Friday 28 November 2014

Progress in South-West Ontario

Progress in Elmira





Afterwards I went to a design workshop in Kitchener. The concepts for the park are great and are still up for revisions but 2 concepts were presented.  There was a clear divide among the participants as to who wanted more street vs. who wanted more bowl.  

 Concept #2 has a snake run and a bunch of quarters.

 Concept #1 has a bowl and a nice street section.

Also scoped the design for Guelph's new park.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Bad Crete

In a follow-up to my article on modular ramps I have decided to show what can happen when concrete parks are built by the wrong people.

The park in Orillia, ON claims to have a 3 foot snake run with one foot of vert. Not only is this a terrible idea, the execution is equally bad. 
 The flat bottom has bike tire treads in the concrete.
 The quarter pipe is kinked with no transition and the coping sits on top of the roll out. (Edit - coping removed.)

 This PIP bowl in Midland has coping that sits flush with the riding surface making it difficult to lock into tricks. This is another CRC wonder.

 A hubba that drops into a bowl is never a good idea. Mt Forest, ON.

 Stairs in a skatepark setting are used for tricks. Riding up a ramp to the stairs makes doing tricks difficult. Maple Skatepark, Burlington.

 Inappropriately large pyramid with a drop off one side. Grimsby, ON

A poorly designed gap feature. Tyendinaga, ON.

 Pickering, Ontario's park features a 1 foot quarter with 3 inches of vert and a wading pool with a sewer grate in it.

 Bowmanville's park has several features present in the Pickering park like a mini-ramp with no coping, safety rails on the top and no deck on one side.
 It also narrows to less than 5 feet causing a hazard for users.

The Port Lambton skatepark was designed by a well meaning local who saw the need for a skatepark.

Check out Their Best & Worst - It's basically a resume for every company that builds skateparks in Ontario.

You can also check out Deja Vu SK8. It features skatepark look-alikes that I've found and sadly, the majority of them kinda suck. 

Saturday 8 November 2014

November days.

Managed to get out on my day off.
Went to Village Green park in Vaughan to skate it and get some more photos.


 This tiny flat doesn't allow you to get enough speed to make the step-up.
 That gap is filled with foam.


The new Sonoma Heights Park, by New Line, is sweet.

 Cool little ledge/wedge/manny pad.

 Bank to ledge.
 Park integration.

Later, I got a tour of the Skate Elmira build site.




 Pool! It's so smooth.