Transition. This park has almost every type of transition you could want to skate; Bowls, Hips, Banks, Pockets, Cooky walls, the whole nine yards It has a nice sized flow bowl with 5-7 foot walls, escalating corners, and several hips. The Big bowl is 5 & 8 with a waterfall connecting the two and two hips. Big Flow section as well. It’s usually not very crowded as well, with plenty of off street parking. This is one of the style parks where you can walk in and skate without ever pushing once.
Its also only about 20 minutes from the Blue Ridge Parkway; which means easy access to hiking camping and fishing. (There’s also a lake 100 feet from the park)
The Bad
Not alot of street elements to the park. There’s the basic hubbas, a few ledges, and two small handrails that aren’t very well placed. There’s also no pool coping (if that’s a must have for you).
Overall
Very well done park with exceptional flow in a scenic setting(I’m biased, it’s the local park). Good stop for day/weekend trips, and primed for old man bowl sessions. Make sure you stay long enough to watch Jake Hilbish tear you a new one.
Address:
Intersection of Falling Creek Rd. and County Farm Rd., Bedford, VA 24523
This is your brain on skateboarding (Photo by Sam Miller)
So a couple years ago when I was (badly) attending community college, we were going around the class describing the topics of our shitty essays and some douche bag kid raised his hand and said “I’m gonna do mine on why skateboarding should be legal…” like it wasn’t..?
So, naturally, I raised my hand and said “I’m doing mine on why it should be illegal. Back then I was angrier and possibly more sarcastic than I am now.
I don’t remember what happened to that essay, but sitting in the same class in actual college, given the same assignment, I decided to rewrite it… better, faster, wronger.
Disclaimer- nothing in this essay should be taken seriously, seriously.
Advocates have been lobbying to get skateboarding- the pastime of marijuana-addicted surfers and adolescent children- into the Olympics for years. Indeed the “sport” is already a $600 billion-dollar industry that claims more participants than baseball (forbes.com). The industry has established a number of major, regular skateboarding contests spread across the country, and globe, including the Dew Tour, X Games, and Tampa Pro/Am, which are viewed by millions.
While this may seem like an ace-in-the-hole for the aforementioned advocates, in reality, it’s game over for America. Skateboarding’s popularity should alarm anyone with half a brain. Famous drug addict and skateboarder Jeff Rowley once said “Once skateboarding looks as clean as basketball, it will be dead.” Besides possibly being racist, this shows that there is something inherently wrong with participating in skate culture, even though the simple act of riding on a wooden board seems innocent. Skateboarders are not interested in improving the state of the world, their local communities, or even themselves. Instead they seek to tear it all down. Sure, the reader might know a skateboarder that seems like a reasonable person. That person might even be a friend or loved one. But judging the entire culture based on one good apple is like approving of al-Queda just because one suicide bomber had second thoughts and didn’t blow up a crowded market.
Skateboarders tear at the fabric of our great society by committing crimes, destroying property, destroying their lives with drugs, and funding illegal and/or terrorist organizations. If we continue to let them go unchecked, then we subject our children to a hopeless future.
The first and most evident way in which skateboarders terrorize society is by simply skateboarding where they shouldn’t. Trespassing is a crime, and so is the property damage skaters bring. Just take a quick look around campus- the ledges outside of the Perry Library, the steps going into Rollins Hall, inside the parking garages- everywhere, destruction of property, property of the university, property paid for by taxes and tuition. They just don’t care. Some business and institutions have taken steps to curb this by “skate-stopping” benches and ledges- this is why everything outside of the library is covered in tiny metal balls or unsightly pieces of metal- as well as putting up signs, but to no avail. The final knife in the heart for business-owners, and potentially our beloved school, is liability. This is the legal idea that if someone gets hurt on your property, under the law, the blame is yours. This unjust, nightmare-of-a-law, which was created by lobbyists for the skateboarding-industrial complex, has bankrupted an untold number of small businesses, destroying the lives of entrepreneurs and hard-working ‘mericans.
