After we had built a sweet kidney pool in the lovely seaside resort of Mers les Bains on the northern french Atlantic coast last year we were invited to come back this year for more. The plan was to extend the street area with some kind of pump track around the whole park and mixing some street obstacles in there and just try to open up as many lines as possible.
It all started five years ago when some dude from France posted photos from the Malmö Ultra Bowl contest… One of the photos was also of me and since then I meet Fred every year and he invites me to come to France. As I was only in a few places in France in all the years, the time had come! And I’m still fully stoked – so read on…
In the highly specialized field of skatepark archeology, the stream of inspiring discoveries flows without an ebb. It goes without saying that the unrelenting efforts of skatepark archeologists, highly qualified specialists in their own right, confirm the omnipotent mantra that conceives the inconceivable, manages the unmanageable and constructs the unconstructable: “It is right as long as it belong to skateboarders (not the cities)”.
…Bruay la Buissiere is still one of the deepest in Europe and we’ll see who’s gonna make the grind from deep to shallow end first, especially on the pool coping side.
Capbreton is hard to figure out, hard to get some speed but after a while it’s really fun. The street park is really nice, and well done. Bénesse-Maremne is more fun if you like trannys. The Viking Blocks pool coping is perfect and the concrete is smooth with lots of lines and quiet surroundings.
It was built in in a old slaughterhouse. It was known as Abbatoire 16 which means Slaugtherhouse 16 in french.
I hate my parents can still resonate in the adolescent head of the skateboarder you are. It’s perhaps still the case, but try to love your friends’ parents because they could agree to give you part of their garden to build a sort of Steppe Side style / DIY skate spot. I don’t know them but I start to love them too.
Belgium based company Concrete Flow under the head surveillance of legendary Michel ‘Mike’ van der Ouderaa has just finished a nice kidney pool on the French atlantic coast 300 meters from the beach in a little seaside town called Mers les Bains.
Bowl de Chatillon d’Azergue is 20 minutes north of Lyon, France. Designed and constructed by the M16 crew. Opening party May 25th, 2013.
Designed by concrete killer Julien Benoliel from Marseille, the bowl is being built for the “Julien Benoliel’s DIY bowl invitational contest” taking place April 26th. If you didn’t hear about it, well, I guess you weren’t invited.
Fun bowl and park, if you know anyone who wants to ride a rad bowl this weekend… – Mike Van der Ouderaa
Inspired by Pontus Alv’s concrete sculptures, the first part of this private mini-skatepark began in August 2010, based on night and rainy construction sessions on an rough unused slab of an old farm. It includes several walls, a tall bump, a grindable bank, 2 quarterpipes and a fun pool coping spine in the middle. A corner was just added in august 2012. Low Holy is a nice spot in the middle of nowhere in the northwest part of France, in the city of Nantes, which has already received a lot of visitors and some heavy sessions