Skateboarding TED x talk- The story behind Philadelphia's Paine's Park

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.  

Love Park: World renowned Philadelphia street skating scene

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.   

Real underground riding: The Louisville Mega Cavern Bike Park

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.

Gale Webb Action Sports Park- Grand opening- Menifee, California

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.  

Another video of the Bike Park- by Integrity Designs

Another video of the bike park by Landon Lassig

Ditch and full pipe safety: Flash floods and debris flows

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Evan Smith- Best of 2022 skating

There are plenty of great skaters, BMXers, and other riders out there that I've never heard of.  Evan Smith is a skateboarder I wasn't familiar with.  YouTube tossed this compilation video at me, and it's freakin' amazing, one of the best I've seen in years.  Big, tech, all kinds of obstacles and urban terrain.  If you like street skating, just watch it.  

Dennis Enarson's backyard ramp set-up

While this is a Colby Raha video, I'm sharing it so you can check out the crazy backyard ramp set-up that Dennis Enarson has.  

When I first started this blog, a couple of months ago. a Colby Raha video popped up on YouTube, as I was getting ready to write the first post.  Since I was writing about bike and skate spots, all the weird places that riders and skaters ride and skate, I used Colby's video for post number one.  It was a sick looking spillway, a crazy looking spot, and Colby did a 114 foot downhill canyon jump there.  You can check that post out here.  

Since then, I've watched a bunch of Colby's videos, which are always entertaining.  He's a great MX rider, and pretty crazy, and he likes to push the boundaries, and ride some really weird places.  He's one of the reasons, probably the main reason, street MX is now a thing.  I've done a lot of skate posts, and was looking for another BMX place to write about.  It turns out that this video starts out at Dennis Enarson's backyard ramps.  But this is one crazy set-up for backyard ramps.  

In this video, about 4 of the first 5 1/2 minutes are at Dennis' ramps, and we see Dennis run through a series of lines, showing us what all these ramps are for.  The main feature in the center is a big jump box, and that makes sense.  But there's a huge undervert banked wall on one side, an under  vert curve, a wall ride, a curved corner section, a spine, and ramps at odd angles.  Then there's a huge launch ramp, that doesn't seem to lead anywhere.  In a few minutes, we see Dennis tear up this place up, alley-ooping into the banked wall, and launhing off that weird launch, carving back to the main landing.  There's a whole bunch of interesting ideas going on in this ramp set-up.  While backyard ramps have progressed a lot over the last 35 years, I've never seen a set-up like this.  

After Dennis and Colby riding the ramps, and a couple of other guys, we see Colby hit the ramps on his motorcycle.  The video goes on to how Colby doing a big, downhill bonzai jump in San Diego on his motorcycle, and then they hit up a ditch, and then some curved wall rides on the BMX bikes.  Dennis' ramps are one of the most interesting backyard ramp set-ups I've seen, and it may give BMXers out there some ideas for building their own ramps in the future, either in a the backyard, or maybe for a contest or skatepark.