Thanks for tuning into skate spot pod, we are on episode 8, which will be the final episode for our first season! We want to thank you all for tuning in and sticking with us during this time. We will be on a short break and will return for our second season, so we hope you all will join us again for that.
Today we have 2 special parks, the first is Spain's oldest skatepark, now this spot was until the mid 2000’s totally buried underground, it was resurrected by the skateboarding community during a couple of years. The second, is a park that is still buried beneath the surface of which is Oregon's first skatepark. Please don’t forget to follow or subscribe to our podcast and we would be very grateful if you would give us a review.
The first skatepark to be built in Spain was in the mountain region of Arenys de Munt. It was built during 1979 by businessman Joaquim Roig. Roig was Influenced by the boom of skateboarding that was happening in the US at the time, and he decided to travel throughout France to do research on skateparks that had been modelled off those in the US. Roig first founded Spain’s official skate organisation, Skate Club Catalunya in 1978. He then followed with the construction of skatepark Arenys that spanned over nearly one acre. The opportunity came to be when the land was given up by a guy who used to spend the summer in Arenys. The park was officially opened on July 7th 1979. It included a freestyle section for beginners, snakerun, two connected bowls, halfpipe and slalom track. The skatepark became a hub for skateboarding with a number of sports fairs, exhibitions and tournaments held. It was also the first skatepark in the country to hold an international tournament during 1979. There apparently were special charter buses that would take kids to the venue, as it brought in many people from all over the country.
So if we dive into a bit more detail about each of these sections, the first thing that grabs your eye is the freestyle section, and surrounding the flat space are walled banks. So it almost looks like a giant bowl, or reservoir, that is in the formation of a square. Next to the freestyle section there are two bowls that are placed side by side and are connected via a roll in section, there is a third bowl section that is at the end or a Snakerun that runs downhill. You also have a half-pipe that sits in between the Snakerun and slalom section that runs down the entire side of the skatepark. From old footage we have seen, it looks like you can roll into the snakerun from either end of the half-pipe. There was also a reception and bar on the property. There is a flyer in one of the links in the podcast description that has a map of the place, so be sure to check that out.Now there are some really nice older videos that feature this park and I have added these in the description below.
So the park's popularity continued until the early 80’s, until there was a large decrease in skateboarding popularity. During this time the residents in the area started complaining that the skatepark was attracting homeless people and drug use, which is when the owners of the facility decided to close the park and bury it in 1984, leaving no trace. During the 90’s and 2000’s there were rumours circulating about Spain's lost skatepark and interest grew. Yet there was very little information about the place. It was not until 2010 that some skaters started to think if it would be possible to recover the spot. It started to become an obsession as they gathered as much information on this place as possible. They finally decided to break out the shovels and picks and start excavating the site. The crew began working on the freestyle track and cleared what was left and then gained more motivation to start trying to recover the bowls. They used the map that was on the flyers for the park to give them an understanding of where to start digging. After taking a rod and testing the grounds on where they thought the bowls were located they finally hit what they thought was cement, after clearing a small area, they realised that they had found the radius of the coping from one of the bowls. The motivation increased as did the number of volunteers to help dig. It was however a painstaking task that did take several years. They encountered metal, scrap, blocks of concrete, old 80’s coke cans, stickers and even parts of the old bar that was located on the skatepark. Not having heavy machinery, it is really impressive that they actually managed to excavate the two connecting bowls. After they had been dugout some repairs were done on the coping, yet it was all pretty well intact. I can just imagine the amount of anticipation once they got to the final stages of excavation, it must have been amazing.
The skatepark was finally reopened during March 7th 2012. They also managed to excavate parts of the old snakerun, yet it is still in pretty bad shape, with a lot of sections still covered with sand and only standing less than half as deep from its original depth. The bowl section at the end is in the same shape, with only a small resemblance of what it once was.The half-pipe however is not visible and may have been totally destroyed when buried, I am unsure. Now this story is captured in a short documentary called “Digging”, I have provided a link in the description below. There is also a cool area shot of the place and what it looks like now that is listed in one of the articles that I have also linked below.
So if you are even in this part of the world, Skatepark Arenys is a must to check out, it also looks like it is in a really beautiful part of the world, with a lot of beautiful scenery! The skatepark still looks super fun to skate and amazing the amount of work that was put in to get this place resurrected!
Moving on we will take a trip to Coos Bay in Oregon. Now this skatepark was recommended to us by a follower on Instagram. So a shout out to Shad for sparking our interest in this place. He also has really the only video documentation of this skatepark that we know exists. So please be sure to check this out in the link below.
In order to tell this story accurately we need to take a trip back to 1974. A speedway was opened up in Coos Bay Oregon, called Ken-Kel Park. This was a major racing facility that was constructed by a guy called Melvin Spaghts. This place actually still exists today, yet it is called the Coos Bay Speedway. So for years Ken-Kel Park was the scene for a variety of motor shows.
