@useless_wooden_knowledge vs Evergreen Skateparks/Bad Park Design

[ndsr]

good thing you can always skate street

Respect, have a gnar!

[Dwyck]

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Evergreen does some amazing work. There is some weight to the argument about having some basics, and making the park skateable by more than a couple people at a time, but they've proven they can do that. This shit is rad, and if you've ever poured concrete you know how sick their work is. And if you haven't ever poured concrete, and are complaining about this, shut the fuck up and go pour something you like, poosey.

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I dont pour concrete though. I skateboard. Sometimes at the skatepark. If i wanted to marvel at architecture I'd go look at buildings.

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You don't have to "marvel at architecture" to respect your park builders. Go pour something sometime, no matter how shitty it is, you will love it.

What does that have to do with not liking pump trackz and wanting to skate a ledge without getting a ticket or a concerned citizen's bucket of water poured on me

[YungJugg]

ledges in skateparks are not ledges

that shits a box b

[sharkjumper]

I made a long comment on the UWK post, but figured I’d chime in here.
This criticism isn’t unique to evergreen. Dreamland and grindline have built plenty of fullpipes, quirky cradles, and 13 ft deep bowls in tiny towns that didn’t need them. Evergreen is doing the same thing with a different design direction.
Here in Portland I can ignore the evergreen park that I hate. There are plenty of options.
But evergreen builds a majority of their parks in isolated small towns. I grew up in a small Montana town and street skating was almost non existent.
So evergreen builds a moonscape bowl in a town that has no street spots. If you’re a skater there what are you gonna do?
These small towns are full of younger, likely inexperienced skaters. They may not know what they want in their park. If they do, they may not know how to voice that to a skatepark builder. Should that give evergreen free reign to build whatever they like? Maybe they could include some basic obstacles to round out the offering? Some of those Montana parks are the only thing to skate within 20, 50, 100 miles.

The point of this is to say there needs to be some consideration for the end user. Skatepark builders can do better than building a bunch of stuff that only they and their homies want to skate. Make a well rounded park that actually serves the skaters. 

And lol to the pal that made the Jeff Ament comment.

[formula420]

Has anyone skated a "perfect park"?

Boise, ID is one of the best parks I have ever skated... a close second would be Lakeland, FL. (Battleground is good, but it needs some maintenance to get back to it's former glory)

Lansdowne in MD is my all-time favorite though because it's the park I grew up skating.

Riley in Michigan is pretty close to perfect

[sharkjumper]

Has anyone skated a "perfect park"?

Your backyard. Ha.

Boise is rad. No park will please everyone.

[OMSK]

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Has anyone skated a "perfect park"?

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Your backyard. Ha.

shhhh.

[IpathCats]

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Evergreen does some amazing work. There is some weight to the argument about having some basics, and making the park skateable by more than a couple people at a time, but they've proven they can do that. This shit is rad, and if you've ever poured concrete you know how sick their work is. And if you haven't ever poured concrete, and are complaining about this, shut the fuck up and go pour something you like, poosey.

[close]

I dont pour concrete though. I skateboard. Sometimes at the skatepark. If i wanted to marvel at architecture I'd go look at buildings.

[close]

You don't have to "marvel at architecture" to respect your park builders. Go pour something sometime, no matter how shitty it is, you will love it.

[close]

What does that have to do with not liking pump trackz and wanting to skate a ledge without getting a ticket or a concerned citizen's bucket of water poured on me

You can build a ledge in a place that won't get you ticketed or water poured on you. You can literally just use construction adhesive to glue some cinderblocks together, and to stick some angle iron on the side of it and have a ledge within minutes (wait for the adhesive to cure before skating). If you want to be more thorough you can fill the blocks with concrete, or make a full poured concrete ledge, but that takes more work, and I'm getting the vibe that's not quite your thing. I understand it's not for everyone, but try and think about what YOU can do to solve your problems before hoping someone else will. Working with your community and getting a great public skatepark is obviously the ideal option, but you can't rely on that to always work out in your favor. When/if it doesn't, don't just cry about it, get off your ass and build some rad shit with your friends. It's fulfilling, it's a useful skill, and can be fun if you're with good people. You have the power to shape your future, and your concrete, just give it a shot is all I'm saying.

[GoneWithTheSchwinn]

Chiming in from Colorado, the Team Pain parks are almost all exactly the same. 
You have to be pretty good at street skating to be able to skate their street parks.  They are enjoyable, but repetitive.  Every time a new one is built here, it's not at the top of my list of things to do.

The Milliken skatepark and the Frisco skatepark were both built by Evergreen.  Both in my opinion are super fun to skate and a refresher from the street league-esque street sections at Team Pain parks.

Nothing will beat how fun Denver park or Trails park are tho.

While D Park has some fun areas in it, it’s not that great and slick. Frisco is nice but when you are in the “bowl” area you can’t see if anyone is coming. It’s problematic especially when you have 7 year olds roaming around not being supervised or leaving their scooters in the flat. If no one but skaters were at a park like that, great! But that’s never going to happen. In some ways, they were short-sighted with their design.

