Belgium based company Concrete Flow under the head surveillance of legendary Michel ‘Mike’ van der Ouderaa has just finished a nice kidney pool on the French atlantic coast 300 meters from the beach in a little seaside town called Mers les Bains.
This bowl is ready now. It´s the first decent bowl we built since starting Yamato Living Ramps and it was a challenge for sure.
We created La Kantera Pool Service – Iñigo Rica, Sendoa Altonaga, Manuel Olagorta, and myself, Borja Casas. We repaired the coping of the banks, changed the stones to create new spots and we put pool coping in one corner and one ramp. The ramp’s name is Carabobo. We repaired holes and painted it and now it is really good to skate!
Every year the Fiesta des Ursulines somehow marks the beginning of the skateboarding summer season in Brussels. However, the weather isn’t always on our side. But beer is a good alternative to missing sunlight, and we Belgians know how to make up for it. Our top animator Phil was at his best as usual, dressed as a womenly kinda joker. All-in-all the event was a great success, gathering skaters, rockers, groupies, mom’s and dad’s, kiddies, punks and hipsters. The gigs around the bowl were rad and the skaters hit it hard during the session. So fuck the weather and let’s skate!
Everybody needs a place to call their own, and it sure helps if that place has pool coping. Getting a private indoor setup together is a giant pain in the ass, but the reward of skating a place that’s exactly what you want to skate is unbeatable. All I can say is- if you’re thinking about it, just go for it; its a lot to do but you’ll figure it out.
In September of 2010 Richmond DIY’ers lead with the concrete skills of Bernie Mcgrew took it into their own hands to finally build for the skaters of Richmond, VA a city with no skatepark. Starting with an 8 foot (2.4 meter) deep kidney swimmer bowl, the Lost Bowl now boasts a lot of other tranny around the decks of the bowl. The Lost Bowl continues to expand with the help of tons of skaters from RVA and there is no stop foreseen in the near future.
Any given friday, a session like this could be going down at the Buena Vista square pool south of Santa Cruz, one of the longest running “backyard” pools in history. This pool has been skated by generations of legendary skateboarders. Most sessions these days include not only the old school pool shredders and underground legends, but also unknown new school pool riders that fearlessly roll in to the deep end and attack the “lip” as if they’ve been skating pools their entire lives, which quite probably they have. This pool is definitely harder to skate than it looks. Hopefully it will remain empty for another 30 years for following generations of pool skaters to shred without too much fear of the cops showing up and busting it, or without it being filled in with dirt like it has numerous times over the last 30 years.
Designed by concrete killer Julien Benoliel from Marseille, the bowl is being built for the “Julien Benoliel’s DIY bowl invitational contest” taking place April 26th. If you didn’t hear about it, well, I guess you weren’t invited.
Over the time, we got some experience with shaping concrete. And the first thing we learned is that we need good wooden trowels for the first contact with the concrete. Filling up holes and smoothing it roughly is the first step, waaay before you work with a metal trowel.
The park will be open for the public April 26th and it will be fuckin rad, and big. No steelcoping! Only pool coping in the bowl area!!!!!!
If you were there, you know words can’t explain the madness that was going on! If you weren’t there, see you next year! – G’nassis
“What can one say about my best friend? He eats sleeps and breathes skateboarding. If he couldn’t be enveloped in skateboarding, I truly believe he would dry up and turn to dust. His entire life has been dedicated to progression through ideas and fruition. It all started with exploring on his bike with a milk crate and to this day, he is still constructing skate obstacles and teaching people how to take their skateboarding destiny into their own hands through doing it themselves…” – Kim Cook