So at the same time another interest was growing by another business owner in North Bend, Oregon, a guy called Rod Maney, he owned a bicycle shop yet took an interest in skateboarding. Influenced by some kids that were coming into his bike shop asking if he sold skateboards. This sparked an idea for Rod and he started selling boards. It was not long after this that Rod began organising local skateboarding contests, some of these local competitions were gathering around 300 - 400 spectators. He is even quoted saying that he believes skateboarding is here for good and he believed that it would be in the Olympics in the near future, interesting visionary, it would just take over 40 years to get there! Rod would eventually start attracting not only locals to these competitions, but out of towners also started competing. When reading through the number of articles dated towards the start of 1977, it looks like Rod would organise these tournaments anywhere where there was free space. Including local high schools and mall car parks. This is where he would discover the popularity for the spot and also give birth to the idea of creating the first concrete skatepark in Oregon.
Now on our travels researching this place, it was brought to our attention that the world's first skatepark was actually opened in Oregon on the 1st of July 1965. This place was called the Albany Skateboard Centre. Now this spot was a 600 foot wooden track that was built on stilts above the ground, which kind of looks like a boardwalk. It was a design concept that they were looking to sell as a type of package concept. This was the same track that was later sold and built in Kelso Washington in 1966. There is a great article on early skateboarding history during 1964 /65 that we learned a lot from that is done by the Concrete Disciples, which I have linked below. What was eye opening was the fact that most people think that Surf City in Tucson was the first park, yet this was opened on the 3rd of September 1965.
At any rate if we fast forward to 1977 Melvin Spaghts, owner of Ken-Kel park and Rod Maney struck a deal, and the Speedworld Skateboard Park was opened, which was located on the grounds of Ken-Kel park. We can’t get an exact date when this place opened, yet it would have been either between May and early June 1977. What was built was a bowl that was in the shape of a horseshoe, in the centre of it there was this bank transition that would allow you to roll between both sides of the horse shoe. At the steepest part of the bowl there was a 6’ vert section, which I have been told was pretty gnarly. Now there is pretty much zero documentation of the park, but you can check out the video taken by Shad during 1998 when he and his buddies snuck into the park. There was also a Slalom track that was setup, which was also used as a go-kart track. I have to read this paragraph from the World that was published in July 1977, they did a small write up on the skatepark, humorous writing of someone that has no idea about skateboarding.
“They have their own bus line, they have more safety equipment than a nuclear power plant. They have a horseshoe shaped concrete bowl to ride in - complete with a safety patrolman who can handle its six foot sides like a mountain goat on four wheels”.
Now during the same year it opened there were a few skateboard contests that were held at Speedworld. The only one that we can find documented was during the 2nd and 3rd of July 1977, which was called the Northwest Skateboard Tournament. Some people that I reached out to over social media said it was called the West Coast Skateboard Championship. I am pretty sure they are talking about the same competition. There are a few mentions of it also being called the West Coast Skateboarding Championship in some other newspaper advertisements, yet at any rate it was hosted by Russ Howell a freestyle champion that is now a skateboarding hall of famer. The competition included freestyle, slalom, bowl riding, high jump, long jump, consecutive 360s, long distance riding and four-man relays.
Now, apart from these few competitions, I have been informed that there was a competition that was sponsored by Pepsi held at Speedworld, although in general documentation of this place is really scarce. I reached out to a few groups on Facebook to see if I could track down any more information about this place and also details of when it closed down. It is said that a kid snuck into the park after hours and managed to break his arm in the horseshoe bowl, after the incident the kids family decided to sue Ken-Kal park. Not long after this event, the skatepark shut and the bowl was filled in with wood and metal to prevent anyone else from sustaining further injuries. We are unsure of what year this was, but judging from the lack of information and articles that are published on this place after 1979, I am assuming that it was either during 79 or 80 when it was shut.
I kind of feel for Rod Maney though, when I was researching this place, his excitement and just general love for the sport of skateboarding really shines though. In general I feel that he was quite proud of what we had created at the Speedworld park. In some of the articles he mentions just spending days at the park with his wife and admiring the level of skateboarding. He makes mention numerous times of his respect he has for skateboarders and the level of difficulty it takes to ride. It seems like he was a really good advocate for the sport back in its early days and to have the park shut in this fashion really does not do justice to the work that he put into the sport.
Now following the park's closure its history is again very hazy. From some comments I have read online, it seems like there were people that would still sneak into this place and skate, and judging by Shads video from 1998 it was totally cleared out at periods, as the bowl was very rideable towards the end of the 90’s. I have tired jumping onto Google Earth and checking the aerial shots of this place going back to the 80’s. A lot of the historical aerials are really bad quality until you hit around 2004, then you can still see that the bowl is visible. So we are guessing that from at least 98 - 04 this place was rideable. Today it is totally filled in; you can, however, still see the go-kart track which they used for slalom, yet the bowl is buried underground. It would be really interesting to know if this could still be salvageable, like Skatepark Arenys, it would make an amazing story to try and excavate this place and see what remains. At any rate, this spot and its history are so valuable, to meet its end in this way is a really sad story.
So even though both skatepark Arenys in Spain and Speedworld in Oregon, suffered a similar fate their situation today cannot be more different. What I have trouble understanding though is the total lack of documentation for Speedworld, being the first concrete skatepark in the state of Oregon I would have expected it to be in some magazines or even in some of the spot guides that were released in The National Skateboard Review.
So thanks again for joining us on our first season of skate spot pod, we will be back again with season 2 in a few weeks. We hope you have enjoyed this first season and look forward to season 2. Thanks!