“We want a cradle! We want a vert bowl” despite the fact that London already has plenty of bowls that nobody uses in the main.
I hate to stereotype too but often the people shouting loudest for these facilities are the ‘I skated in the 70s/80s for 6 months and gave up and then restarted after the Dogtown movie came out’ types.
Just build a plaza and put some user-friendly tranny in there too - big mini ramp etc - look how busy Mile End is compared to every other park in London.
Plaza designs don’t have to be boring, in fact if done correctly they can combine all aspects of skateboarding into one space, just that they’re harder to design than ‘a bowl with a cradle’.
Been getting the same bullshit from a vocal minority over here. To be honest, they’re not MAS-ers, more a well-organised group of scooter kids and some Q-Anon supporting skaters in their early 20s who went to a skatepark in Barcelona once and now think they know it all.
This will be controversial but I fucking LOVE the cantelowes bowl. Loads of people hate it but I don’t think anyone needs another bowl in London given that that thing exists. Plus viccy park and clissold. You’ve got all the transition needs met.
But I’m not fussy, I love mile end, and I love the gnarly bowl at viccy and cantelowes, but I’d be equally happy with a janky wooden miniramp, a flat bar and a ledge so you get a bit of everything in one place. Maybe because I was raised at one of those shit parks. Probably a useless post. But I agree London isn’t in immediate need of another bowl.
There are tons of examples.
All I meant was - jump off the ‘one or the other’ horse. You can have flat and tranny in the same space. It’s not hard. Imagine Mile End with tranny all around the perimeters. Or Thornes near me. Or stappparken (or however it’s spelled) in CPH.
All this it’s ‘either Mk bus station or Uplands and nothing inbetween’ thinking is so myopic.
Malmo! That’s a great park, but whenever I’ve been there, it’s the little new build DIY that gets more use than the main park, while pretty much everybody skates the enormous flatground area with whatever obstacles are put in that day.
Nah I’m on about the one in CPH with the pool and the over vert thing as well as the massive street area with all the ledges/banks and shit.
The Malmo One you mentioned just proves the point really - the smaller user friendly tranny stuff is popular along with the ‘street’ stuff so why bother with 85 interlinked bowls again?
Beats the idea of a pump track, and the “I skated in the 80s and know how to write letters” bowl parks.
I feel like you could turn some dials on that kind of design and make things a bit more street focused, without being too street, nor too transition heavy.
