You're part of a city government that is considering building a public skatepark for local skateboarders. Your motivation may stem from wanting to decrease damage to public and private property caused by skateboarders, wanting to please residents who are demanding a skatepark, you may feel the skatepark will revitalize or bring business to a certain area, or perhaps you just want your city to be more "cutting edge" and after all, every other city is doing it. Whatever the case, you probably want the skatepark to be used. After all, what's the point of spending $200-500K or more of city taxpayer money for something nobody will utilize? And yet tens, perhaps hundreds, of cities across the United States do just this every year.

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It's not even officially open yet, but it is skate worthy, if a little dusty. Mark and I just headed on down there for a chilly, January session, and although there are several park in Utah that I have yet to skate, I don't mind saying I'm pretty sure this is the best one.

Directions: Get off at the exit in American Fork where the llamas are. It's the 500 east exit. It's just south of the Lehi exit, and just north of the new Pleasant Grove exit. It's where Wal-Mart used to be but isn't anymore. So get off there and head east, towards the mountains. You're going to take a left, but don't take the one by Carl's Jr., take the one that's just before Deseret Industries. So now you're going north. Head a few blocks and it will be on your left.

Yes, there are bathrooms, and you've got places to eat and get drinks and such within a few minutes walking distance (I'm not sure the road going to it is skateable).

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I'm 31 years old. I have a Master's degree in business and I'm the CEO and owner of a business that employs eight full-time employees. I own a house and three cars. I'm married. I volunteer at a youth detention facility. I skateboard. And I'm being punished for a crime I didn't commit.

A month or so ago I drove a half hour from where I live to go skate at the South Jordan, Utah skatepark. I like skating there because it is relatively well-built, has two skateshops nearby, a gas station down the street where I can get a soda afterwards and maybe fill up, and because it is the only skatepark I know of in Utah that does not allow bikers. Having had a collision with a biker at the Draper skatepark, I am motivated to not repeat the experience, and that makes the South Jordan park especially attractive.

But on this day my hour round-trip drive was in vain because the skatepark was closed. Somebody had spray-painted various messages in several spots all around the park, and a sign on the gate said the park would be closed until the city was informed as to who the perpetrator was. Today, more than a month later, the park is still closed. I didn't commit this crime, I don't know who committed the crime, and it is not within my power to find out who committed the crime. Yet I am being punished.

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I just opened the new issue of The Skateboard Mag and I see that Kent Dahlgren is the guest editor of the month. Kent is the executive director of Skaters for Public Skateparks, When I set up this blog a while ago Kent sent me an email. We ended up exchanging a few emails and he invited me to an event at a skatepark up in Boise, or Portland or somewhere which I was unable to attend although I was a bit flattered to be extended a personal invitation rather than just getting the blanket mass email I usually send out to people.

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Have you ever had the experience of skating a place and thinking it stinks until someone shows up who rips the place and you realize it's just you? That was pretty much my experience here. The park is fun enough in spite of it's typical poor design and construction, but I've come to not expect too much from public skateparks.

But then two guys showed up who were amazing and made me realize that the park is pretty darn nice, or can be, if you're as good as they were.

2415 East Bengal Blvd. (7600 South)

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Why aren't public skateparks covered to prevent wear and tear from sun and rain and to provide kids with something to do when it's raining, snowing, or too hot outside? Other public facilities are covered or enclosed in expensive, air-conditioned building, why not skateparks?

Case in point, the South Jordan, Utah public skatepark.

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I just got an email from the guys at Cream City Skatepark in Wisconsin asking me to add a link to their park's site on our links page, and while watching the video of what looks like a super nice park I started thinking "Is there any skater who hasn't dreamed of owning an indoor skatepark?" Just imagine, you could skate anytime, rain, snow, or shine. You wouldn't have to pay to skate. You could build exactly what you want. You'd get to meet all the top pros and ams and hold contests. Chicks would flock around you. And on top of it, you'd make tons of money and people would give you free product if you let them skate there.

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During the holidays I went down to visit my parents in Arcadia CA and skated the Monrovia public skatepark with my high-school buddy whom I haven't skated with in about ten years.

Despite some "interesting" features the park is still fun to skate. That said, I probably won't go back.

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St. George Utah used to be a tiny town in the middle of the desert that you would pass through if you were travelling between Salt Lake City Utah and Los Angeles. It's about two hours north of Las Vegas, and 4-5 hours south of SLC. Today, St. George is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, mostly due to a huge influx of retirees who don't mind the 120 degree summers. But as the retirees move in this provides a lot of money so all sorts of other businesses are springing up and now St. George and surrounding cities are getting fairly large. Large enough to have a public skatepark, anyway.

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It's at 4800 South, Redwood Road in Taylorsville, but don't bother going. This skatepark was one of the earlier skateparks built in Utah, and it's not very good. Tearing it down and putting in a flat piece of concrete with a few ledges would be a much better idea.

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Yes, it's true, Binary Skate Park in Draper, Utah, is no more. If you're interested in buying a bunch of well-built skateboard ramps contact Brock or Sean at brock@binaryskateboards.net or sean@binaryskateboards.net respectively.

Continue reading if you want more of the story.

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I finally went over to the Sandy skate park. I don't know why I've put it off for so long...oh yeah, it's the crowds of 8-year old kids riding Razor scooters, bikes, and toy skateboards. And some of them are just running around without any sense of skate park etiquette. But I finally went, and I must say I waited too long. This is one of the best skateparks in Utah.

It's on 7th East and just north of 106th south. It's pretty easy to spot, right next to the street.

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Since the Payson skatepark was so lame we decided to check out the Spanish Fork park as we headed back towards SLC.

It's around 400 South and 600 East. It's by the high school I think. Some sort of school. It looks like it's actually on school property, out in the back of a big field by the street, and across the street from a park. You want skatepark photos? Go to Concrete Disciples.

Well, first of all, the Spanish Fork park was different, but not much better. Second, it was closed. But I didn't need to skate it to write a review about it.

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I'm not giving any sort of directions to this monstrosity, because there's no reason for you to visit it other than if you need an example of how not to build a skatepark. Seriously, it is that bad. It's so bad that it's even worse than the Provo skatepark. The photo above makes it look a lot better than it really is.

Ok, fine, here are directions: It's at about 600 South and 100 East. Get off at the Payson, Main Street exit and just stay on Main Street into town (South). Go through that one-way part even though you want to turn to the right, and just keep on going straight. It's in a park.

If you hired a construction company and told them "Here's $100K and some open land. We're not going to tell you what to build, just come up with something." you would have ended up with something that would probably be more skateable than this. And I mean that you wouldn't even tell the consruction company that they needed to build a skatepark. If they ended up building a used-car lot it would probably be better.

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This is not a very good skate park.

208 North 2050 West, Provo Utah. Get off at the Center Street exit in Provo and head West. It's in a park that is roughly on the corner of Center Street and Geneva Road. If you take a right on Geneva you'll see it on your right-hand (east) side.

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Another surprisingly well built park out in the middle of nowhere (sorry Oakley, but it's true and you know it's true). This park is closest to the bussling metropolis of Kamas. In case you don't know where that is, it's a little ways from Heber, which is a little ways from Park City, which is a little ways from Salt Lake City.

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I finally skated the South Jordan, Utah park which I've been hearing a lot about and it is my new favorite. Good bowls, good street, even considering a number of things that could have been built better.

Photos courtesy of rideutah.com and GrindLine, the builder.

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Ever heard of Blanding, Utah? If you're from Utah, chances are you're related to someone here. In my case, I married someone who is the daughter of someone from Blanding, so I get to visit every once in a while.

Well, there's a new reason for visiting Blanding. They've got a new public park, and it's not bad at all. In fact, I like it better than a lot of the parks up around SLC.

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I just read an article about a skatepark constructed by volunteers. It starts out sounding like a good thing. American Eagle donated $80K, no small chunk of change, to help it happen. 200 volunteers from the community showed up, including Dale. Birds, deer, and assorted wildlife frolic about.

