Hannah Whiteley and friend kitesurfing lakes and sand dunes in northern Brazil, a spot known as Bedsheets.
And now for something completely different. OK, sure, these two women are hot, and they're in thongs, and you may think that's why I'm sharing this video. But they freakin rip, it's a really beautiful sand dune and lake spot they're at, and they're hot. Plus I like to add things besides BMX and skateboarding in this blog now and then. It's a really cool video of kite surfing, under 5 minutes, check it out.
This area they're at is officially known as Parque Nacional dos Lencois Maranhenses. It's around 1,400 miles straight north of Rio de Janeiro, on the northern coast of Brazil. It's a huge area, if you've got a moment, look it up on GoogleMaps/Earth, it's a cool spot, and much different than most of our ideas of Brazil, which I think of as the Amazon river, jungle, anacondas, indigenous tribes who eat tarantulas, and caimans.
As a taxi driver in Huntington Beach, California in the early 2000's, I would pick up kite surfers in my cab once in a while. Sunset Beach, just north of H.B., was big in the early days of kite surfing, and groups of them would kitesurf north, 3-4-5 miles, and pull out north of the H.B. pier. They'd break down their equpiment, pile it in my trunk, and I'd drive them back to Sunset Beach. They were all pretty cool, and other than leaving sand on the floor of the back seat and in the trunk, were fine passengers. I've never really been drawn to try kite surfing, but I have sat on the beach and watched them launch off waves plenty of times. I've never seen some of the moves Hannah and her friend are doing in this video, and like all action sports, progression is always happening. Another unusual spot found, courtesy of the YouTube algorithm.
Indy's own edit of the Independent Trucks Rip Ride Rally jams in Philly this year.
As a blogger who has been mostly telling my own weird stories, of moments I rode and witnessed in BMX and skateboarding back in the day, for 14 years, this blog has led me into a lot of new ground. With The Spot Finder blog, I wanted to dive into the stories of epic bike and skate spots, and that leads to the scenes behind those spots. Post by post, I started with places I had either been to ride many years ago, or spots I've heard of. Nearly all the posts have turned me on to videos and footage that's completely new to me. And I love that.
I knew of Love Park from skate videos, and hearing skaters talk about it, years ago, the place was legendary. After that post, I realized the TED Talk in the last post was also from Philly, which led to a skatepark there. I was working towards a post about FDR, the DIY skatepark that's now as famous as Burnside, in Oregon, the original under-the-bridge, DIY skatepark. As I dug into the Philly skate scene, I learned it's a much bigger, and a much more hardcore scene that I thought.
Then my laptop decided to konk out for a couple of weeks, which gave me time away from blogging, whether I wanted it or not. Since I was so focused on content creating, it really bummed me out at first. But it turned into a cool reset, a hiatus away from the things I've been doing daily for so long, while stuck offline for two weeks, except for Twitter.
My laptop came back to life today, basically on its own, much to my surprise. The list of blog posts in my head two weeks ago faded away. I decided to dig through YouTube, see other videos there were about the Philadelphia skate scene, and FDR. I wanted to find a solid video of real skateboarding there. I found one. Rather than diving back into the FDR post right away, I decided to embed this video, which is a ton of epic skateboarding in Philly this year, sponsored by Independent Trucks. Indy's Rip Ride Rally is a bunch of serious, hardcore skating, at several spots in Philly, including FDR. So pop open a cold whatever and check this video out, it's 20-some minutes of serious skating, without any filler. The FDR post will be coming soon.
A skateboarder who went to law school. TED Talk by Josh Nims, and his long push to build an official skatepark in Philadelphia.
In the last post, I embedded the documentary about Love Park, the heart of Philadelphia's hardcore skateboarding scene. With the demise of Love Park, skaters took their drive in different directions. Josh Nims was part of the group that took their DIY skateboarding energy into official channels, trying to get city hall behind skateboarding projects. In this TEDx Philadelphia talk, Josh speaks about how a widespread group of supporters came together to build a series of skate spots, even using some of the original granite pieces from LOVE Park.
