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| Designer unveils early concepts for skate park |
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| Written by Marc Aceves | Patterson Irrigator | |
| Friday, 11 July 2008 | |
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Results from the Fourth of July skate competition: Ages 15-18 First Place: Ben Silva Second Place: Kenny McCall Third Place: Anthony Cordova Ages 12-14 First Place: Brandon Schornick Second Place: Matt Harr Third Place: Devyn Flowers Ages 8-11 First Place: Ronnie Smith Second Place: Gilbert Mercado Third Place: Bryan Vargas If Wally Hollyday had fashioned the moon, its surface might look something like the two skate park designs he unveiled Wednesday at City Hall to a group of about 30 local skateboarding enthusiasts.  BOWLED OVER: Skate park designer Wally Hollyday unveiled this design, as well as one other, for Patterson’s to-be-built skate area during a Wednesday meeting at City Hall. If it all seems like a dreamscape, that’s because it is. This is the kind of place skateboarders dream about. “There is plenty of room in both park designs for me to get as much speed as I need,” 17-year-old skateboarder Ty Tauer said. “I’m very excited about the vertical elements that this park will have. There are no ‘vert’ areas in this town right now.” What Hollyday’s designs produce are places where familiar elements of the urban landscape are digested and sent back to the boarding community as skate parks. Curved basins recall the empty swimming pools where early ’80s skateboarding was refined. Slopes hint at the concrete canal embankments where too many of Patterson’s skaters have scuffed their elbows. “These designs bring out a little something for everybody,” 14-year-old skater John Kiesser said. “Here in Patterson, (skateboarders) are used to a lot of street elements,” 13-year-old Cody Gagnon said. “I like how (Hollyday) was able to incorporate the street stuff with the ‘vert.’” Hollyday’s parks, like Granite Skate Park in Sacramento, give skaters the impression that layers of urban and suburban terrain have been compressed into rolling sea beds. The essential elements of most skate parks are bowls — rounded craters that can be as deep as 12 feet, which skaters can barrel down, building enough speed to coast along the walls and climb the rim. “Learning to ride bowls involves an interesting amount of technicality and board-transferring know-how,” Hollyday said. “About three-quarters of the (skating community) preferred to have a bowl — even if they had little experience skating them.” He added that he favored adding a shallow bowl to Patterson’s park. But Hollyday’s designs have moved far from just the basic pool formations. “Now, it’s about taking those elements and intersecting them with fresh ideas,” Hollyday said. “I have to keep thinking of the next shape.” One popular idea pitched Wednesday involved an “escalating spine.” The feature — designed to keep the smaller-sized park’s traffic moving without incident — would be a unique touch. “It was important that I created a long, flowing design,” Hollyday said. “There is certainly a lot going on (in both designs) in such a limited amount of square footage.” Hollyday once again invited attendees to critique his suggested designs, informing his young audience that the time to speak out was now. Staircases and banks — popular suggestions from the last meeting — decorated the mostly “street”-style courses. “Around Patterson, any stairs that we may be able to skate are all blocked off,” Gagnon said. “If you go on them, then you’ll get busted.” The stairway in front of the Patterson High auditorium, for example, has long been a popular spot for daredevil skateboarders who risk not only personal injury, but also a citation from the long arm of the law. Proponents hope such violations will be curbed by the building of a skate park.
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