Pezzy: We’ve got Kaleb Stevens here, live from Costa Rica! Let’s talk about this basement bowl you built — or should I say, the bunker bowl? So, what’s the story? Where’s this spot located, and how did you end up building a skate spot in someone’s basement?
Kaleb: Yo, Pezzy ,this spot is up in northern Guanacaste, in the mountains, on an old teak plantation. It’s like 15 minutes from Tamarindo.
Basically, a friend of a friend hit me up, saying, “Hey, this guy wants a little skate spot in his basement.” So, I show up, we check out the spot, and I’m like, “Hmm, there’s a pillar right in the middle.” At first, he kind of just wanted a little warm-up surf spot type thing and I kind of talked him into a little bit more of a bowl thing and then by the end of the conversation we realized that the pole the pillar that was in the way was non structural so we decided to knock it out and Make the smallest bowl possible to skate basically, and that was the goal. It was a little bit difficult because I never really made anything that small so it’s kind of interesting to see if it was gonna actually work or not and Yeah, it was quite challenging.
Pezzy: Okay, give us the nerdy details. How small are we talking? Dimensions, radius, all that good stuff.
Kaleb: It’s about a meter and I used about a meter and a half radius. There’s about a meter and a quarter, a meter and a half flat bottom. That was the part I was a little bit concerned about and it seems to work. I did metal coping for the straights, I did a hand coping for the corners and one of the walls, I put it up, I made it into, one of the quarter pipes, I did it to a wall ride to make it a little interesting, have something different to do and yeah, it came out pretty good.
Pezzy: I heard you had a bit of an adventure just getting materials to the site. What was that like?
Kaleb: It was quite the challenging build,its on the side of a hill and there was no stairs down to it, so I had to walk down this little goat trail to bring materials down and fill the walls and the first three or four days were very difficult, could do about 20 trips, 30 trips a day, up and down and then I figured out that they had to have done it a lot different way with maybe a shoot and so I asked one of the fellow workers that was on the job site if they actually did that with the shoot, He said yeah over there in the bushes. So I grabbed that shoot went to work and it was still challenging but a lot easier.
It was about five guys total in the project. Just me my girlfriend Casi and one other guy helped prep it up get it ready and then on concrete day I had three guys mixing concrete and me finishing and screening and filling it.
Pezzy: Speaking of the local workers — you mentioned they thought you were kinda crazy?
Kaleb: Yeah they pretty much looked like me like I was a lunatic or crazy or didn’t know what I was doing because kind of looked like an older dude just going up and down working really hard and once I kind of made the mock-up and showed them the transitions they started to kind of figure it out but they really didn’t understand what was going on until the first port day and then after that just like normal they understood and they’re pretty impressed to say the least they hadn’t seen concrete that smooth for fun purposes.
Pezzy: Shoutout to you for pulling off something so rad. Any last words for the skateboarders and builders out there?
Kaleb:Big thanks to you, Pezzy, and everyone who’s curious about this kind of projects. Shoutout to Confusion Magazine for always showing love.
And hey, what’s up to Jonathan Hay.
Much love from Costa Rica!