It used to be called Roadrunner Skate park, the skate park built by the Roadrunner skate shop in Portabello. You could skate all day for 4 pounds. Then following the deflation of the urban action sport industry the money needed to keep the place running wasn't coming in anymore. According to the team of guys running the place in the mid 90's the land they were renting was too expensive. So...

Sony Playstation who were then hoping on the bandwagon of marketing to the elusive 16-30 male demographic decided to step in and save London's only and beloved skate park. The park was then known as "Playstation Park", a name that has stuck with it for years. In my humble opinion this was the glory years of the park. Ok... they introduced the 'session payment' plan where you had to pay for a 4 hour session now and not for the whole day, making your visit more expensive but the ramps were always in perfect condition and there was equipment to suit ever style of skater and the whole gamma of urban action sports. The team suddenly were upgrading and redesigning constantly, and it seemed overall like they had more money than they knew what to do with. By the time you got used to the park layout it would change, fantastic it was like having a new skate park every 2 months. This was also the time when I had my "sponsorship" with Playstation park... which basically meant I could go in for free and even skate during the breaks between sessions when it was empty. Then in 2000 Xbox decided to move in on Playstation... both in the gaming console market and in this instance the skatepark. This is how central London's skate park became known as "Bay 66" (even thou some people even today call it Playstation, that must really p*ss off Xbox). With the color schemes of the Xbox 360 and everything. Great... but what changed was more than just the color schemes.

After being renamed Bay 66, and under the new management the skate park began to change. Which brings me to the recent session I had last Sunday wile I was in London visiting my good friend Nick Kouros. Before coming to Greece I had noticed that Bay 66 had began splitting up parts of the park to be more blader friendly, Boarder friendly, biker friendly etc. They had even tried having 1 session per week which was just for one of each group! I digress... all of my fears were proven correct. First me and Nick tried to go for a skate on Saturday afternoon but there was a skateboarding event and the place was just not skate-able with all of the little boarder kids standing and sitting everywhere to watch the few skateboarders who were actually busting. So we went for Indian food instead. Come Sunday however and the park is pretty empty... so I strap in and have a roll around. What do I find? the entire design of the skatepark is Anti-blader. What do I mean? The funbox was about 4.5 feet tall and rounded around the boxes with 4 inch kickers. Instead of quarter pipes, there were banks everywhere and I mean everywhere... it was almost impossible to put together a decent line on the street course because it was simply not built for fast running, big runs. The new bowl area in the back has an oval bowl with one of the bowl walls being a spine into a mini ramp with a nice circular 'wall ride' (more like a tight circular quarterpipe). The problem? the bowls are about 4.5 feet deep, I just couldn't pump in the bowl because I kept getting air out of the coping, so it really wasn't that much fun... if I wanted air I would be at the 7 foot mini ramp in the back or the 14 ft monster halfpipe. The circular 'wallride' like I said was not wall rideable because it stuck about 3 feet above the coping of the mini ramp it was embeded in and so narrow that you could only tap it, not really ride it. I mean... wtf? what is it good for? I'll tell you what, for a quick slide up and down on a skateboard to feel like you just came out of Z-boys. Much like the rest of the park its for skateboarders exclusivly. Imagine how the BMX'ers must feel trying to maneuver there heavy machinery through the narrow, low chaged banks of Bay 66?

(Check out Video Edit of SYEAH SKATE crew blading Bay66)

In short the parks new design is built for beginner skateboarders... not even more advanced ones. There was a fella my age skateboarding around and he ended up doing the same thing as me... trying desperately to squeeze out a decent line, simply because rolling and enjoying the park was not possible for him, in other words we couldn't enjoy our skills... what a skate park is suppose to do. Instead Bay 66 has become a bay for noobies, even worse just the skateboarder noobies. Honestly the only thing they have put up for Rollerbladers is a single kink thigh high rail that is placed in the middle of a bunch of skateboard noobie boxes making it impossible to make the most of. Then there is the quarter to quarter wall ride which again... has sitting right in front of it a mini-fun box (noobie skateboarder box)... come on! coming off that wallride and finding thatthing in front of you? Thats just unsafe for the boarders if not anything else. Then there is a straight thigh high grind box which sits atop the flat between two 6 foot banks... not exactly the best thing to launch off of... especially when there are no quarter pipes around to pick up speed from. Then there is the monster launch ramp that used to be one of my favorite parts of the old Playstation which was tied up in red tape this time... Its almost like its all been done on purpose, of course its paranoid to think that they have actually built it to dis encourage bladers from using it. Its much more likely that they have just built it to satisfy all the newcomer skateboarders. This makes me angry because they are neglecting the more experienced bladers (and skateboarders) who are the core of these industries to satisfy the 'skateboard moms' by giving quite little ramps they're 12 year olds' can skateboard on. Bay 66 got better for this group but overall worse for everyone else. Have they sold out like everyone else? In my opinion... yes. The big money now is in hooking the kids and they're moms who fork over the cash because this is the cause of skateboardings big boom so the peripheral industries (like skateparks) are following the trends. I don't like it... fine! give them something to do too... but dont forget the very people that helped you build this place! I hope to see changes on the next upgrade they do because right now skating at Bay 66 is like a huge slap in the face... with an Xbox logo. Oh! But you can now buy hamburgers from the new canteen! woopee...

Written by :

Antihero

 

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed