Cities people should skate

[Ronald Wilson Reagan]

What cities have you been to that other skateboarders would check out? Some are obvious, others not as much.
I can only really speak for American cities but...
San Francisco is a one of a kind city, if you don't know why, I'm not explaining it. pier 7 is fucked, emb is long gone, and third is loafed as hell, but the hills still offer so much, and the lack of those spots might be good, because now people are exploring more.

LA has a lot of lame shit going for it, but there are awesome spots everywhere, just coming here and exploring is a lot of fun. Want to know what schoolyards have those cool moveable LA benches? All of them, and they are just as fun to skate as you would imagine.

Chicago- grew up there and people say a lot has changed. But they got spots for days, and being as though its away from both coasts and most other cities, a lot of it is still pretty unspoiled

Philly- a few years back when love, city hall, that spot with the game pieces, and a bunch of other plazas were still running Philly was the best city for skating. A lot of that shit is gone for good these days, but FDR, the random raw streets, and the most chances to skate cellar doors (hate on them all you want, you know you at least want to skate on once) and a few remaining spots downtown make it still good

New York- I'm all about Manhattan. Everybody gets coverage in Brooklyn, but I went there and couldn't find shit without somebody showing me around, Philly is better for that type of shit. Manhattan is a never ending jungle of every kind of skatespot you could imagine

I know a lot of my cities are kind of obvious, but I guess that's the point of this thread- I've been to the cities everybody knows are good, what are some other ones, in the U.S. and abroad, that people should check out

[bandini]

I think I mentioned this in another thread, but San Antonio is the greatest undiscovered skate city in America.

Texas in general is super fun because every place you go, there are these long, perfect round flatbars in front of everything (we were theorizing that they were intended as hitching posts). Also, for some reason, the people who built Texas decided to put crazy cement banks everywhere. Plus, every single town has tons of really fun ditches that never have any water in them. 

Also, since most of Texas is severely economically depressed to the point of looking like someone dropped a bomb on it, most of the spots I skated there were in front of abandoned businesses... no bust factor!

[clamy]

I've never been there but San Jose. When I make my trip to the US that's one place I want to hit most, enjoi/tiltmode make it look so fun.

[tobey]

took a trip to Washington D.C. a couple summers back, a lot of spots are really close and are really fun. Problem was you could maybe skate at each spot for a minute or less cause of some many different cop districts

[Fishsticks]

What cities have you been to that other skateboarders would check out? Some are obvious, others not as much.
I can only really speak for American cities but...
San Francisco is a one of a kind city, if you don't know why, I'm not explaining it. pier 7 is fucked, emb is long gone, and third is loafed as hell, but the hills still offer so much, and the lack of those spots might be good, because now people are exploring more.

LA has a lot of lame shit going for it, but there are awesome spots everywhere, just coming here and exploring is a lot of fun. Want to know what schoolyards have those cool moveable LA benches? All of them, and they are just as fun to skate as you would imagine.

Chicago- grew up there and people say a lot has changed. But they got spots for days, and being as though its away from both coasts and most other cities, a lot of it is still pretty unspoiled

Philly- a few years back when love, city hall, that spot with the game pieces, and a bunch of other plazas were still running Philly was the best city for skating. A lot of that shit is gone for good these days, but FDR, the random raw streets, and the most chances to skate cellar doors (hate on them all you want, you know you at least want to skate on once) and a few remaining spots downtown make it still good

New York- I'm all about Manhattan. Everybody gets coverage in Brooklyn, but I went there and couldn't find shit without somebody showing me around, Philly is better for that type of shit. Manhattan is a never ending jungle of every kind of skatespot you could imagine

I know a lot of my cities are kind of obvious, but I guess that's the point of this thread- I've been to the cities everybody knows are good, what are some other ones, in the U.S. and abroad, that people should check out

NO! New york is reserved for Bobby Puleo and Bobby Puleo only!

[grimcity]

New Orleans: tons of great spots but don't go unless you've got natenola as your guide. He knows every spot and he's a good dude.

