SCHOOL
EEP
ENTER
LEAN
RESPECT WHERE
You SKATE 1
BACK
IN
SESSION
SATURDAY MORNING
So you're bored. You wanna skate but
your best partner had to visit a relative or
something and the local halfpipe is in need
of heavy repairs anyway. Still you gotta
skate so you pump off down the street
looking for possibilities. A curb grind here
and there, maybe a little freestyle down on
the corner. After a while you realize you
have been gravitating along a familiar path
and to your horror you end up face to face
with an empty schoolyard. You start to
back away from your unintentional
destination, but wait! Dude, check it out,
the schoolyard! You've never really
stopped to think about it before but there is
a whole bevy of possible skate potential.
Schools usually harbor painted red curbs
and plenty of parking blocks to go around.
Deeper in there are the ultra smooth
corridors, benches, ramps and, hey, how
'bout that little bowl of asphalt around the
sewer hole over by the metal shop. Sheez,
there's a lot of skate action to be had at any
given public schoolyard, and we haven't
mentioned the asphalt acreage that forms
the major part of most playgrounds. Yes,
our educational system, especially at the
elementary level, can provide almost
18
David Hackett, epitomly dit the low pivot. Photo: Blen
E Friedman
Long-timer Stacy circulates around a giant U-Bank
somewhere on the edge of The Valley
Skating Editor KT glides a high line past a thoughtful message at Kenter. Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but urethane tracks. Photo: Glen E. Friedman
made to order skate terrain. If not at your
own school, think of the hundreds of public
playgrounds that dot any suburbia and
you've got yourself some skating action,
not to mention some searching to do.
DOGTOWN DIMENSIONS
If you live outside of the greater L.A.
Basin and Southern California in general,
which most of us do, it can sometimes get
a little frustrating looking for new skate
spots in comparison to the wealth of terrain
available in L.A. Already the swimming
pool capital of the world, the area also
boasts an abundance of drainage ditch
and spillway mileage and, of course, when
parks were prevalent, the LA. area was in
charge of the largest concentration of the
so-called skate arenas. It is no wonder
then that when it comes down to the
epitome of the banked schoolyard, L.A.
has got the prime examples. West L.A. to
be exact. Santa Monica, Dogtown.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the
infamous depths of Dogville to sample
some of the finest asphalt banks ever
conceived. I was fortunate to have as my
tour guide longtime resident and local
historian Glen E. Friedman. Even as we
drove through the surrounding burbias on
our way to the different institutions and
their respective swells, Glen was pointing
out some of the interesting sights such as
Tony Alva's old house and the original
Zephyr logos still visible on the wall at
Brentwood. Another interesting tidbit was
the fact that James Garner used to stop
periodically to catch a session at Kenter
even giving Glen a ride up the hill once, "in
the same truck he used on the Rockford
Files, mind you." Or the time Bob Biniack
punched Glen and took his board. Or when
Wally Inouye showed up one day and did
gorilla grip aerial 180's on the bank much
to the confusement of the locals.
Names like Alva, Jay Adams, Muir,
Marty and Clyde Grimes, Chuck Aspinese,
Danny Bearer, Torger Johnson, Stacy,
Shogo, Paul Constantineau, the Z boys,
the Hiltons, Paul Hoffman, came to
memory as we cruised walkovers and
Bertlemans over the same walls. This is
where bank skating and, in effect, vertical
skateboarding was born twenty years ago,
for it was in the same schoolyards that the
locals used to gather before foraging into
the nearby canyons looking for and finding
empty pools.
For me, skating the Dogtown schools
was an experience I'll never forget and
may never repeat, since I'm not a local of
the area. Skating those banks did cause
me to recount some school spots that I
have skated elsewhere. I realized that, like
the Dogtown crew, I had spent a lot of my
early skate youth swirling and sliding and
hanging out in the schoolyards, pumping
and carving and working the surface for
everything it was worth, walking the nose
into low pivotal re-entries on meager
banks. Our terrain wasn't as heavy but the
attitudes remained the same. I know now
that I picked up a lot of technique and style
from those sessions that has stayed with
me throughout my skating. Yeah, school-
yards, check 'em out.
-KT
Contortion adaption. Tony Hawk pushes himself and
the banks to the limit of each. Photo: C.R. Stocyk