Lone Pine Skatepark

Lone Pine Skatepark

After seeing the park from the road many times, I finally stopped by Lone Pine skatepark on the way home from Mammoth last weekend to skate it. What a treat! This park has everything going for it! It happened to be empty when I stopped so that was an extra treat. The concrete is that perfect kind, that found the fine line between being smooth, but still grippy - wonderful! I'll go ahead and let the photos lead the way here:

Lone Pine Skatepark




Panorama of the park from one corner. Mountains in the background (including the tallest point in the contiguous US), smooth, empty park in the foreground. Pretty wonderful. These two bowled corners have perfect transition and are maybe only 4 feet tall. Take a peak at the brick section on the ground to the right, the long bank for slanted manuals, perfect pyramid, euro gaps, and stairs across the way.



Panorama from the other corner - Two stair with rail and ledge, AND skate-able skateboard! Not much run up for the handrail unfortunately, but two fun euro gaps coming up the banks also.



Skate-able skateboard! That slanted bank in the background was super fun, along with the rising wall ride over on the left.



Ollieing the pyramid with Mt. Whitney in the background. New Facebook pic?! :)

MZ

M&M Doughnies

M&M Donuts
1614 Katella Avenue
Anaheim, CA 92802

As I pulled my socks up at 7:30am on a Thursday, I had no clue what awaited me a mere 13.5 hours later. 

I had an appointment with the doc at 8:30am and I actually got a donie on the way to work from the dr.'s office, but this isn't about about that. I went about my day like most other Thursdays - got coffee, worked, got more coffee, worked some more, and so on and so forth. I had the pleasure of going to lunch with Mr. Shoemaker and a youngster of the ripe age of 20, and for the sake of privacy and potential legal issues, we'll call him Bryce Wong.

After lunch, Mr. Wong raved about a donie spot that he hit the night before. His eager youthfulness and elegant descriptions of donies made me salivate mildly. It was a date. I was in. All he had to do was suggest we head there later that evening (the donut shoppe opened at 9pm and is stays open until 2am). Luckily, my wish was obliged and we tentatively confirmed that we would meet later to get our donies on.

9:25pm and I find myself whizzing eastbound on the 22 headed for Anaheim. An offramp and couple turns later I found myself finding a pretty decent parking spot in front of M&M Donuts. This is almost when the excrement hit the fan, but I'm getting ahead of myself. There was a decent crowd of youngsters in front of the donut window. I spotted the all-around BA, and he already had placed our order. Holy unholy balls of dough. I wasn't quite ready for what was about to enter my person.

We were #90

After what seemed like a short eternity, our number was called. Like music to our ears, we snatched our bag of blueberry glazed craze from the beautiful old woman at the window. (Sidenote: if you order enough donuts, they come in a pizza box. We only ordered 4 donies so we had to settle with a paper sack)

Gladness/Madness ensued. 

I don't want to get all yelpy and derp out about the consistency, texture, flavor, nostalgia, and what hints and notes I was experiencing, but G-dang, it really was something else. I suggest you try one, or all of them for yourself. Word on the street is that you shouldn't even bother wasting your time with anything other than the blueberry glazed. They were made fresh to order and still warm while we consumed them. Spiritual/out-of-body experiences can happen at will if you want them to.

I give M&M donuts a 9.5 out of 10.

Sincerestest,

Jordan S. Nielsen

Hampton Skatepark

Hampton Skatepark
234 Landing Rd, Hampton, NH

I honestly had no idea how difficult this New Years resolution was going to be until I went out on Saturday morning to hit my first park. At 10:00am, it was a solid 19 degrees... this is going to be a long winter. The plus side to freezing temperatures- no scooters, no kids, no skate coaches.... really, nobody at all. 

In recent years, the Hampton skatepark has been completely rebuilt. The new design has a lot more transition than past years. The back half of the skatepark has 2 small quarter pipes with a large, steep bank right in the middle. They also added a new bowl with transition ranging from four feet to about six feet. Overall, this is a great park just for cruising around and pretending you are Matt Z. He would destroy this park. 

I hope this is actually part of the new layout. The frozen grass ride to quarter pipe makes for a really interesting session. 

Cheers,

Kevin

2015: Adding 52 More to the List

First off, I'd like to thank Bryan for kicking this off!

In 2011, I made a New Years resolution to hit 52 new skate parks in Southern California (with the exception of a few in Massachusetts, Arizona & Hong Kong) to force myself to explore and experience the unfamiliar area as much as possible. After moving away for 2 years, I realized that I never really took advantage of the local skate scene here on the East Coast. Now that I am back and it is the start of a new year, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to add 52 more to my list.

First Post!

Well, we all know that everyone has been to these two parks... But to my understanding is that if I haven't then i can post about them! So, here it is.......

First Park we went to was " Westminster" skatepark, the reason i put the ' " ' in there was I don't really feel like this place should even be classified as a skate park or even exist at all. Needless to say i hated it and i score it a 1 out of 10. Only giving it a one because Matt Z looked soo good standing in front of it eating ice cream.

The second park we went to was my favorite for the day, I think it was in Garden Grove. It was very small but had some of the sickest little kids there shredding and some " cool guys" cool guying it around. nothing much else to say about it. 3 out of 10 though.

Signing out, 

Bryan Betz