The Frying Pan Skatepark

The frying pan skatepark in Wilkeson, Washington.

Disclaimer

According to the artist who designed it, John Hillding, this is the Bacon and Eggs Pop Art Skateable Sculpture, in Wilkeson, Washington.  I love this idea for a whole bunch of reasons.  John himself explains his idea behind it in this local news clip.  He comes from the world of Pop Art, where Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are some of the best known names.  John Hillding has been into Pop Art since the late 1960's or early 1970's, and has created pieces for Bumbershoot, a Seattle based arts and music festival, over the years.  Bacon and Eggs is his most recent big idea, and the late skatepark designer  Mark Hubbard, of Grindline skateparks, did the design work to help bring John's vision to life.  After Mark's untimely death, Grindline built the sculpture/park.

Pop art never bowled me over, but like everyone, I've seen art by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Koons and others over the years, some of which made me take a second look, wondering about the thinking behind it.  Then, in the mid 1990's, I took a bus back east, then hopped in my sister's car, to help her move back to California after graduating college in North Carolina.  By the middle of Texas, we were bugging each other a bit from the long hours of driving each day.  Then, just outside Amarillo, we drove within site of the Cadillac Ranch, and decided to stop.  It was just an empty field with the back ends of all these old Cadillacs sticking out of the ground.  I had seen post cards of it, but didn't realize we were going to drive right by it.  My sister didn't really want to stop, she was on a schedule to get to San Jose, to move into her new place, and start work as a teacher.  But I talked her into stopping.

We were the only ones there when we walked out in the field from the parking area.  And we just started laughing.  There was no gift shop, no fee, no nothing, just all these old, graffiti'd, Cadillacs sticking up out of the ground.  Tired and road weary, we couldn't help but smile.  As we wandered around, a couple from Germany, and then a few other people, showed up.  We took some photos with the cars, and walked back to her car smiling, in a much better mood.  We just couldn't help it.  

Much more recently, a couple of years ago, I spent an hour walking around the Newport Beach Art Park, home of Bunnyhenge, shooting photos.  The circle of three foot high concrete rabbits is just so ridiculous, and I got a similar vibe as I did at the Cadillace Ranch.  

Bunnyhenge, Newport Beach, California (It's on Google Maps)

Yes, it's easy to say acts of absurdity, like these two places, and the Bacon and Eggs skatepark, are a waste of money.  You can say that they're stupid, and they're not "art."  I say, who the fuck cares?  Places like this have an affect on people when we go to them, and that's reason enough for them to exist.  It's just hard to walk away from them in a bad mood.  

Another thing I love about the Bacon and Eggs skatepark is that a little town, of less than 500 people, built the thing.  Wilkeson, Washington, decided to build that sculpture/skatepark, to put their home on the map, in our social media heavy, photo taking world.  And it worked.  There are several videos on YouTube of groups of skaters sessioning at the park, and Thrasher magazine even covered it.  

I think "skateable sculpture" and "BMX rideable sculpture," are great ideas, and I think we will see more of it in the future.  Personally, I'm waiting for an enlightened architect to design an action sports themed subdivision, and actual place for people to live where the sidewalks are half pump tracks, and there are jumps and grind rails and pools to ride all over the neighborhood.  Golf communities?  Yeah, hang up the plaid pants grandpa, lets design some kick ass places to live for THIS century.  

A little town none of us had ever heard of, Wilkeson, Washington, ante'd up and made a cool sculpture/skatpark.  Who's next in this line of progression?  That's what these sports are all about, right?  

One main theme of The Spot Finder blog/concept is to get my fat ass back on a bike before too long, and go check out lots of cool places to ride and skate, along with interesting art projects.  Bacon and Eggs is on my list of places I definitely want to visit someday.  How 'bout you?

Classic Skate Spot: "The Ashtray"- Murdy Park skatepark in Huntington Beach

 

In her early days, while leading the way for women in street skating in the late 1990's and early 2000's, Elissa Steamer was a local at The Ashtray, and nearby Oceanview High School.  The Ashtray is not in this clip of her, but there are a couple of shots from Oceanview, which is a block away. 

Disclaimer

First, a little skate history.  There's no consensus on who invented the first skateboard, one prominent theory says it was a bored surfer in San Diego in about 1958.  A 2 X 6, and some steel roller skate wheels, and he could go "sidewalk surfing" when the waves were flat. The "Devil's Toy" was born.  The start of skateboarding was probably something like that.  The first big wave of skate popularity was in 1965-1966, and skateboarding looked like this.  The quick fad of corporate interest faded, and skateboarding went underground. 

In the early 1970's, skating moved to downhill speed runs, wheelies, slaloms, and carving banks, led by guys like Bruce Logan, among many others.  That led to the second big wave of popularity, around 1975-1980.  Again, skateboarding became a fad to large toy companies, a way to make a quick buck for a couple of years.  I was one of those 70's kids who started skating during that fad, in the tiny town of Willard, Ohio, in 1976, in my case.

