"Why did you fail to respond to the question-
naire, Joe?" I asked via fax.
"What? Oh shit. I guess I didn't hear about it.
We've been building this concrete stuff under the
bridge downtown," he responded in a telephone
call a number of days later.
I saw him the next day. He was a mess. Pants
all dirty. Shoes: far from chillable. He had a
bizarre gray film completely covering him from
head to toe.
"You should come check it out," he offered.
"The park, I mean."
Some background on Pino: A little over a year.
ago, Joe, a diehard hobbyist, turned his idle-time
attention towards the construction of a concrete
bench a genuine replica of benches found on
the raw streets. A few days after placing the com-
pleted piece in front of his apartment complex,
hordes of San Diego's skaters and related media
swarmed on the bench. More often than once,
Joe would return home from a hard day's skate to
find a heated session going down on his bench.
Eventually the bench drew so much attention that
the city came and hauled it away. In San Diego,
even skating your own bench is against the law.
In the tradition of the bench, Joe found himself
involved in another concrete undertaking. After
locating an unused spot under a bridge near
Washington Street, he began concocting a pyra-
mid with a
flatbar on
top of it.
"In San Diego,
even skating your own bench
Attracted by the sound of shovels scraping
against concrete mix, Burnside transplants.
Sage and Little Jon came over to inspect
Pino's progress.
"Um, Joe?" was all they got out before turn-
ing from the crude creation to grab shovels and
take over with their concrete-shaping expertise
and skill.
Other people began showing up too: some with
bags of concrete, others with warmly-received
is
the law."
against the
Clockwise from sequence: Four lanes of traffic
block out the afternoon sun, allowing Dorian Tucker
to creep up on a ghoulish feeble to backside 180°.
Troy "Clean Aussie" O'Mahoney floats a likewise
kickflip over the hip and flatbar. Pino barges a pillar-
ride, while the Osiris jocks hide their ghetto blasters.
words of constructive criticism.
Still others arrived to provide
moral support via nonstop ses-
sioning of a portable flatbar.
Money came trickling in, dollar by
dollar. And the concrete spread.
Soon the video and photo goons
arrived, licking their lips and prat-
tling away on their cell phones in a
language peppered with adjectives
and few nouns.
"Sick, dude! Mad heads! Crooks,
crooks, crooks!" they said, among
other inanities.
A week later the flatbar thing had
expanded to include a
quarter-
pipe, a three-foot-tall hip to pillar,
and an even burlier five-foot one,
complete with parking-block cop-
ing. The skating began as soon as
(and sometimes even before), the
concrete dried.
I know "hero" is an awfully strong
word, but when the construction
crew took a few steps back to
admire their work, it was hard for
the crowd of grateful skaters to
keep that word from popping into
their minds.
"I love you, Matt Dyck!" one
youngster cried out.
"Washington Park," as Pino likes
to call it, or "Diegoside," as most of
the kids call it, or "Pinoside," which
I'm still gunning for, exists because
the skaters of San Diego decided
the sucking had gone on long
enough and they wanted to skate
something better. While the park's
future is sketchy at best, news of
the spot has already begun to
affect the most recent pro and
sponsored am poll. In its latest
inception, a whopping 75% of
respondents had changed their
description of the present skate
scene from "sucks" to "rocks"
with an additional five per-
cent going so far as to put
"rocks balls." Pino, once
again, was not among
the polled.
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