Baton Rouge: After 6pm on weekdays and pretty much morning until night on weekends, the capital area downtown and central business district is pretty much deserted. From the Mississippi river (at the Cat Banks), through the core of downtown, past the State Capital, the entire area has so much shit that it's like a video game. BR is pretty sprawled, so there are some good natural and DIY spots around, as well as a really well done new concrete park with a ton of street-ish stuff and a bowl & pool.

Hammond:  We're between and off to the side of NOLA and BR... we have a sick ass Dreamland park and an indoor wooden bowl with varying heights, hips, blah blah. There's an epic ditch just outside of town and an abandoned dairy in the land of Britney Spears that looks like it was built to be a skatepark.

NOLA, Hammond and BR heads all know each other, and I've heard out of towners talk about how nice people were to them- so I think that says a lot. Not taking away form other friendly places, but for traveling skaters I think this part of Louisiana is really nice. Shit, Lafayette's cool too, but I think we have a local here who can speak for it better than I can.

[???]

I would say that the most fun (and luck) I have had was in Austin, TX. lots of ditches and cool spots, good people, Bingham brothers hooked it up because I lived in the same town as their other brother.

Notable mentions:

- Vancouver BC: relatively easy to navigate, there still are some cools spots, but they get fewer with each visit
- NYC: for obvious reasons
- SF: hills, cruising, and lots of good folks
- Chicago: was okay. I was with a friend who had just moved (next to clemente) and we had a hard time finding stuff, but he ended up doing well there

[spool of cord]

in response to gipper's first post:


I have to say brooklyn's got philly beat (just in terms of skating) at this point. sure in philly you have tons of fun little spots all over, but the bust factor on most of them is just absurd. those cellar doors you talk about, just like waxed stairs, are usually in front of an apartment building. and usually you're gonna get kicked out pretty fast. philly had that awesome DIY spot going on under the I-95 bridge for a while in the early/middle part of last decade but I was down there about a year ago and all thats left is a flatbar. I guess the city took the spot back for more parking.

brooklyn: you can get off the train at the first stop across the brooklyn bridge and find everything right in front of you. you can also keep going on forever and keep finding amazing stuff everywhere. people love to hate on williamsburg but its just a goldmine of spots. the bust factor in brooklyn is almost non-existent compared with philly and manhattan. person opinion here but I feel like way uptown manhattan is another undiscovered playground. columbia university area of manhattan is busting at the seams full of spots, and the best part is 99% of that area is just apartment buildings full of people who leave early and come back late everyday from their jobs downtown.

[AnklePants]

I think I mentioned this in another thread, but San Antonio is the greatest undiscovered skate city in America.

Texas in general is super fun because every place you go, there are these long, perfect round flatbars in front of everything (we were theorizing that they were intended as hitching posts). Also, for some reason, the people who built Texas decided to put crazy cement banks everywhere. Plus, every single town has tons of really fun ditches that never have any water in them. 

Also, since most of Texas is severely economically depressed to the point of looking like someone dropped a bomb on it, most of the spots I skated there were in front of abandoned businesses... no bust factor!

You must of been in the middle of nowhere, all of the main cities in TX are alive and well.  Austin has the best spots by far, you can drive anywhere in central texas and find spots all over, some of the most unique too.

[Monty Burns]

Sydney : Nice friendly city , nice women , some good street spots but takes abit of effort to find , alot of stuff is skate stopped but theres some good parks and minis . Great weather and sights too . lots of hills to bomb

Melbourne : Same deal as Sydney but with abit more euro vibe


Malmo: 2 great outdoor parks with all kinds of ledges , tranny and anything betwen . One big indoor park with everything you could
want . Alot of DIY spots thanks to mr pontus alv and other local heros . Alot of old and new architechure being built with spots for days
great women , best women ...

Copenhagen : Chill ass city with tons of party , alcohol and drugs , great women and a nice vibe . A indoor park , some outdoor stuff , some new stuff built and spots to be find in alot of places .

Tel Aviv : atleast one big park , some plazas and parks and some downtown spots if you can find them , nice ppl , and alot of party
great weather . MOST BEUTIFUL WOMEN IVE EVER SEEN

[bandini]

You must of been in the middle of nowhere, all of the main cities in TX are alive and well.