Officially called the Murdy Park skatepark, this is the first public skatepark in California, built in 1993 or 1994.  It quickly got dubbed "The Ashtray," because it was so small, and kind of looked like an ashtray from the 1970's.  The bank was kinked, with a cracks right in front of it, but it still got skated... a lot.  This little park had ot prove the concept that public skateparks were a good idea.  No one died there, the idea worked, and this little skatepark made every other public skatepark in California possible.  #steveemigphotos

 

But out in Southern California, where the sport was centered, a group called the Z-Boys, the Zephyr Surf Shop skate team out of Venice Beach, along with Duante Peters and a few others down in Orange County, discovered empty swimming pools were a great place to skate.  This led to the first wave of skateboard parks in the mid 1970's, and a new aspect of skating, vertical walled pools, concrete waves that never moved, that could be "surfed" on skateboards, like Tony here in Marina Del Rey in 1978.  Suddenly skateparks became a viable business in Southern California, and select places across the United States, and a few foreign countries. The boom surged for a while, but then began to fade in the early 1980's.  One by one, the skateparks of the second wave of skateboarding closed down.  

By the mid-1980's, only two were left in Southern California, Pipeline Skatepark in Upland, and Del Mar Skate Ranch in Del Mar (north of San Diego).  In addition to skateparks pushing the evolution of skateboard vert riding, BMX bike riders in the mid-1970's realized skateparks were fun on bikes, as well.  Bob Haro is credited with inventing BMX freestyle, about 1977, and by 1985, Eddie Fiola, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, and a few others, took BMX vert riding to a new level in the skateparks.  

Vert skating and bike riding both moved largely to halfpipes for contests and demos, because it's really hard to take a concrete skatepark on the road to do demos.  First Del Mar closed, and then in late 1988, Pipeline Skatepark, the last California Skatepark closed, and a few months later, in 1989, was eaten by the excavator.  

 

This curved ledge/wall has seen some serious use in the last 26-27 years.  There are much better skateparks around, but sessions still happen at The Ashtray.  It's just north of Warner, on Goldenwest, in Huntington Beach.  #steveemigphotos

 

During that same period, in the third wave of skateboarding, in the late 1980's, Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guererro, and Natas Kaupas took skateboarding back to the streets in a new way, taking Rodney Mullen's flat ground ollie, kickflip, and other freestyle tricks, to new terrain.  Street skating began growing as vert skating faded.  Pool skating and BMX went underground, and was banished in California to empty backyard pools and the Nude Bowl, way out in the desert.  

As luck would have it, I was working at Unreel Productions, the video company for Vision Skateboards, one of the "Big 5" skateboard companies of the late 1980's.  A handful of then Old School skateboarders, including a few at Vision, had a plan.  They wanted public skateparks to become a thing.  The time had come for free, open all the time, public skateparks.  They tried to talk the city of Costa Mesa, where Vision was located, into building one.  But Costa Mesa, like all cities, was worried about liability.  They didn't want to get sued for millions of dollars, because some skater fell and broke his arm.  

So before public skateparks could happen, those Old School skaters had to get a state law passed so that cities couldn't be sued for liability at skateparks.  That process took several years.  Then they had to talk a city into building a skatepark.  Then they had to talk the city into funding that skatepark, and actually get it built, and see if a public skatepark could work ( in the eyes of city leaders, we all knew it would work).  

I think it was about 1993 by the time the first public skatepark in California was built.  That was this skatepark, The Ashtray, in Murdy Park, officially at 7000 Norma drive in Huntington Beach, near the corner of Goldenwest and Warner.  Without this sketchy little park paving the way (literally), none of the other public skateparks in all of California would have happened.  So if you ever make it to Huntington Beach, go to The Ashtray, snap and ollie, and say thanks.  We thought it was going to get turned into a duck pond by now.  It's not great, but it's cool it still exists.

The most skatable part of The Ashtray, this bench been ground by a lot of legends of skating, from Ed Templeton and Elissa Steamer, to dozens of others.  It's waiting for you.  #steveemigphotos

 

What exactly did this little skatepark, The Ashtray, open the way for?  All of this skating and riding at public California skateparks, and a lot more:

 

Andy Anderson at Venice Beach skatepark 

 

Tucker Smith (blue helmet) and friends at Laguna Niguel skatepark 

 

Omar Hassan on all kinds of concrete (including public parks) 

 

Etnies/Lake Forest skatepark

 

Lyn Z Adams Hawkins (pre-Pastrana era)

 

 Christian Hosoi and Duane Peters at Lake Cunningham skatepark (San Jose)

 

Jesse Gregory at Costa Mesa (?) skatepark 

 

San Clemente skatepark locals 

 

The biggest public skatepark in California 

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