The Land of Oz

If you were to hijack the Mole Man's tunnel machine, and drill a hole through the earth from Beasley Park in Hamilton Ontario, you might just end up at the Fitzroy Bowls in Melbourne, Australia. Built twenty two years ago in beautiful Edinburgh Park, located just north of the now hip Fitzroy neighbourhood, the Bowls could be Beasley's sister skate park: same punk aesthetic and laid back vibe, funky graffiti and down to earth crew of rad skaters. The main difference is, when it's winter at Beasley, and everyone is wearing three layers of cloths, it's summer at Fitzroy, and peeps are lying around in the grass, listening to tunes on a portable boom box, skating, replenishing fluids, and having a good ol' time.

 Ditto for Waterloo Park in Sydney, which is a little newer than Fitz, but attracts a diverse crew of skaters, two of whom were good enough to teach me the intricacies of "the flamingo," while I introduced the backside no-comply wall ride to the land down under. But don't forget to wear sunscreen!!! I arrived at about 11 pm, and skated for two hours, thinking the cloud cover would protect my freshly shaven head from solar radiation. Wrong! Turns out the ozone hole is directly over Australia, and those harmful UV rays pierce right through the clouds like spears. My neck and head looked like a flayed salmon for a few days after that. Lesson learned. Sure was a fun skate sesh though.

 

The Beasley Skate Jam

The Beaseley Skate Jam was started in 1993 by Derek "Oldschool" Lapierre. In this historic video, the fresh, glass-like concrete provided a smooth surface for the skaters, whose antics were video taped by Pete Trepieddi.

This year the Bease Comp is twenty years old. In preparation for the two-day blow out on August 11 &12, the Hamilton Skateboard Assembly has been working with the City of Hamilton and the Beaseley Neighbourhood Association to give Beasley Park some much-needed love and attention. They've installed some new elements, including a flatbar, ledge, and a new location and transition for the up-barrier. There is a new light to make the park easier to skate at night, and there will be some fresh concrete laid to remove the "Niagara Escarpment" in front of the quarter pipe. All this so that the 20th Annual Skate Jam will be the best one yet!

The BNA is also running parallel events in the park on these days, including a mobile skatepark in the parking lot of Dr. Davies school, so that kids new to skating can try it out without getting run over by the veterans. There will be a Breakdance Battle, sports, food and more, so come down to Beasley and check it out!

HSA Summer Update

There's a ton-o-stuff going on this summer in the Hamilton skateboard world. Leading up to the 20th annual Beasley Skateboard Jam (Aug. 11 & 12), the Hamilton Skateboard Assembly has several fundraisers and mini-contests planned. Beasley Skate Park is getting some much needed love and attention, and it seems like every weekend, street-level skate events are going down. Check out the following video for some highlights, and check in at The Hamilton Skateboard Assembly for further details and updates. And if you want new crete for Bease, stop in at The Beasley Skateboard Park Development Fund and drop some coins.

Winter Blues?

Last week gave us an unexpected dose of T-shirt weather, and a bonus weekend of Superbowl skateboarding in February. But if the cold and snow are getting you down, I find it helps to remember warmer times.

Skateboarding in January

The same modernizing forces that encased a large portion of the globe's surface in pavement, thus allowing for the evolution of the wheeled lifestyle known as skateboarding, also provided the preconditions for a parasitic automobile culture that has turned the human animal into little more than a phantom appendage of hulking metal carcasses that feed of the liquified remains of dinosaurs. This destructive impulse, known as “driving”, has greatly contributed to changing the Earth's climate over the past hundred years. It is the global warming trend that we have to thank for dislodging the noble but unruly beast known as Bigfoot (or “Yeti” in the polar regions) from its native climes, driving them ever southward in search of their preferred diet of twigs and berries. Luckily, no Yeti have been spotted in Beasley Park, where skaters recently gathered for a balmy weekend session in JANURARY, giving some credence to recent descriptions of Hamilton, Ontario as “California north”. But if you do happen to encounter a Yeti, DON'T TRY TO ENGAGE IT IN CONVERSATION, as the few words scholars have managed to record of their complicated system of grunts, squawks and howls have been decipher to mean “Shut up and skate!”

Cracks can Kill

...or at least send you sprawling toward the twenty year old concrete that covers Beasley Skateboard Park in downtown Hamilton. Laid sometime around 1991 (and used by skaters long before that, when the bowl was a kids' wading pool), Beasley is believed to be the oldest municipal skate parks still in use on the east side of the continent. Every year, a city crew arrives with grinders and crack filler, but every year the much- loved 'crete of Beaze develops new holes, fissures and deadly crevices, just waiting to suck a skateboard wheel into the gap and send its hapless rider flying. I know my wrists, knees and elbows have taken their fair share of hits from unexpected dislogements due to failures at crack evasion--and I'm a seasoned veteran!

The park surface is not due for an overhaul until 2016, but with the dilapidated state of the park, and with the 20th annual Beasley Skateboard Jam approaching next August, the skaters of Beaz, in association with the Hamilton Skateboarders Assembley, are pushing to have the park smoothed out before this date.

New Footy Coming Soon!