Retro-post: San Jose

Went to San Jose back in March. Didn't get to skate as many places as I would have liked, but Lake Cunningham and Santa Cruz were wonderful. I so want to move there. AND IT'S NEVER HUMID! It was 70 degrees all week, in Chicago it was snowing.

Wish I spent more time riding this one, tight transitions and stairs like a pool.


It was super hard to get speed at that cradle, not sure if it was bigger than Riley in Michigan.



The pipe, and a really big hip!


The huge vert wall.

Should have taken more pictures, LC is ~60,000 sq. feet. I'm not sure if that includes the big flatground area for spectators. It's still huge, kid in a candy factory.

 I guess I didn't take any pictures of the Santa Cruz park, only a few videos. That pool is definitely my favorite of everything I've ridden.

I have more old pics I'll post later, and I'm going to Roselle today, I'll make another stitch, because those are fun, but Roselle isn't interesting at all.

West Dundee Concrete Mini!

Went all the way out to West Dundee to skate a concrete mini. Not too much to say about the park, there's not really a flow to it because it's mostly street obstacles. The mini was perfect though, save for the wax that kids have put on it. One side hangs in the air with no deck, and I was able to hang a feeble all the way over it which I was pretty happy about. Finally was able to land disasters, which is why I went in hunt of a mini ramp, trying to push switch through traffic at Wilson was not paying off. Here I was able to do a bunch of switch rocks, then move to disasters. Not really worth the drive, but if you're already going out to Schaumburg or Roselle its only another 15 minutes. Forgot the camera so I have crappy phone pics.



Built by Spohn Ranch I believe, craftmanship was all good, no complaints, but it's not as if it was a complicated thing to pour. The soil under the hanging side of the ramp has already compacted leaving an extra space between the ramp and the soil. I expect it to get worse over time, hopefully the crete is strong enough and wont crack.



The street course pitches downhill, which is a blessing and burden. Less pushing unless you really want to hit it the other way. There were also lights on one side which made the park pretty rideable after dark.



I don't really give a shit about this part.



The little bank was actually pretty fun, I didn't expect to ride it when I got there, but gave it a shot and liked it.


Nice little park if you're already out there, not worth much of a drive, but much better than a skatelite mini, and much better than drop-on-top prefab concrete. There's a mall nearby if your lady is tired of watching you skate.

Lake Delton!

So I finally made the trip up to Lake Delton, a skatepark by Dreamland. It's right next to the Wisconsin Dells, and there's even a state park with camping about a half mile away. I will definitely need to make a return trip to this one. The concrete was uber smooth, and every inch of the park was made skateable. When the builders poured up to the edges of the park, they didn't just leave it flat, or build a wall, they put in transitions or banks.



This is the sweet sweet bowl, (after several attempts at stitching photos.) It's a little hard to see but there is a love seat sticking out of the wall on the right, which I was able to carve over. The love seat was fun, but it actually breaks up the flow of the bowl. The coping is the way pool coping should be, which makes me really how strange Wilson's coping actually is.



That guy's arm is actually like that, I swear. Behind him is a psuedo-brick quarter with a really steep transition. The entire park was skateable. I'm definitely going to have to head back!

Slightly bigger versions can be seen here.

Sushi by the beach!

So Jessica and I have been exploring the Andersonville/Uptown area, there are tons of amazing restaurants, and the beaches are much nicer than the over populated douchey beaches to the south. We had sushi by the beach.



Yum! I believe it was called Sushi Marina. We also tried Sushi Luxe, which had much larger pieces of fish in their sushi, but I think we preferred the Marina.






We walked over to that beach after.