Everybody needs a place to call their own, and it sure helps if that place has pool coping. Getting a private indoor setup together is a giant pain in the ass, but the reward of skating a place that’s exactly what you want to skate is unbeatable. All I can say is- if you’re thinking about it, just go for it; its a lot to do but you’ll figure it out.
In September of 2010 Richmond DIY’ers lead with the concrete skills of Bernie Mcgrew took it into their own hands to finally build for the skaters of Richmond, VA a city with no skatepark. Starting with an 8 foot (2.4 meter) deep kidney swimmer bowl, the Lost Bowl now boasts a lot of other tranny around the decks of the bowl. The Lost Bowl continues to expand with the help of tons of skaters from RVA and there is no stop foreseen in the near future.
Any given friday, a session like this could be going down at the Buena Vista square pool south of Santa Cruz, one of the longest running “backyard” pools in history. This pool has been skated by generations of legendary skateboarders. Most sessions these days include not only the old school pool shredders and underground legends, but also unknown new school pool riders that fearlessly roll in to the deep end and attack the “lip” as if they’ve been skating pools their entire lives, which quite probably they have. This pool is definitely harder to skate than it looks. Hopefully it will remain empty for another 30 years for following generations of pool skaters to shred without too much fear of the cops showing up and busting it, or without it being filled in with dirt like it has numerous times over the last 30 years.