effective way to create a classy aesthetic. 

Green roofage.

Caught Merdith w/ helmet on. She thinks it looks rediculous, I think its cute.

Free spirit maan...

Campus is lush son!

Dont let these signs fool you.

That arrow points to this plaza and I have been booted many times. Its fun to argue with the security- "Dude look at the sign! WTF!"

Second purpose of this post is to show the cruiser board crew these rad spots that are all over campus. The bricks are super loud and ground is slow on a regs board, but on that rain board you are super stoked! Below is the typical kicker, these things are all over school.

More kicker action

Horners dream spot. There is one with recyled plastic for grindage.

Low to not so high recycled plastic action.

It is a bummer that plaza design seems to include skate stoppers these days, but they don't see everything we do. How about ollie the five to grind on the lower ledge or (if you got pop) ollie over the block down the big three...

Gap to down ramp. Really surprised not to have seen this spot in mags.

The first time Mike and I visited P-town in '97 I tried to drop in on this monster while holding a ghetto blaster- prob playing Teengenerate. One of the worst slams I ever took; the ghetto blaster didn't survive R.I.P. Ten years later and I have a class in the building, really wierd.

Fall colors are super epic.

New Indys

Went skating with Mike on Sunday, he had some technical difficulties.

Swivle from Matt Yula on Vimeo

WAX

In the last couple of years there has been an explosion of renegade crete spots in skating. Aside from banks and quarters being real fun to skate, there is definite feeling of "making it happen" which makes those kind of projects super fun. While its so awesome that people are making it happen we can't forget the power of wax. The effort involved in turning a rough ledge into a buttery grind is pretty minimal and fun. With the number of heads devoted to skating right now, if each of us has one that is our baby, there will be spots on every block. Look around and recognize the potential. 

Last days of summer

We went down the... I mean - out to the coast

 a couple weekends ago. Merle killed it! 

I found a nasty one from the day before.

castlage

Meredith shot an ad for Krew

Oregon coast views = Sooo sick

Been busy with school, but have been trying to get clips everytime I go skate. 

Fall '08 bro-video in the works!

A good barrier spot never gets old

This place has my vote for best new skatepark in Portland

A couple of still shots - isn't the delay on digital cameras SO annoying?

Miguel: ollie and bsts

Got some shots

Required arty shot for closer.

Harvest

We went out to Hood River last week in search of apples, kind of the best snack on earth.

After getting shut down at a couple places we finally found

 an orchard that would let us pick our own.

They had tons of cool old style tools. Above are some cider making presses,

below a scale- duh.

The real treat was all the crazy decor at this place.

The highlight being this sick arrangement

featuring a painting of Ray Charles.

 The woman running the orchard got super bummed on me

 for taking a photo of it. For the rest of our time picking

 she was known as the apple Nazi:

"NO FRUIT FOR YOOU!"

It turned out the woman was the artist.

 I thought maybe she was self conscious, but really

 she thought I was going to pass the work off as my own. She made 

sure to point out to us that the work was signed.

Meredith- soo excited! That girl belongs on a farm.

Our bounty. Oh yeah, pears as well as apples.

We stopped at the skatepark on the way back through Hood River just

long enough for me to eat crap rolling, then

 rode off into the sunset.