Well, most of Texas is not the "main cities" - Texas is a big fucking place and the vast majority of it is obviously not doing very well. But this is the case throughout most of the Midwest and the South as well. America in general is completely falling apart - people in cities or on the coasts don't really get this.

San Antonio was my favorite city - even for non-skate reasons - but whole areas of the urban center were pretty abandoned looking (which was why it was so fun to skate).

[Skater Austin]

Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Dallas all have sick spots.

[Ronald Wilson Reagan]

in response to gipper's first post:


I have to say brooklyn's got philly beat (just in terms of skating) at this point. sure in philly you have tons of fun little spots all over, but the bust factor on most of them is just absurd. those cellar doors you talk about, just like waxed stairs, are usually in front of an apartment building. and usually you're gonna get kicked out pretty fast. philly had that awesome DIY spot going on under the I-95 bridge for a while in the early/middle part of last decade but I was down there about a year ago and all thats left is a flatbar. I guess the city took the spot back for more parking.

brooklyn: you can get off the train at the first stop across the brooklyn bridge and find everything right in front of you. you can also keep going on forever and keep finding amazing stuff everywhere. people love to hate on williamsburg but its just a goldmine of spots. the bust factor in brooklyn is almost non-existent compared with philly and manhattan. person opinion here but I feel like way uptown manhattan is another undiscovered playground. columbia university area of manhattan is busting at the seams full of spots, and the best part is 99% of that area is just apartment buildings full of people who leave early and come back late everyday from their jobs downtown.

I guess its all about luck. Philly definitely used to be way better for sure, but when I go (my sister lives there), I usually am just cruising around looking for spots and hitting shit and moving on, and it has been awesome. I suppose if I lived there or wanted to session a spot it might be tough. One thing I forgot to mention that also makes Philly rad though is the absurdly small street gaps.

When I've been to New York, Manhattan has been easy in terms of finding spots, there seems to be something everywhere you look the way it's so built up. I actually did go up north a bit when I was there, skated grants tomb area, whatever that i I'm sure there are good spots in bs considered. With Brooklyn, obviously a lot of people skate there, I just found that without a tour guide I struggled to find spots, maybe I just was looking the wrong places. I just saw that spots were not quite as littered along the street as philly. Philly seriously has a pole jam on every corner. its weird, people must be terrible drivers there. Oh, another thing, that whole "brooklyn spots are tougher than they look" shit is way true too. That one spot with the banks next to the wall (Dustin Dollin frontside flipped off one onto the wall  then rolled into the next one in baker 3 I think), is crazy, anything over it is insane.

And to whoever mentioned San Jose- go with a tour guide! A lot of the best spots are tucked away in business parks where software and .com companies are based. It was really good a few years ago when the .com bubble burst and a lot of those places were abandoned, some still are. It was awesome because those companies were all about image and would always have some weird and cool architecture in front. I'm pretty sure that one spot with the blue curving uphill metal ledge and those other random colored shapes is still abandoned.

Another city- St. louis, Missouri- Shit has some really cool cutty spots. The kings bridge park was really cool when I went. A friend showed me around and showed me some shit Randy Ploesser did around there, and that kid is fucking incredible.

[bandini]

Actually, I didn't even think of it, since it's my current stomping grounds, but the Sacramento area has turned out to be pretty amazing. I just keep discovering spot after spot after spot.

Plus, thanks to Chris Ray, a huge percentage of the spots in videos are in Sac these days, which is kinda fun.

Sacramento is definitely one of those places where it helps to have a tour guide, though. You can have fun just cruising around downtown for sure, but the spots are mostly pretty far apart, in not terribly obvious places, & require driving.

[Ronald Wilson Reagan]

Sacto is fun. I had a good tour guide when I went. Is that big quarterpipe/bank thing still there? That thing is really fun.

[bandini]

Yeah, I haven't been there in awhile, but I'm pretty sure it's still there. We just lost the West Sac bank to barrier AND the famous triple set on Douglas though.

[blackalbino]

99 percent of girls in montreal are models

[Ronald Wilson Reagan]

Yeah, I haven't been there in awhile, but I'm pretty sure it's still there. We just lost the West Sac bank to barrier AND the famous triple set on Douglas though.

the roseville triple? Fuck that thing. Fucked my foot up bad trying to ollie it.