But upon closer examination this isn't the most positive scenario. Most of the volunteers aren't skaters and don't know anything about skateboarding. Then it gets worse.

"Township supervisors contracted with KaBOOM!, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group that specializes in helping communities design, finance, and construct skate parks and playgrounds through a program called ESKAL8."

KaBoom? As soon as I heard that name, I knew bad things were afoot. Not that I know anything about the company, but I didn't need to read that they also specialized in "playgrounds" to know that this wasn't going to be a skatepark on the level of a Skate Plaza.

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I went and skated the Springville skatepark again today. I've probably skated that place more than any other park in Utah. Somehow the prefab, blue, metal ramps and obstacles and lack of crowds make it one of my favorite spots. Is it subpar like just about any other public skatepark? No doubt. But is it fun? Yes, it is, and it's worth going to.

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I got rained on four times today. What a weird summer for Utah. Rainstorms in June, and it's about the 433rd time it's rained just this month. Personally I love the rain, as long as I'm not skating. Today Lex and I got rained out of two outdoor parks, and Binary was closed for some reason. Probably because everyone was over at Blindside in Orem trying to get Jamie Thomas to sign their shirt. Which brings up the matter of autographs. What is with autographs anyway? I've never asked anyone to sign anything of mine. Except for that 80s band that came to my high school once, but that was a total joke. Maybe I'm just jealous nobody is asking me to sign anything except checks.

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We've started posting so much information about skate parks that we figured we might as well add a skate park section to Sublimited.net.

With time we should have quite the directory of skate parks, along with real reviews of them as they get sent in. There is already a bundle of posts in the section, including my personal favorite on Skatepark Etiquette.

No, we don't have our own skate park directory on Sublimited yet, although maybe we will someday. What we do have is a directory of skate park directories. Enjoy!

http://www.concretedisciples.com/cd_skate/skateparks.php
http://www.skateboardparks.com
http://www.socalskateparks.com
http://www.skateboardpark.com/skateboardpark/fullindex.asp
http://www.switchmagazine.com/skateparks_list.html
http://www.skullskates.com/parksnew.htm
http://www.sk8parklist.com
http://www.skateoregon.com
http://www.skatenorcal.com
http://www.skateboard.com.au
http://www.freeskateparks.com

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One of the benefits of having a blog is that you can complain about things and feel better. One of my pet peeves is that lack of proper etiquette with kids these days at skateparks. Here are a few examples.

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I'm becoming more and more concerned about how much money, money that belongs to you as a taxpayer, is being wasted on skatepark construction. No, I don't mean that skatepark construction is a waste of money, but building skateparks that don't get used is, and I'm afraid that public skatepark failures are the rule rather than the exception.

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I just stumbled onto this website called Skaters for Public Skateparks at http://www.skatersforpublicskateparks.org.

As the site says, "SPS is a non-profit skatepark advocacy organization, international in reach, dedicated to providing the information necessary to ensure safe, rewarding, freely-accessible skateparks are available to all skateboarders."

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Want to see photos of the Fairmont / Sugarhouse Skatepark in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City, Utah? Well then click here for photos my young friend. And while you're at it go hire the SITE Design Group to build your next skatepark. Colby knows what he's doing.

I had the opportunity to skate the park last Saturday, and it wasn't all that bad.

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I already talked a bit about this in another post on the Skate Plaza concept, but I feel it needs a little more attention.

There are literally hundreds of public skateparks being constructed around the country, and the sad fact is that most of them will be under-utilized and will not fulfill one of their primary goals of giving skaters a viable alternative to destroying public and private property. The two reasons public skateparks are failures are design and construction.

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You've been hearing about Rob Dyrdek's Skate Plaza for a while now. The first one in Kettering, Ohio, should be open this summer ('05).

What makes the Skate Plaza different from any other public skatepark is the concept behind it that creates different results.

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There's a new skatepark in the Draper area of Utah. Binary Skate Park. I haven't done much skating for the last year, having been so busy with my web design firm, but I've been there twice in the past two weeks trying to get my skating muscles back and it's a pretty nice park.

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