INDEPENDENT
t's been approximately ten years
(nine years and 180 days, give or take a few)
since the bulldozer hit the pipeline skatepack
and destroyed the infamous pack that
forever changed the face of skateboarding.
Many skaters through the years claimed
the Combi-pool was the shit because of its
unique shape and design, and while it was
super gnarly (8-foot trannies with 3 feet of
vert) and somewhat flawed, skaters over-
came the lumps and bumps and kinks to
elevate skating to new heights in the world's
only round/square combination. After its
demise I forgot about the whole deal,
thanks to the OC connection, and I grew to
appreciate pools when I skated them
because nothing lasts forever. I wrote off
the idea of ever skating one of the raddest
pools of all time again.
Then I heard rumors about Vans actual-
ly constructing a skatepark minutes from
Kelly's house, which is like a 30-minute
drive for me. Rumors abounded that they
were considering building another ver-
sion of the Combi, and after getting a
phone call from Dave Duncan, my wildest
dream was about to come true again, ten
years after destruction.
I could not believe it.
So Rick Carje (the man responsible for
Chicken's and the Basic Bowl) took the
helm and started planning with Duncan the
layout of the new park, which would
include along with the Combi-pool an 80-
foot vert ramp, a pro street course, a mini-
street/ramp complex for the kids and an
intermediate San Juan pool/bowl deal
complete with a spine. To get to this deci-
sion, it took months of planning and chang-
ing the format/layout of the park like four
or five times. Also taken into account was
the vast amount of limited space to make
everything work well together and fit within
the parameters of the building's square
footage. It was quite a challenge.
First on the agenda was to try to get the
original plans from Mr Stan Hoffman;
when I asked him if they even existed, he
said that they just winged it and to his
knowledge no plans were ever made. He
did know the dimensions, though, and he
estimated that both pools had roughly 8-
foot trannies with 3 feet of vert and that
both pools were the same depth. It did
seem though that the north wall of the
square had 4 feet of vert and 7-foot tran-
nies that made it feel like 13 feet deep or
something. The bowls were 32 feet x 32
feet wide from the center point and the
middle hip was 4 feet within the middle of
the coping, which actually made it about a
6-foot peninsula with the extra foot of
coping per side between pools. The
square corners were about 4- to 6-foot
radius; he couldn't remember. The shallow
Resurrection
The Combi-pool Revisited
Left: Curtis Hsiang takes a frontside air for a test drive on
the freshly poured crete.
Right: A destruction crew buries the original back in 1989.
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