The skate lobby’s movers and shakers are smart too. They know that they can use threats of property destruction and liability lawsuits to coerce towns and communities into building skateparks to keep the skaters off the streets. It’s like pre-World War 2 appeasement meets terrorism.
With the advent of satellite communications, the tearing down of trade barriers, and the internet, people anywhere on the planet can communicate with ease. The flow of information has been liberated and democratized. The downside of this is that your child might see skateboarding- really a sanitized, mass-appealing lie of what skateboarding is- on TV and become interested in it. Shows like “Rob and Big” or whatever Ryan Sheckler’s show was present skateboarding as good, clean fun; even an honest way to make a living. Just open up a “Thrasher Magazine” or try to sit through a “skate video” without smashing your face against your computer screen though! Real skateboarding culture glorifies drug and alcohol abuse, bad tattoos, punk rock music, unemployment and, simply, a dead end lifestyle of perpetual failure.
Many of us underwent the D.A.R.E program in elementary school, which led us to believe that marijuana was the gateway drug, and that if we did it just once, we would become hopelessly addicted to trying all kinds of illegal things. Well, the reality is that skateboarding is the gateway drug. Skateboard companies like Baker(a drug reference?), Creature, and Bones use drug experimentation and otherwise reckless behavior in their advertisements and in the propaganda videos they sell to children- films that are not rated by the Motion Picture Association of ‘merica, and therefore do not warn unknowing parents of the perverse debauchery contained.
The last wave of skateboarding, which arguably has yet to reach its peak, began in the 1980s and has never stopped growing, consuming young people with unlimited potential and spitting out tattooed bums. What else has been on the rise since the 1980s? Almost every drug there is, terrorism, and organized criminal activity, especially in Latin America.
Many of skateboarding’s biggest proponents and idols are themselves victims of drug abuse. The industry dumps large amounts of cash on rising stars who don’t know any better. Jeff Grosso, a skateboarding icon, summed it up in a 2003 interview with “Skateboarder Magazine,” saying “They started handing me $65,000 a year at 17. I mean really I was doomed.” Connecting skateboarding’s anti-social tendencies to drug experimentation, he continued “Coming from a place of rebellion or alienation sets the tone for any drug addict. You’re already isolated. They hate you, you hate them, you hate yourself, so what else to do but destroy yourself in order to get back at them.”
The most detrimental contributions of skateboarding are the far-reaching, global effects. The most obvious is the collective carbon footprint. Inherent in the culture is the tendency to travel long distances for no other purpose than to skateboard in different locations. This coupled with the fact that most skaters driver older, less fuel-efficient vehicles creates an unfathomable amount of green house gases, which are contributing to climate change. Another trend of skateboard consumers- that is consumers in the economic sense, not the biological sense, wherein the aforementioned consumers would eat the skateboards… although if you take enough drugs, you would probably eat a skateboard- is to purchase massive numbers of small orders of products from online businesses instead of buying from local shops, which would provide for much less emissions from transportation. Another less obvious effect is that of the building of literally thousands of skateparks across the globe, each one made of thousands of square-feet of concrete, which is made of cement, which is responsible for “over five percent of carbon dioxide emissions” (theguardian.com).
There’s also the impact of all the drugs! Growing marijuana (most skateboarders drug of choice) for instance, accounts for over one percent of all electricity used in the US (evan-mills.com) and has a terrible effect on the environment. According to Mother Jones, for every pound of marijuana produced, 4,600 pounds of C02 enter the atmosphere.
Other drugs such as meth and cocaine fund gangs and criminal activity in this country, while fueling violence and paramilitary groups in Latin America which have effectively taken control over huge territories, namely in our southern neighbor, Mexico. Heroin is another drug with unforeseen consequences- it funds terrorist groups such as al-Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan (Forbes.com)(NPR.org).