The result was the Paine's Park skatepark. It's not just a skatepark, but a nexus point for people from many backgrounds, converging in Philly. It's an official skatepark for the hardcore skaters of Philadelphia, and for those cruising through the area on bikes, or walking or jogging.
Now I'm out on the West Coast, with no chance to visit all the places I'm blogging about, right now. As I dig into the videos and websites about different spots, I'm learning more about the scenes in different areas. Just because you build a skatepark, bike park, or climbing gym, doesn't mean you have a scene of people using it. From what I can see, Paine's Park is less popular now than many spots in Philly, but it's a part of the web of skateboard spots in Philly, which has a thriving skateboard scene.
Here's a look at Paine's Park, in a video uploaded around 2016. It's a sunny day, and there are no skaters in sight at that particular time. But there's some great terrain to skate.
Here's a more recent video of Paine's Park, from late 2021 or early 2022. It's still pretty empty, but now covered in graffiti. The great terrain is still there, just not crowds of skaters. This could be a slow time of day, or it could be less used than some of the other skate spots, which there are several around Philly.
LO...VE... with the crooked "O." Draw that on a piece of paper and ask any skateboarder from the 1990's what it represents. They'll know. Any serious skater from that era, around the world. They'll say, "LOVE Park, Philadelphia. Great street skating spot." It was that well known.
Street skateboarding as a genre' got going around 1984, with skaters like Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Natas Kaupas leading the skaters of the world to explore their local urban terrain. Vert skating still ruled through the late 1980's, as far as board sales, fame, and money for the big names. It was the era where Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero and a dozen others battled for fame in the remaining pools and on halfpipes. Then the the third big wave of skateboarding popularity peaked, and it began to drop off. As it dropped, the U.S. dropped into the long recession of the early 1990's. Skateboarding went underground, just as video cameras became inexpensive enough for average people to start making their own videos. A revolution took place in all the fledgling action sports. Home made videos began to take the place of magazines as the main medium.
As all these things were happening, freestyle/street skater turned entrepreneur, Steve Rocco, and his crazy little company with the big name, World Industries, snapped up and promoted street skaters. The tide of skating turned and the next big wave, of the 1990's, was led by the street skaters. In San Francisco, home of Thrasher magazine, the Embarcadero/EMB scene gained fame in the magazines, and early videos. Ledges, benches and rails became the objects of choice.
But at the same time, back East in Philly, where there was no magazine, no major skateboard media, Love Park rose to prominence as a major street skating spot. This video above is the story of the rise, and the death, of the park with the four letter name, LOVE Park. It's the little public park that put the city of Philadelphia on the skateboard map in a huge way.
When the popularity of BMX and mountain bike riding fades, the true riders go underground. Or when it's raining in Kentucky. This is the bike park that was in the Louisville Mega Cavern.
Since BMX and mountain biking have grown in popularity over the last 40 years, bike parks have sprung up in all kinds of places. This is one of the most unusual places I've seen for a bike park, dozens of feet under ground in an old, abandined mine. What is now the Lousiville Mega Cavern was an operating limestone mine from the 1930's into the 1970's. Limestone is the same kind of rock the pyramids in Egypt were built out of. No pyramids here, though.
The mine sat unused for years, apparently, until it was bought by some business developers in 1989. High security offices and storage space was the initial idea. But the place is huge, over 100 acres total. So in the 2010's zip lines, obstacle courses, and Christmas light displays were added to the mix, to better use the remaining space, and make some more money. And a bike park was built. Being a cave, if man made, it stays a constant 58 degrees all year 'round, and it's out of the rain. The total bike park was about 320,000 square feet, I believe. That's ginormous. To put that in perspective, a typical Walmart or Target store is usually around 100,000 square feet. So imagine a BMX and mountain bike park that's the size of a big store, including the parking lot, warehouse area, and everything. That's a lot of bike trails and jumps. The bike park has closed down, in 2019, it appears.