[pinche gringo]

I think the alien landscape parks are cool from the perspective that they are accessible to a wide range of skill levels. I also recognize that sometimes things look fun and in practice they are not.

[IusedToSkateMore]

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Has anyone skated a "perfect park"?

Boise, ID is one of the best parks I have ever skated... a close second would be Lakeland, FL. (Battleground is good, but it needs some maintenance to get back to it's former glory)

Lansdowne in MD is my all-time favorite though because it's the park I grew up skating.

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Skater Island was a perfect skatepark. RIP.

Gnarly for sure. Had fun the handful of times I got to skate there as a kid. That box by the left wall was dooook.

I find this conversation kind of weird. While I appreciate skateparks and skated them whenever I could growing up, I feel like the general lack of availability made for more creativity and adventure. Even in a suburb or a place where the town doesn't want people skating in public, kids learn to make it work. Availability of a skatepark might get more kids on boards, but what does that matter? Everyone's talking shit on kooks and scooter kids at various places on slap, and without skateparks, those groups won't proliferate.

I just want to skate. I'll skate a prefab park, a poured park, parking lot, street, sidewalk, whatever. Still, I get kinda tripped out at skateparks sometimes. Even if its fun as shit im really not a fan of being fenced in with other people. The whole idea of community funded skateparks most often isn't altruistic, it's to keep us caged in and control movement (property value).

I dont know anything. I now suck at skateboarding and think too much. Skate whatever's there to skate. Learn shit anywhere. Adapt. Have fun.

[deathturd]

The perfect park:

[Youoverthere]

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Chiming in from Colorado, the Team Pain parks are almost all exactly the same. 
You have to be pretty good at street skating to be able to skate their street parks.  They are enjoyable, but repetitive.  Every time a new one is built here, it's not at the top of my list of things to do.

The Milliken skatepark and the Frisco skatepark were both built by Evergreen.  Both in my opinion are super fun to skate and a refresher from the street league-esque street sections at Team Pain parks.

Nothing will beat how fun Denver park or Trails park are tho.

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While D Park has some fun areas in it, it’s not that great and slick. Frisco is nice but when you are in the “bowl” area you can’t see if anyone is coming. It’s problematic especially when you have 7 year olds roaming around not being supervised or leaving their scooters in the flat. If no one but skaters were at a park like that, great! But that’s never going to happen. In some ways, they were short-sighted with their design.

ever since they poured dirt and clay in the park at the start of covid, the ground has become a little sticky.

[Dorje Drolo]

They honestly look like glorified pump tracks. I'm sure they are fun but limited. I could see people getting bummed if this was plopped in as new local park.

[Freelancevagrant]

Evergreen parks are fun until they aren’t if that makes sense. If you have nothing else to skate, then yeah you they are a lot of fun and you can learn a lot of shit there. But if you have plenty of options for places to skate, it can be a fun novelty once in a while or a solid warm up spot.

That being said, I think they’re trying to saturate towns that want parks but don’t have much, if any, of a local scene. My thinking is they can go in, and probably underbid just about everyone because all they need is ready-mix, rebar, a pump, coping, and some sweat equity.

I don’t work in civics or claim to have a vast knowledge on how this shit works, but I imagine it’s all budget and interest based.

Side note, my wife (who coincidentally loves evergreen parks) gave them my info and told them I had a CDL and I got offered a job to be a truck driver/builder. I said no, but thank you.

[Sold Out]

I skated the Coeur D'Alene skatepark and it's Evergreen and it is ammmmmazing! But I do agree, building these shitty fly outs or pump track looking parks (pictured here) are a huge waste of space and money.

[Jagr]

good thing you can always skate street

Usually...

Some of the Evergreen Parks in Montana are in the middle of nowhere...

A couple of the ones on reservations really seem like the only place to skate in town, other than maybe the high school parking lot if they're lucky. Rough roads, no sidewalks, no businesses in town. Not much concrete anywhere else. One MF pulled up to the park with his board on his horse. I think in Hays, Montana.

Glad a lot of those out of the way places in Montana got these parks (better than nothing), but seems like a more traditional park would serve kids in those very small communities with nowhere else to skate within 50+ miles much better.

That said, I do personally think most Evergreen Parks are fun. Haven't skated any that have built been in last two or so years, but they all look a lot more well rounded than those from their first couple years of building.

[Hyliannightmare]

Has anyone skated a "perfect park"?

Boise, ID is one of the best parks I have ever skated... a close second would be Lakeland, FL. (Battleground is good, but it needs some maintenance to get back to it's former glory)

Lansdowne in MD is my all-time favorite though because it's the park I grew up skating.