Skateboarding must be stopped if we are to survive as society, or even as a species. This is the most urgent problem of our time, and without swift action, our children could all become skaters… and that’s not the future they deserve. Perhaps old people are right in their universal distaste for skateboarders. With age comes wisdom, after all.
Works Cited
Adam, David. “The Unheralded Polluter: Cement Industry Comes Clean on Its Impact.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Oct. 2007. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Ehrenfeld, Rachel. “Stop The Afghan Drug Trade, Stop Terrorism.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 26 Feb. 2009. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
“Energy up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production.” Energy up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production. Evan Mills, Ph.D, 18 Apr. 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Kotler, Steven. “Waiting For Lightning: A Deep Peek At A $658 Billion Dollar Market.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 06 Mar. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Nelson, Soraya Sarhaddi. “Taliban’s Cash Flow Grows From Heroin Trade, Crime.” NPR. NPR, 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Sinister Skateshop, which also put on Boardstock back in April, organized this contest at the Soul Ride Park in Charlotte, NC (actually Concord, whatever). It was really great- tons of great skaters, a killer bowl, couldn’t have asked for a better crowd.
We met a couple of dudes that had come up all the way from Florida, as well as kids from VAB and the surrounding area. It was cool to see a lot of the same faces from Boardstock.
They also linked to this video from David Wu – who even when filming, was still the most courteous dude in the world
It was pretty cool to see the friendly competition among some really good-natured skaters in the open division. There’s a wooden fence to keep people from falling off the bowl deck into the rest of the park, and first Brandon Yarborough blasted a a trick on it, which made “Yoda” Upapong blast one, which made Jake rack himself on said fence, but then literally get straight up and land it…
The best part of the whole trip was that Jake bought Josh and I the largest beers I have ever seen, with his prize money,
The people that run Sinister and Soul Ride are really great, and do a lot to support skateboarding, both locally and regionally (also they gave me a free sticker). If you ever end up in Charlotte, be sure to stop by.
I had heard a lot of hype about this park over the last 2 years- even since before it was finished, I’d watched the video Team Pain posted of the dude riding around the park, and seen the aerial photos. I’ve also been to quite a few Team Pain parks, and am a huge fan, so all that being said here is my review: HOLY SHIT BALLS GO SKATE IT RIGHT NOW! IT’S SO GOOD! SO GOOD!
Really, if you aren’t super siked on skating right now, fly to Denver and go skate this park. It will save your soul.
The only thing that through me off was that the snake run-looking thing is not a snake run so much as just a bunch of things to pump over and get dick tons of speed. I’m not sure if that whole setup is considered a bowl, but it was my favorite thing to skate. As with everything else in the park, the only limitations are what you can imagine as far as lines.
The potato chip thing is pretty sick, even on an artsy basis. I think a kid blunted it while I was there. All the Team Pain usuals are there- crazy shit, fun shit, shit you have no idea how to skate, brick/stamped quarter pipes, perfect smooth ground, and great transition, plus a healthy amount of pool coping.
There’s not too much else to say, since all the pictures are up (and I can’t figure out how to add text before the first pic without deleting any)(I’m lazy, whatever). I have never been anywhere that has as many awesome parks as the Denver area, and this one reigns supreme. If you ever get the chance to spend a couple days in the area, take it.
First, On the ride up, my camera stopped working, so all pictures were taken with an Iphone. That being said, I was impressed how they turned out.
If you’ve ever thought about going to Skatopia, go. By far one of the most, unique, hardcore, terrible experiences one can have with a skateboard. To those that associate with, or live on a certain fringe of society, this place is heaven. To others, those that are maybe more comfortable in quiet suburbia, Skatopia looks like Hell, complete with fire, suffering and sodomy.
But don’t worry it’s not that much sodomy.
