40
grinds. Nick and Janni run the place-Mama and Papa-they're cool as
shit. The ramps rule. The bowl is smooth and fast, pure joy to ride, they
also have a 24' wide mini-ramp, with a tombstone and a major street-
ramp area. During the summer they have full-tilt events like "Skate
For AIDS SK8-A-Thon." Fifteen bands, hundreds of skaters-a sheer
blowout bash. The Cutting Edge is always fun, definitely the best
skate spot around.
Brattleboro, where I live, is in southeastern Vermont. We've had a
skateboarding ban here for about three years it's pretty damn
oppressive. A small band of grommets kept going to town meetings.
pushing for some sort of solution. Police, local business people and
concerned citizens proposed an indoor park to resolve the problem.
They issued us 17 Flat Street-a three-story parking garage right in
town-and a buttload of materials. Yessir, I dig solutions like that. We
built a sweet mini-ramp with pool coping and an extended roll-out deck
like Bryce Kanight's ramp in the Thrasher ramp plans. As time went by,
we slapped together bank ramps, lip ramps, jumps and a small stage.
We gathered curbs, got some paint, lights and plugged in my stereo-
Wala! The Flat Street Park was born, and life in the town of Brattleboro
just got a whole lot better.
There is a lot of crossover. Everyone
skates and snowboards, you could say
it's part of our heritage. Because of the
long winters and the sweet summers, I
see southern Vermont as a powerful up
and coming scene. This summer I want
to see a vert ramp-a 9 tranny with 15
of vert-go in at Flat Street. It's time to
push the scene to the extreme.
-Michael North
THIS IS SOUTHERN VERMONT. It's cold. The winters are long and
seem like forever. Since I moved here I thought. "Vermont is perfect
for hemp farming, good tunes, and fat indoor skateparks." So we got
good tunes at the skatepark, two outta three ain't bad. It won't be
too much longer to spring, uh, I mean mud season, Vermont's fifth
season where everything thaws out and turns to soup. You're proba-
bly reading this out on the patio by the pool while we're still picking
the crud out of our tires.
There are two indoor skateparks and two ski resorts in southern
Vermont, making this a sweet spot in an unforgiving land. And dig
this snowboarding was born here. This is Burton's backyard.
Stratton Mountain and Mount Snow have dope snow parks with
full-on halfpipes. Both totally promote snowboarding, with shops and
competitions. So, if you groove on hangin' out with mountains, get on
a lift, let it carry you to the heavens, then carve soulful lines downhill
to Babylon. Everyone is shredding hard and getting along. Most of us
live to ride. The possibilities here are endless.
The Cutting Edge is a cool shop and skatepark on the western side
of southern Vermont. They sell everything that rides, glides and
VERMONT
46 TER
Clockwise from oppo-
site top: Even the cops
in Vermont are cool,
Brattleboro police offi
cer Randy Wheelock
tears it up. Jeff Toma
fakes a long backside
stand-up grind at the
Cutting Edge bowl.
Teddy Rauh flies a
steady backside above
the Flat Street commu
nity ramp. Jim Kelly
bones a frontside at
Mount Snow's snow-
park. Zor, Jacob Hill
and Tony Lebrun build
Flat Street's mini.
Zac-Man busts a
frantside at Cutting
Edge Bowl. An over
view of the bowl in
Bennington, VT.
Averal