@useless_wooden_knowledge vs Evergreen Skateparks/Bad Park Design

[sharkjumper]

To bring this back around to evergreen, I skated the park in coeur d’alene, Idaho last week. They built a rad street section there. The park is probably 60% street, 40% bowl. The bowl is what you’d expect from them. Street is definitely flowy in their style, and checks a lot of the boxes for stuff I think should be included in a park- ledge, mellow hip, weird manny pad, etc. 

Skating that park makes me want to hate on evergreen more. Because now I know they’re capable of building a good street section, but they refuse to do it anywhere else. That feels worse than being ignorant of street skating.

Side note, Polson, MT got an addition of street stuff by dreamland, and they built some rad stuff. Pleasantly surprised by that.

[boi-cuzudo]

Speaking of shitty skateparks, there was a hilarious (except for the locals) occurrence here lately where the city resurfaced a concrete park, but instead of concrete they went ahead and poured blacktop on everything. Apparently cost 100k Euros, and I kind of feel bad for the guys who clearly put some effort in shaping the asphalt on top of the obstacles, but this was going to end badly regardless. 




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what where they thinking?? I imagine the road rash on a hot summer day

[somethingmustbreaknow]

not only this, on hot summer days fucking asphalt gets soft making it pretty hard to roll away after landing tricks.

[bombsaway86]

Apparently evergreen is responsible for the new park in Lake Stevens, WA which explains why it's so bad(you have to go there to see what I mean). For me the perfect skatepark is in Battle Ground, its existence proves that it is possible to nail it with nothing fancy just a wide area with a street and transitition section for people of all abilities. My main gripe with new skateparks being built in the NW it's too much to ask for lights because Canada doesn't have the same problem

That park was designed by Grindline and built/poured by Evergreen. The only bad things about that park are the leak in the big bowl (which has been fixed), the pebbles from the sidewalk (partially replaced), and all of the shitty scooter kids. Issues like the lights and sidewalks are the decided by the city, not the park builder. I think the leak issue was on both of them, but more so the civil engineers for not catching that the bowl was significantly deeper than the nearby drainage pond.

I skated the Rockridge park in Bend, OR a few months back and thought it was pretty good. That’s the only Evergreen park I’ve skated. My main issue, as others have said, is the collision factor. The locals manage it by calling out when they are dropping in, which is a simple yet effective solution

[h00man]

Speaking of shitty skateparks, there was a hilarious (except for the locals) occurrence here lately where the city resurfaced a concrete park, but instead of concrete they went ahead and poured blacktop on everything. Apparently cost 100k Euros, and I kind of feel bad for the guys who clearly put some effort in shaping the asphalt on top of the obstacles, but this was going to end badly regardless. 




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hahaha holy fuck this is the funniest thing ive seen all day (sorry if this is your local tho)

[sharkjumper]

We have a new evergreen hater in the ring.

[Mr. Stinky]

We have a new evergreen hater in the ring.

This looks like roughly 1/3 of a fun park.

[thebacker]

Expand Quote

We have a new evergreen hater in the ring.

[close]

This looks like roughly 1/3 of a fun park.

imagine begging your town/community to build a skatepark and you get that monstrosity

[cky enthusiast]

Designed By Rollersurfer

[Global Moderator]

Speaking of shitty skateparks, there was a hilarious (except for the locals) occurrence here lately where the city resurfaced a concrete park, but instead of concrete they went ahead and poured blacktop on everything. Apparently cost 100k Euros, and I kind of feel bad for the guys who clearly put some effort in shaping the asphalt on top of the obstacles, but this was going to end badly regardless. 




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Full view:

If the city or some handy locals sealed and painted the surface with the same epoxy paint they use on school yards or street bus lanes/etc, it would actually be pretty rad.

[newguy]

We have a new evergreen hater in the ring.

Damn they got sponsored by the movie first man for this? Park looks like the apollo landing grounds  lmfao

[Daewon_Stan]

I think Evergreen parks are popping up everywhere because Billy Coulon is just a good salesman/conman. He's pushing the narrative that ledges, manny pads, and even coping are too expensive and not what skaters want. Evergreen just builds half-ass designed parks with no consideration about the flow, and not even any FLAT between transitions.

It's honestly shitty for young skaters in rural areas like Nebraska or Iowa, where they only have these. A lot of people can't skate street because they live on gravel/dirt roads.

When they're designed well, the classic 90s/2000s setup is the best kind of skatepark. Bank-to-banks with pyramids/funboxes in the middle, banks-to-quarter pipes with funboxes in the middle, at least a 12' wide mini ramp, and then random flat bars, ledges, curbs, and manny pads sprinkled throughout. Give or take an A-frame, spine transfer, or quarter pipes.

I'll always remember one of my favorite skateparks, that was torn down when I was 14. It had a flat ground area right when you walked in with curbs, flat bars, and kickers scattered around.
Then it had the "beginner" area that was a 3' tall bank-to-bank with a mellow pyramid in the middle.
To the left of that was a 3' tall, 12' wide mini ramp.
Past that was the "advanced" section, which was a 4' tall bank-to-quarter with a funbox in the middle. In the middle of the funbox was a hubba, and then there was a 4-set on one side in the middle. Behind the quarter pipe side, there was a grind box against the back.