Jake getting it in, and over. Day 1Sunset over the Lula Bowl
I don’t think we’d been there for more than 4 hours before we got some serious action! But in a bad way.. First, 2 guys from the camp next to us stole one of our tiki torches, which led to a drunk, back-and-fourth shouting match. This meat-head, ‘roid-raging man-child ended up beating the fuck out of two of our guys. Will had 2 black eyes for the whole trip(and could not shut the fuck up about it), and Shaun (Red Beard) looked like someone took a hole-puncher to his lip. We agreed to move campsites to the other side of the big field, to where our group had previously camped, and where we already knew a good number of other people. That should’ve been the end of that…
This year was noticeably smaller than when I came out 2 years ago- There were probably half the bands. Why that is, I have no idea, but You can’t complain if it means less of a wait to get another run in the Lula Bowl, or having your own session in the Church.
It was about as hot and humid as it could’ve possibly been, so for most of the day we just sat around, dodged fireworks, and drank beer. Sometime in the late afternoon, we’d walk up to the Lula Bowl, where everyone with either a board or a camera was. The bowl is rough in some places, some of the transition “has character,” and with 20 other angsty dudes waiting to drop in behind you, there’s no fucking around. There were, predictably, a few real gnarly, awesome skaters that killed it and were killer to watch, and I’d love to find some of the pictures the legit Photographers took.
Oh yeah, and some guy on a dirt bike jumped the bowl several times…
E.T.
After the sun went down, we’d restocked our backpacks and coolers with adult beverages, and scavenged up some food, everyone would head over to The Punisher. The barn it’s in is essentially the world’s biggest tree house- 3 or 4 stories high with a full pipe, 13-foot bowl, and 2 stages for bands (although this year I think they only used one for music). The sessions in the punisher are what the whole Bowl Bash is about, and for most, this really is the main event. lucky for us lilly-livered, pussies that can’t skate a bowl with an 8 ft waterfall of death, Jake absolutely killed it, which just made us look cool…
“I’ll see you in the punisher! BITCH!”- Jake Hillbish
Some of the bands were really good. I think we heard “In My Eyes” like 5 times.. which is fine by me. Did I mention The Murder Junkies (G.G. Allin’s band) played Thursday night? And yeah, the drummer was completely naked, and kinda fat. It ruled.
Early Saturday morning, a dude blew his fingers off… I heard several different stories including one that him and all his friends were all tripping acid, and that he had loaded a stick of dynamite DYNAMITE into a mortar tube. The pictures were really terrible, and I’m not going to post them, but sympathies for that guy.
Later that same night, while we were watching Jake rock The Punisher’s socks, I stepped out to take a piss. On my walk back, I saw police lights at the gate and decided to walk down and check it out, while keeping a very safe distance. This was an interesting situation because Brewce has signs up everywhere that say no law enforcement allowed inside. At first nobody knew what was going on, but seeing Brewce walk down, non-nonchalantly and not start smashing windshields was reassuring…
There were between 3 and 5 police cars that were there just to bring an ambulance to the gate, which at first seems laughable, but then you think of all the crazy, hammered punk kids a couple hundred feet up the hill that would love nothing more than to destroy, and then burn a police car, let alone 5 and an ambulance. They should have brought the National Gaurd…
The paramedics were older, middle-aged good ole boys, and as I saw them first passing the body down, one stood up and yelled “hey! I need to talk to this guys friend! is there anyone here that can tell me everything he’s taken?” I just assumed it was an overdose, with all the drugs and debauchery and whatnot. But then I saw the guys leg- bloody with a shirt tourniquet. Somebody told me that he had loaded a mortat into the tube backwards and fired it from the hip. It shot into his leg, but didn’t explode. Seeing the video of shortly thereafter, and hearing the story, I couldn’t help but think it was very Blackhawk Down…
Not more than 2 hours later, Jake took a fall in the bowl. He went up for a grind, but slipped out and kind of rag-dolled to the bottom. I think he might have flipped over himself a time or two. He didn’t get up.. Alex and Ryan, who were the least coherent, jumped in and got him out. I walked him back, pillaged some ibuprofen from our neighbors, but then gave up on keeping my concussed friend awake (you’re supposed to not let them sleep for 12 hours, no?), when I got too tired. That is real friendship- making your broken friend feel better, but still letting them risk death or coma.