Lakeland and St Pete are the 2 best parks I've ever been to in Florida. I hear Lot 11 is up there as well

[WobbleHeadBob]

there is absoltely no reason that apark cant have a flowy bowl section for the santa cruzers AND a little flatland section with a manny pad and a ledge or rail..  its not a massive expense and how much space does that shit actually take up?

my city had a sick ledge spot that was basically the heat of the scene - the council skate stopped it beyond beleof and it was eventually demolished - in exchange we got a hard fought for indoor park- with a 10 foot bowl and a massive tranny section.. cool, i guess all us street guys will go learn inverts then huh?

its rediculous.


that same park got a revamp a few years ago - the aim was to make it more apealing to all types of skater/bmxer

so they extended the ramp section, added some biker jump boxes and took away the one perfcet little hip they had and replaced it with some weird ass wallrides that lead nowhere and a big open space that everyone ends up colliding in cos theres nowhere else to go. so stupid.

I think the issue is the same in most places - the people who end up being listened too and running the skatepark comittees are usually gettin golder, probably have sore knees or back issues and have no interest in building shit that they would have wanted to skate 15 years ago. We end up with 'flow' parks that only flow if theres less than 5 people skating and the kids who wanna improve there ledge game have to either skate tranny or fuck off.

[bean_plant_ray]

If you complain about an Evergreen Park then you need to learn to skate transition and learn to skate faster so you have some flow. So stupid that someone would trade endless lines for a ledge and a rail.

[Youoverthere]

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good thing you can always skate street

[close]

Usually...

Some of the Evergreen Parks in Montana are in the middle of nowhere...

A couple of the ones on reservations really seem like the only place to skate in town, other than maybe the high school parking lot if they're lucky. Rough roads, no sidewalks, no businesses in town. Not much concrete anywhere else. One MF pulled up to the park with his board on his horse. I think in Hays, Montana.

Glad a lot of those out of the way places in Montana got these parks (better than nothing), but seems like a more traditional park would serve kids in those very small communities with nowhere else to skate within 50+ miles much better.

That said, I do personally think most Evergreen Parks are fun. Haven't skated any that have built been in last two or so years, but they all look a lot more well rounded than those from their first couple years of building.

that’s fucking badass! Did he shred tho?

[IpathCats]

If you complain about an Evergreen Park then you need to learn to skate transition and learn to skate faster so you have some flow. So stupid that someone would trade endless lines for a ledge and a rail.

Some people like skating ledges? I like these parks personally, but this is a stupid take. Probably why you posted it on a fresh account

[Freelancevagrant]

If you complain about an Evergreen Park then you need to learn to skate transition and learn to skate faster so you have some flow. So stupid that someone would trade endless lines for a ledge and a rail.

[Alan]

Even in a suburb or a place where the town doesn't want people skating in public, kids learn to make it work.

This sort of stuck out for me. One thing that's pretty much a constant in interviews with pros or ams who came from small towns or the burbs is that they had nowhere to skate and that it sucked. They don't even try to romanticize that kind of situation.

[j....soy.....]

Id put my money on kids who skate some modular piece of shit than that monstrosity......if the order was a pump track.....respect.....if it was a skatepark?  fail.....

in the spirit of a message board....pump tracks offend me....if they had them in the 70's, I get it, but if skating was about pump tracks it would never be what it is today....they kinda don't teach you how to do anything. 

[augustmoon]

If you complain about an Evergreen Park then you need to learn to skate transition and learn to skate faster so you have some flow. So stupid that someone would trade endless lines for a ledge and a rail.

lol, found the trucker hat guy

[Francis Xavier]

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If you complain about an Evergreen Park then you need to learn to skate transition and learn to skate faster so you have some flow. So stupid that someone would trade endless lines for a ledge and a rail.

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lol, found the trucker hat guy

Or an Evergreen employee

[MORT]

The owner of evergreen has burned so many people in the industry. He’s had entire crews up and quit on him multiple times over the repetitive designs and his horrible attitude. One of his guys recently lost a few fingers in the swing tube of the concrete pump because he told him to “stick his arm in there and clean it out” the companies whole purpose is to stroke this dudes ego while he literally gets rich ripping off one town after another. Sorry billy but this just ain’t it.

[IpathCats]

The owner of evergreen has burned so many people in the industry. He’s had entire crews up and quit on him multiple times over the repetitive designs and his horrible attitude. One of his guys recently lost a few fingers in the swing tube of the concrete pump because he told him to “stick his arm in there and clean it out” the companies whole purpose is to stroke this dudes ego while he literally gets rich ripping off one town after another. Sorry billy but this just ain’t it.

Proof?

[sharkjumper]

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good thing you can always skate street

[close]

Usually...

Some of the Evergreen Parks in Montana are in the middle of nowhere...

A couple of the ones on reservations really seem like the only place to skate in town, other than maybe the high school parking lot if they're lucky. Rough roads, no sidewalks, no businesses in town. Not much concrete anywhere else. One MF pulled up to the park with his board on his horse. I think in Hays, Montana.

Glad a lot of those out of the way places in Montana got these parks (better than nothing), but seems like a more traditional park would serve kids in those very small communities with nowhere else to skate within 50+ miles much better.

That said, I do personally think most Evergreen Parks are fun. Haven't skated any that have built been in last two or so years, but they all look a lot more well rounded than those from their first couple years of building.

This is the point I always try to make to those guys about putting some street stuff in their parks.  Hays, Havre, Browning, etc. don't have street spots, and those parks are the only skateable thing for many miles around there.