Something like that is too much effort, and Evergreen would rather shit out something without thinking about it. And then cities councils will eat it up because they either don't know any better, or they just want to build a cheap skatepark as quickly as possible.

[gnidraobetaks]

Use more wooden knowledge
Do it yourself
Illegally
With buddies.

[gnidraobetaks]

I’m more of a flowbowl skater…

[dr.prestige]

I agreed back when this thread was posted and agree today that these parks are mid. Grindline/Dreamland supremacy

[TwisT]

would take an above ground ARC park over EG.

They're concrete parks are look pretty good too. https://americanrampcompany.com/category/in-ground-skate-park/

[GnarAlarm]

They built a park similar to this near my city, at first I thought it looked like it could be fun, but it was not.
The bumps are so randomly placed and sized it's really hard to get any flow going, I guess if you skated it every day and charted the best paths through it maybe it could be sort of fun, maybe...
As it stands, most people just end up losing all their speed or ramming into another skater because there's no obvious flow or path. It's just fucking nonsense. Never went back.

[mattchew]

Holy shit that looks impressively unfun.

[Cranberry Relish]

These would be perfect for the Girl Swirl crew.

[Rune Spliffberg]

evergreen skateparks look like AI lmao

[sharkjumper]

evergreen skateparks look like AI lmao

LOL to that.


But…… have you seen this garbage?
https://www.skateecosystems.com/projects

[The Huffer]

I've had fun at some Evergreen parks that were well designed and constructed but I can see why if you're a young fan on modern skateboarding you'd be a bit let down in your small town of that's all you had....

[WashingtonNECKTIE]

Their work is very hit or miss in my experience.

The "moonscape" design is at least different, but having the entire footprint dedicated to bumps and lumps is a disservice. They have a few formats that work pretty decent, but those are basically sectioned off into EG stuff, a more classic bowl design, and the small street section. Parks like Alberton, MT work pretty well for this, Darby and Hamilton in MT are some other ones. They do generally reach useable capacity with less people.

But coming from WA, the variety is more welcomed since there's a more standard style park in nearly every major city around. Definitely could be a major bummer if there's not a single street feature in the only park in a random small town so i get that too

[pop idiot]

Evergreen parks are sort of a destination. "Hey lets go to Montana to skate some weird shit we can't find elsewhere". I bet it'd suck if that's your only option for miles around but you'd prolly be a more well rounded skater that doesn't look awk doing an axel stall after landing a krook nollie flip.

New Line's park design is pretty egregious/generic/boring/layout has horrible flow. "Lets add another stair set"- Kanten Russel

[sharkjumper]

Evergreen parks are sort of a destination. "Hey lets go to Montana to skate some weird shit we can't find elsewhere". I bet it'd suck if that's your only option for miles around but you'd prolly be a more well rounded skater that doesn't look awk doing an axel stall after landing a krook nollie flip.

New Line's park design is pretty egregious/generic/boring/layout has horrible flow. "Lets add another stair set"- Kanten Russel

Wild to put an image from House Park in Austin in there and call it bad design. That’s one of the best “please everyone” parks I’ve been to. Has a bit of everything and some unique features too. I’d say it’s a good example to follow for park design. Rhodes in Boise is another example.

[pop idiot]

Wild to put an image from House Park in Austin in there and call it bad design. That’s one of the best “please everyone” parks I’ve been to. Has a bit of everything and some unique features too. I’d say it’s a good example to follow for park design.

This photo does not make it look fun! The rest of the park is way cooler but I chose these images for the obstacles being showcased. I wanna skate the bank to ledge but then I'm in the way of someone hitting the 3 block, who's standing in front of the ledge up top waiting to throw down.

[Plan9Customs]

Grindline/Dreamland over the others. Hell, I’d even take a Wormhoudt over an Evergreen. The ones I’ve seen are a jumbled mess with absolutely no cohesive flow. Seems like EG are better suited to the bmx crowd(pump & jump) rather than skaters.

[DONT_CARE]

This is my home park, old Carlsbad. Best worst skatepark in the world

old CBP downhill ahhhhh park

[Skatophile]

Park builder here. IMO any small town park that doesn't have a decent ledge, flat bar and quarterpipe is a disservice to the community and disregards the skate culture.

We find ourselves squeezed between innovation and functionality. We try to please our construction crew by always building crazier, more unique shit that's gonna go viral on social media, while the users often want the most basic stuff that they understand and can see themselves skating. We often propose a flowy section with a mix of unique transition obstacles but you gotta deal with the users on the commitee/town etc. Those include the middle aged helmet dude who got back on board for his midlife crisis and wants his 2' mellow mini ramp because that's what he knows. These guys somehow always ends up being the shotcallers we gotta deal with and get stuck with their narrow vision of what the park could be.

Im not even a transition guy. If i was to design the parks for me it would be mellow, long street stuff but this is not where park builders get their satisfaction. The crew is obviously prouder to build a crazy moonscape that's super smooth than a basic set of stairs where you can't flex your concrete skills.

That being said, Evergreen truly blows with these unidimensional parks. Imagine how many kids could have got hooked on skating but instead got bored having only this. We're already competing with pumptracks that take up half of skatepark budgets nowadays, no need to do the same out of concrete.

[funeral_tuxedo]

evergreen skateparks look like AI lmao

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