Two years ago I started digging a pool in my town Lodi. The city authorized the skate association to do that but after a while I found asbestos in the dirt.. it’s not toxic but really harmful if you inhale it. I don’t know if you have that shit where you live, but it’s pretty big in Italy though. Somebody hid the asbestos back in the day. I quit with that. I wasted six hundred euros, part of that was a Carhartt contribution, part was my own money.
This summer the city gave us another location. They gave us concrete and rebar too. I wrote to Daniel (Cardone) if he wanted to help me in this dumb mission, and he was totally down! I bought him a one way flight and we started to work everyday.
I needed a good friend to work with with full time. Daniel is the best. We disassembled an old minirmap and we did the set up for the concrete putting together the rebar. So fast to say, but pretty hard to do that. It took three weeks.
Paolo Coppini and Simone Verona were essential too. They came every week for two or three days. They live in the south, three hours form Lodi. They just love skateboarding too much. Ale Redaelli is fully motivated. He came here so many times… lots of people come by to help. My apartment is open to them. I work in a pub, after the concrete, I start to serve beers,. When I come back home late in the night there are always people hanging on my couch. I like that. We finished the first hip yesterday night, we have to do another hip, the waterfall and the flats.
The pool will be:
- deepend height: 210cm, radius 200cm
- shallow height: 140cm, radius 150cm
Designed by Marco Morigi. It’s going be free entry.
Osiris Shoes is actually the only sponsor we have. Honestly, if I had known how hard it would have been, I wouldn’t have started. It’s just too much for a dumb krew. I’m not a big fan of the ‘diy or die’ culture, I would have loved to have good public skateparks like St. Helena around the corner!! But there are not lots of good skateparks in my area. Actually, there are no skateparks here. At the same time, it’s one of the best experiences of my life. The diy, in my eyes, put people on the same level, after ten hours of work in the yard, it’s just hunger, happiness and need of rest. I love that feeling.
This is the 10th years of Dumb Skateboards, I couldn’t imagine a better anniversary.” – Giovanni Grazzani
For giving support go to: www.nippleskateshop.com/tops/ottone-diy-pool
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