Those were all the injuries of note, which is really surprising..
For our entertainment on Saturday, a couple campsites down from us, they defaced, sawed the roof off of, utterly destroyed, and then burned a car.. They would load up with fearless warriors and fireworks, drive over to the other side of the big field, shoot the fireworks at the camp that had messed with us, make a terrible, fish-tailing turn-around, drive back and repeat. The other camp would also shoot fireworks at them, and by the end, some of them had definitely been very large explosions/burning balls of fire reigning upon thee, but despite that, there didn’t seem to be any real bad blood between the two.
9 people in car that seats 4. Now that is innovation. Also- you can see the other camp in the background.Man down!
On the nail-biting, flailing, turn around that the car would make, a couple people fell off/out of the car, a couple times. One time, the dude didn’t move. It obviously looked really bad, but nobody batted an eye- a couple guys jumped out and pulled him back to the car, presumably yelling “NO MAN GETS LEFT BEHIND!” “GO GO GO!” all under heavy fire. He lived.
When the poor Prizm finally stopped running, and actually before they had determined so, drunk, angry, shirtless, free Skatopians hacked off the doors, hood, trunk, and anything else that would possible come off with axes. I wish I had recorded what he said: one of the older, 40ish(that’s very old in a lifestyle such as this) Skatopia gurus was commenting on how sick our society is that all these kids had all this pent-up, suppressed anger, and negativity and energy, and that their only outlet had to be a car in this wonderful, free place. He was very high.
Jake’s look-alike/stunt double/future-self choppin’Red Beard is the final strawsociety! Society! SOCIETY!
Then they burned it. And behold, it was good…
BURNNNNNN!All gassed upRighteousness.In the end of the world, there will still be entertainment..balls
Its funny how a car burns. How intensely, and for how long. Just imagining what would happen if there had been anything left in the tank, or anything remotely flammable left in the seat or trunk. It makes one feel uncomfortable at the thought of riding in one fore7 hours to get home.
Watching a car burn, with 50 fucks that look like they’re straight out of Waterworld- or any other dirty, post-apocalyptic movie- with no rules, no legal repercussions, no authority, is pretty.. fucking cool. It really did feel like the end of the world, and I especially felt that later that day when the entire (pretty big) campsite on the other side of the field- the one we got in a scuffle with- was convinced we ripped the wires out of at least one of their cars.
There’s a downside to that kind of anarchy, of not having any kind of authority (save for Brewce, who is god), any kind of court… If you are wronged, the only way to get justice/revenge is to take it into your own hands. And drugs and alcohol most definitely hinder the judgement part of your anger-driven mind. We didn’t end up getting in anymore fights, and I convinced them to at least second-guess themselves long enough, but it got very, very close to a really big fight, if not tribal war- their camp was pretty big, and had alot of drunk, lookin’-fer-a-fight kinda guys, and on our side, the elders from the camps next to us said they and theirs’ had our backs.
Maybe next time…
The last thing any of them said to me when I was leaving their camp was that “that guy in your camp rips really hard. He’s like crazy in the bowl,” referring to Jake…
This event was back in April, so it’s really really late to put this up, but whatever.
This trip was one of the things that made me want to start this blog.
Jake Hillbish, Apr 2013Jake Hillbish, Apr 2013The Boardstock ramp and food truck-skateshopthe band from the first evening “Go Go Pilot”Jake, tailslidin’Josh, running outJakeJake Hillbishsignature JakeJake Hillbish, high fivethe winners for the beginner divisionintermediate winners
I spent 2 months in Las Vegas at the beginning of 2013. Not finding a job allowed us to skate almost every park in the area. The really nice thing about being there when we were, was that it never got so hot you wanted to die, but for when it does, the vast majority of the parks are lit at night.
Unlike Denver, the parks here seemed harder to find on the internet, and so for the first few weeks, it was discouraging because the only ones that we did find were… shitty. However, by the time we left, I was pretty siked on what we’d found.
