The Urban Skate Project’s wheels are back in motion thanks to a motivated young man we’ll call Hutch. His drive to contribute, build and donate whatever he can has earned him an apprenticeship with myself. After a few successful pours it was time to go for a renegade installation, investing time and money into something that may only last a few hours. Melrose currently holds the record for the demise of a USP install at 8 hours of life. I’ve often though if we had just placed the ramps on the sidewalk they would have lasted longer. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to test my theory, along with Hutch’s willingness to barge the streets. We skated Melrose avenue and found a great spot within blocks of where we started, with tall grass, broken glass and graffiti strewn along the adjacent building. This had to be the spot.
Article and build by Clayton Graul
“Hutch had been asking question after question about the what’s and who’s of the build, to which the answer was invariably, “Barge it”. Now was a barge of a different kind as we were heading back to Melrose to prep the spot just after sundown. There is something odd about digging up grass and dirt with small hand tools and running a few bags of concrete in the side of your favorite walking street. I told him to do his best tweaker impression. He nailed it.
Melrose had not only swallowed ramps the last time around, it also took two Confusion engravings featuring the infamous (¿?) logo. That had to be fixed!
Last thing was to get seven skateboarders to arrive at 7AM on a Saturday so we can all lift 600 lbs of concrete at once… After three weeks of back and forth the date was set, no one was late and we “barged It”
– Clayton Graul
P.S. 12 days of longevity and counting. Knock on wood!
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