In 2019, after a 3.4 earthquake in Tennessee, a good sized sinkhole formed in part of the Lousiville Zoo, above the Mega Cavern. So if you can't find the unicorns at the Louisville Zoo, that's why, they fell through the sinkhole and hid out in the Mega Cavern. OK, just kidding. The unicorns probably got shot and eaten by hillbillies. But part of the Mega Cavern closed, and one site says that was when the bike park closed. You can read a bit about the history of the Mega Cavern here. The Lousiville Mega Cavern is billed as the #1 attraction in Louisville, even without the bike park. Here's the main website if you want to check out what's happening there now.
Here's a good look at the Grand Opening of the Gale Webb Action Sports Park, in Menifee, California. This video was put out by Rad BMX Builds. This event just happened, November 8th, 2022. The location is 26533 Craig Avenue, in Menifee. Menifee is out in the SoCal desert, about 60-70 miles southeast of Los Angeles, near Lake Elsinore.
Gale Webb has been known as America's Sports Mom since the 1980's. For decades her and her late husband Jim put on action sports shows all over the place, including weeks at a time at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Riders like Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, Scott Freeman, and skateboarders Primo and Diane Desiderio were active riders in her early shows, along with dozens and dozens of top action sports athletes since.
I first heard of Gale Webb in 1985, when I saw a little photo of an woman doing a wheeler on a skateboard in a halfpipe, in Bill Batchelor's Shreddin' zine. Back then, the first story I heard about Gale was that she had survived a terrible skydiving accident, where her shoot didn't open until she was about 150 feet off the ground. Something crazy like that. She made a long, full recovery, and went on to compete in women's motocross for many more years. This was at a time when young kids were just getting into BMX freestyle's first wave, and the third big popularity wave of skateboarding. Gale could ride skateboards, rode motocross really well, and tried her hand at mountain bikes, which were also a new thing back then.
I interviewed Gale for the American Freestyle Association newsletter in 1987, riding my bike to Knott's Berry Farm, since I didn't have a car. She was putting on several BMX and skateboard shows a day there. As luck would have it, Primo and Diane Desiderio got stuck in traffic, and I filled in for the first show, doing a few tricks on my bike. The riders that day, as I recall, were Martin Aparijo, Scott Freeman, freestyle skater Andre' Walton, and a vert skater and BMX ramp rider. I don't think Eddie Fiola was there that day, though he often rode in her shows, when not on tour for GT. Gale was putting on shows like no one else in those days, BMX, skateboarding, inline skating, and occasionally vert roller skaters like Fred Blood and Duke Rennie. Even with all there is to do at Knott's, a major amusement park, her shows drew crowds of 200 to 500 people for every show. I doubt anyone in action sports has shown more kids these sports firsthand than Gale Webb's shows. So it's really cool to see her honored with a great action sports park named after her.
So far there's a BMX/MTB jumping park, a kids BMX park, and a pump track, which can be ridden by BMX and MTB bikes, scooters, and skateboards. I don't know if there's a skatepark at the park yet, it's so new, nothing shows up on Google Maps, but an empty field.
In this video I see Eddie Fiola, 80's BMX vert legend, and the very first King of the Skateparks. I saw 80's freestyler turned supercross announcer Dan Hubbard, as well as new school riders Mike "Hucker" Clark, and Tucker Smith, and I believe MTB rider Dylan Stark, who lives in the area, was there as well. I'm sure several other high level riders were there, those are just the ones I saw in the video above.
Skateboarding, BMX racing, and BMX freestyle all were invented in Southern California, but because land is so expensive, there are few bike parks and pump tracks in SoCal. There are great bike and skateparks all over the U.S. and the world now. So it's really cool to see a really good park opening here in Southern California, where these sports began. I'm sure there are many, many great sessions to come at this park.