Desert Breeze:
The first park we found, and one of the closest to the strip.. how do I say this nicely.. I wouldnt recommend it to a friend, unless you really dig weird transition and bowls with potholes. Theres a little street section with manual pads, small banks, and a couple rails. The big “meh” aspects of this park is the flow bowl: it goes from roughly 3 feet to 6, some of the coping is below the concrete, its got some rough concrete, 3-ft spine, and some banks/extensions. There’s a larger 6-ft circle bowl, with the tallest nipple I’ve ever seen and another 5 to 7-ft bowl with lots of weird pockets and again, weird transition. Overall I think its fun to skate something that isn’t perfect, something “with character,” but expect to leave and be over it.
Hollywood:
If you can only go to one park, make this it. i think it was $3.00, you had to fill out a registration form, and wear a helmet, but the park is so worth it. A couple of the biggest bowls I’ve ever skated, perfect transition, no rough spots anywhere (this place is nice), a massive full pipe, that you can haul absolute ass through, sweet kidney bowl. Its got a pretty sweet street section too, with banks and euro-gaps, a couple 4ish stair sets, hubbas, a block 3(?), and a real long, 2 or 3-ft china bank. Thinking back to it, this park was pretty much the best of every other park I’ve ever skated. It was lit at night (til 10 i think), and the view of the valley below was to die for.
Doc Romeo:
OK so it’s pronounced roe-may-oh, and everyone calls it “pro park” so don’t worry about that. The top of the park is a massive bowl that probably gets as tall as 15 ft. Some of the transition is kinda weird, and some of the ground was kind of rough, but get the fuck over it. There’s a reason they call it pro park, and I would give anything to watch a real good bowl/ramp/vert skater shred this. Some of the features (for lack of a better word) were on such a gnarly scale that it felt like the only way they would ever get properly utilized is in a videogame…
In KOTR 2010, Sammy Bacca busted the longest powerslide in this park- that should give you an idea of how slick some of the concrete is…
Below the huge bowl is a little tranny/street park- between extensions, quarter pipes, launch ramps, rails, and banks this has everything you could ever want.. but beware, its where the hundreds of scooter kids stay.
The neatest thing about this park, is the old-style bowl- I’d heard that originally, it was the only thing to skate in the complex. Theres a snake run-esque sidewalk that leads to it from the main park. The sidewalk has rainbow rails and pole jams, and is very fun in itself. The bowl is essentially just a drainage ditch you won’t get kicked out of, so unless you dig ditches (ha!) you probably won’t enjoy it. Old School skaters enjoy!
Anthem:
A nice neighborhood demands a nice park..
This was the most consistently crowded park we frequented, and there were always tons and tons of little scooter kids. This park has anything a tranny/bowl skater could ever want, and you could probably flow around the entire park without pushing, if you didnt have to worry about all the other people. I think the pool-style bowl was pretty sweet, and obviously very tight. The view of the valley/Henderson is also really really good too.
Ditch Jam:
Prepare yourselves for a name-drop. OK ready?
So back when i was a senior in high school, I flew out to Vegas for a weekend. While driving down towards Lake Mead, I was enamored by the drainage ditch/running trail(?) that ran parallel to the road for what seemed like miles, downward. I didn’t get to skate it, but it really stuck in my mind. On the plane ride home I sat next to.. wait for it.. Fred Gall, who slept for most of the flight, but we did end up talking about ditches, and that one came up in conversation.
Fast forward almost exactly 3 years, and there we were, drinking PBR with a bunch of gnarly punk skater people, skating a good section of this sweet ditch…
I forget the name of the shop, but they were having their first annual ditch jam, and it was fucking cool. The parking lot was literally right off the major road, and there were neighborhoods right on the other side of the walls, but nobody seemed to care about the extensive public alcohol consumption, or loud punk rock. There were alot of really good skaters, interesting people, and I would definitely love to skate that ditch again.
Skateventures 