[spool of cord]

I guess I see where you're coming from gipper. I'm not from philly or brooklyn and and I also tend to just cruise, hit shit and move on. however if I find something extremely appealing I'll stop and skate it for as long as I can. and I've just found more of those type of spots in BK than philly.


DC has always been so great to me whenever i've been there. pulaski has always been dead and I've been able to skate it for hours. zillions of spots all over.

some small cities worth going to for the skating, in order of how dope they are: albany ny, birmingham alabama, portland maine, cleveland ohio (not too small but pretty under the radar) , binghamton ny, scranton pa.

[friendly dave]

Portland, or at least the northwest US in general. We've got some good shit going on up here.

[grimcity]

DC has always been so great to me whenever i've been there.

I love DC, but there's just too many damned cops everywhere. I go there for a few days every year and it seems like they multiply like bunnies.

[daniel]

99 percent of girls in montreal are models

Montreal definitely rad, lots of awesome spots, see the dimestore video for examples.

I grew up taking the GO train to Toronto to skate, the downtown is packed with amazing skatespots.
Now, most of the obvious ones are skateblocked or quick busts, but there are still lots of fun spots to poke around.

[Diogenes]

Arica, chile

Trujillo, Peru

B.A. Arg.

Budapest

Agadir

[spool of cord]

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DC has always been so great to me whenever i've been there.

[close]

I love DC, but there's just too many damned cops everywhere. I go there for a few days every year and it seems like they multiply like bunnies.

maybe since 9/11 they've really beefed up the force, I wasn't old enough to be making trips down there in the 90s. but yeah, if you're not going there during the summer, or when the trees bloom, or on some sort of high security day it should be just like any other big city. puluski isn't really a bust after the sun goes down

[heckler]

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DC has always been so great to me whenever i've been there.

[close]

I love DC, but there's just too many damned cops everywhere. I go there for a few days every year and it seems like they multiply like bunnies.

[close]

maybe since 9/11 they've really beefed up the force, I wasn't old enough to be making trips down there in the 90s. but yeah, if you're not going there during the summer, or when the trees bloom, or on some sort of high security day it should be just like any other big city. puluski isn't really a bust after the sun goes down

I went to DC a few summers ago and I was able to skate Pulaski bust free all day. Still one of the best times I've ever had skating.

[InternetDaddy]

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DC has always been so great to me whenever i've been there.

[close]

I love DC, but there's just too many damned cops everywhere. I go there for a few days every year and it seems like they multiply like bunnies.

very true, but living near DC has really made me appreciate it. Ledges for days...sure, it's a bitch to skate a lot of the more famous spots because of the bust factor, but if you get away from the "mall" where all the monuments are, there are some gems. NE and SW DC have some great shit if you go searching. SE has some fun shit but there's also some really shitty areas. Malcolm X park has some sick fountains/natural transition to skate, but if you go in the evening/at night you will probably get robbed or shot at. Near the welfare ledges there was a block of the sidewalk that got fucked up so they removed it, and some kids elevated the block before it making a super fun flat gap with a little kicker into it. so basically, like any other city, the famous spots are a bust but there's tons of fun stuff to find.

also, not to ramble on too much but next time you're here check out Arlington and Alexandria VA, just outside of DC and there's a bunch of stuff to hit and the bust factor is way lower. and Baltimore's not far away, and has a bunch of fun shit too.

[ryangoose]

Portland, or at least the northwest US in general. We've got some good shit going on up here.

I fucking love Portland. I get to go and visit maybe once a year during the summer, and the skating is so great. Good parks, a decent selection of street spots (plus half the parks are plazas in Portland now), and the abundance of sick parks within an hour or two drive makes for great sessions.

The Sea-Tac area of Washington was sick as well, I just haven't spent as much time up there.

[Doogie Howser Ph.D.]

Passed through downtown Memphis the other day, looked crazy fun

[James Lanson]

Passed through downtown Memphis the other day, looked crazy fun

its ok, the mlk memorial is pretty fun but hard to skate and there are some spots here and there...i prefer driving over to nashville if i wanna skate some good stuff

[Doogie Howser Ph.D.]

You live around there?