ATLANTA
(From page 5) water in it. I met some
more people from that pool. I ran into
the guys from Marietta-Lenny, Mike
Landers. Mike was like the leader of
the pack. Debbie McAdoo-she was
originally Lenny's girlfriend and later
she hung around with Landers.
Chuck Hultz was there. You know
how a Roman-end pool is? Well, he
was doing airs off the hip onto the flat-
wall. This is when a lot of people
started building ramps.
Those guys from Marietta event-
ually became the Rancheros. They
had built a ramp and we ended up
going out to check it out. I had
already built my ramp. It was sixteen
feet wide with eight-foot transitions
and a foot-and-a-half of vertical. I had
taken the time to build it with flat bot-
tom and no kinks. Their ramp went
like this (crooked gesture). Uneven
transitions. It was deep and they built
it by hand with no power tools, just
hand-saws. The edge-cut across the
top was totally rough. Death box.
So I told those guys to come out
to my ramp. They came over and
realized that flat bottom was where
it was at. It was great to session with
all these people at my ramp. They
decided they were going to put flat
in their ramp. Somehow they did it.
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This must have about 79. Then they
rebuilt another ramp-sixteen feet
wide with flat bottom. The transitions
were a lot more even, I think they
were drawn with string.
They had a good ramp. Eight-foot
transitions, foot-and-a-half of vert,
pool coping on both sides. You could
blast on it. We started going out
there. It was a bigger scene. We'd go
out there and sleep for the weekend
under the ramp. Wake up with bong
water in your hair. Then we brought
my ramp out there, connected the
two and everyone started calling it
the Ramp Ranch. The local crow
were called Rancheros. Me and Load
couldn't really be called Rancheros
because we were from out of town.
B.K-How did the ramp go from
there?
There were all these massive huts
for everyone to sleep and party in.
Then everybody decided they
wanted to live in Daytona, Florida, hit
the waves and go to the rampe down
there. Everybody was hurtin'. We'd
been skating really hard for a long
time on bad knees. You just keep go-
ing because you can't quit when all
your bros are skating. We tried to get
some of the people back into it, but
they lamed out and headed for
Daytona. Me and Load would still
skate the ramp with a few other
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people. The ramp was at Debbie
Macadoo's house. Then Joker, that's
Debbie's brother, got paid by his
mom to tear the ramp down. This was
about '81. So we'd skate pools like
the Blue Room, the Mansion, the
Cabana and various others. We
didn't quit skating.
Then John Hughes called me up.
I didn't know who he was at the time,
but he called me up and said, 'Hey
man, this is John Hughes. I used to
hang around at the Ramp Ranch
somewhat. I don't know if you
remember me but I remember you.
We'd like to get you to come out and
skate our ramp. This kid Mitch had
a ramp, so we went out and skated
it. They were calling it the Ramp
Ranch II, but it was never really con-
sidered Ramp Ranch il. That was a
good ramp. Twenty-four feet wide.
with a channel. Then that ramp got
torn down because of the neighbor-
hood ordinance or something.
They wanted to build another ramp
so we got together on some wood.
I drew up some nice even transitions
and started making the templates
and that became the Ramp Ranch
II. It was at a killer house. The land
must have been about fifty yards
wide by a football field long. The
ramp was thirty-two feet wide with a
sixteen-foot deck on one side and an
eight-foot dock on the other. The
sixteen-foot side had a channel, plus
a hut on eight feet of the deck. It was
like a pavillion. We had the hell storeo
up there, couches, the whole deal.
We had huts underneath the ramp,
too. The dude's mom was cool and
people could just stay there. It was
great. There would be a party in the
neighborhood somewhere. It would
be bring your own bear and we'd
bring a keg. People would get all
pissed off because they thought it
was a keg party and we'd be like, "I
don't think you qualify for a glass."
Well, finally that ramp took a dive
due to city ordinances and building
codes. We tore all of the wood off of
it-the plywood, the long two-by-
fours, the decking wood-and took
it to my house. It sat there for a couple
months before we made the ramp
that's in my yard now. That's the third
one. It's twenty-eight foot wide with
nine foot transitions, a foot-and-a-half
of vert, a twelve-foot deck on one side
and and eight-foot deck on the other.
There's an extension in one corner,
sixteen foot of flat, a staircase.
K.T-Were you a carpenter before
you started building ramps?
Building ramps is what got me into
it. That first ramp I built, I got some
guides on how to do it from Chris
Bealy. He left town, but I did it exactly
like he said. There was nobody to
rush me I took my time and made
sure it was done right.
B.K-When you're in town is your
ramp happening?
Yeah. What's happening right now
is that it's always been up to me to
come up with wood. I make good
money, so I'll go out and buy wood
and take up money from people that
are going to be skating here, but it
never comes through. I've been
burned so many times. I paid two
hundred dollars for some wood and
I only got to session it once because
I had to leave to work on the Powell
Chin ramp. I was gone for about three
months. When I came back, the
wood was history, buddy. It was
shredded wheat.
KT-Any skatepark history in
Atlanta?
Yeah. There was Concrete Curl in
Marietta. I always heard scary stories
about that place. I heard the concrete
was rough and had rocks in it. I never
went there because I didn't have
transportation. Then there was Con-
crete Surf, which was just basins and
stuff. It was pretty cool. I wish they
would have never torn it down. There
was another park called the Tube. It
had a long halfpipe with a sharp edge
on the top and it went down into a
bowl. It was really wavy. You could
get up there but it was scary. Then
there was National Skate Park..
You've never seen so much wasted
concrete. This long downhill shit, a
slalom section, a massive olympic-
sized bowl.
B.K-What about pools?
Kitterege pool is about twelve-and
a-half feet deep. Then Fog Point's
pool up in my neighborhood is really
gnarly. It's a tight kidney. Collier pool
is a miniature Roman-end. There
was a fountain about three feet high
we called it Shallow End. It was real
smooth and you could just pump
around in there. We'd get about fif-
teen people in there and go berserk.
The Mansion pool was downtown at
this mansion that turned into a
restaurant. The Blue Room is like a
big Mickey Mouse hat. It's a bowl
with two ears on it. The ears are the
shallow end. It's about ten feet deep.
tile coping. We used go there after
parties and drain the pool to be ready
by sunrise.
KT-Did you always use a pump to
drain pools?
No. When we drained the Man-
sion, we did it with one of those in-
dustrial grade trash cans. It took us
like nine hours. We had a sump
pump that we used to get these three
hoses going
K.T.-What's happening in Atlanta
these days?
A lot of people hanging out with
boards. For me, it's kind of lame. I'm
not happy unless I'm skating vert. I'm
just going to have to fix my ramp.
DEAD
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