I went on a whole different train of thought. This was before they decided to turn and go street. The pushed really hard for a while the whole backyard vert thing. When they started to really go for it, boost their airs and stuff, it’s right when the parks started to close. All of a sudden you had the Lances, the Blenders, Billy Ruff and those guys coming up behind them. You had all of the generation one and two guys: the Alvas, the Hacketts, the Olsons, all that stuff. Originally the trick explosion started in the skateboard parks. Let’s talk about what half-pipes did to trick progression. Once they put flat bottom on it, you could pump and airs got a little higher.įlat bottom helped. Those ramps were the first ones to do a legitimate flat bottom. Allan “Ollie” Gelfand, the frontside ollies on that wood ramp. That ramp was well documented in Skateboarder. The Hollywood ramp in Florida was another one. It was this huge, beautiful structure and everybody just thought that was the way to do it. Everybody starting mimicking the Ramp Ranch. The advent of eight, ten, twelve feet of flat bottom was a fuckin’ revelation. They did a little article and I believe- I could be wrong but I think the Ramp Ranch guys in Atlanta, GA are credited as the first guys to put flat bottoms on ramps. The summer tour issue in ’83 or something. I think Thrasher did an article about it. How did halfpipes themselves evolve, from the 8-ft-wide, no flat bottom, plexiglass Pepsi thing to the modern version we have now? If they’re going to treat it like that, I’ll just bulldoze it. Gigliotti, the owner was just like, Fuck em. We found later that they were thinking of reopening it but since all the punkers tagged it, Mr.
That lasted about a month or two and it was gone. Then we started jumping the fence and skating there anyway. Lucero called us one day and he told us that they were riding Skate City. We were so nerdy that we didn’t even think about jumping the fence. It sat closed, dormant and empty for a couple months. It was around the time Skate City closed. Was there a period of time where you were simultaneously skating the skateparks and vert ramps? Smith’s tripping’ on those yellow shorts! Photo: MOFO He was trying to calm down his home life. Lance shut his ramp down when he had Cyril. I funneled him a bunch of my skateboard money so he could finish the ramp. There was this other kid, Phil, who lived by Lance that was building a ramp out of stolen wood. I was fortunate enough to grow up near Lance Mountain so we started riding Lance’s a lot. The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves, to figure out what we wanted to do with it. A lot of people were dropping out and growing up, going to school, getting jobs and moving on with of their lives. It was sad because all of the stuff was going away but it was also kind of empowering. You’re either in the streets, street skating, at somebody’s back yard ramp or if you were fortunate enough, you were at the skateboard park on the weekends. The skateparks were our babysitters, it’s where we grew up. It was kind of sad for all of us, out here in my world. A year in skateboarding is a long fucking time. When did the transition from concrete parks to wooden ramps occur? Skateparks slowly started to close and that pushed everybody back into the streets and into backyards. Yeah, back then, as far as the pros were concerned, everything was skateboard park or backyard pool influenced. The first tricks came from pools though, right? I had a 4x8 sheet of wood leaned up to a keg my stepdad had. What do you do? You build a little quarter-pipe. Some kid in Boise, Idaho, Wichita Falls or wherever the fuck doesn’t have a skatepark. Everybody was trying to emulate the California dream, what they saw in the magazines. You go way back into the 70’s, with the birth of Skateboarder Magazine and you got kids everywhere without access to skateboard parks.
#Mini ramp flat bottom length how to#
Once they figured out how to ride up walls, the kids started banging nails through wood. Obviously skating vertical terrain first happened in pools, but how soon did halfpipes appear? We caught up with Jeff at the “The Grosso Vert Ramp” for a friendly discussion of all things halfpipe, vertical and rad.
#Mini ramp flat bottom length professional#
Just as he helped revive professional pool riding, with the advice of Jeff Grosso a grand wooden vert ramp has once again bloomed in the Vans parking lot. Luckily Vans’ Steve Van Doren, ever the sage, is taking the long view. In a trend-defying twist that few saw coming, there are not only more skatepark pools now than at any time in skateboarding’s past, there are more concrete pool and bowl contests than ever before too, leaving vert halfpipe skating, the one-time pinnacle of progression and spectacle, in a somewhat weird spot.
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