While I knew a few 90's skaters, being a Huntington Beach BMX local, I'd never heard of the Chain Bank until I ran across this video a few months ago. In this clip, Rob Dyrdek narrates as we see the day where the cat-like Tom Penny unloads trick after trick, and shuts the place down... in one session.
What Rob Dyrdek calls the Chain Bank in the video above, is also known as the Shelter Island Manny Pad, and is listed in this list of top San Diego skate spots, on The Swellbow website. Shelter Island is in the Point Loma area of San Diego, basically across the harbor from the Navy Base, or 3-4 miles straight south of Sea World San Diego, for us non-locals. Shelter Island comes up on Google Maps, and it looks like the bank is near the boat ramp, from the satellite view. One site says there is now a guard rail where the chain used to be, which would make it much harder, maybe nea rimpossible, to skate now.
From what I can gather, this was a mid1990's skate spot, and despite Tom Penny's epic session back in the day, this compilation video has several other really solid tricks on the bank, by skaters like Pat Duffy, Rob Dyrdek, Marc Johnson, Bastien Salabanzi, and more.
Nothing... at all, comes up for BMXers riding there, which surprises me, since there are plenty of BMXers, particularly older ones, who love banks. San Diego was a major force in early BMX street in the 1980's. But I've seen no sign of BMX riders sessioning this spot back in the day. If I run across any, I'll update this post.
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