Skatepark Worlds

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a veritable skatepark renaissance has been underway. Fuelled by the popularity of street-skating, the X Games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game (Activision, 1999), new legislation reducing liability claims, a slew of magazines and the emergent internet, skateboarding was on rise. By 2000, over 180 skateparks of various sizes, complexity and ownership had already opened across the US, while expert constructors like Airspeed, California Skateparks, Dreamland, Grindline, PTR/Placed To Ride, Purkiss Rose, SITE, Team Pain and Wormhoudt were also appearing. 1 Today, similar expertise exists globally, from Convic in Australia, to Canvas, Freestyle, Gravity, Maverick and Wheelscape in the UK, or Constructo and The Edge in France, Vertical in Switzerland, Mystic in the Czech Republic, G Ramps and Lndskt in Germany and Spectrum and New Line in Canada. The results can be impressive. "To say that Oregon's Newberg and Lincoln City skateparks are masterpieces is not an exaggeration", asserts Jocko Weyland (2002, p. 318). "These works put their builders in league with artists like Richard Serra, Robert Smithson and James Turrell: the parks are beautiful environments, awesome to look at and, on some level, superior to sculpture because they combine aestheticism with athletic functionalism." (Weyland, 2002, p. 318) 1 Sections of this chapter are also contained in Borden, I. (2019). Skateboarding and the City: A Complete History. London: Bloomsbury.