Diary of a Dubliner
Steve's a skater from Ireland who moved to Scotland about a year ago. He's promised he'll provide us with regular updates as he discovers what the country has to offer.

02.02.05

I used to skate my mate's ramp a lot and I was alright at it but after it got rotten and your wheels kept breaking through the ply we went back to street skating. Street was where we had to skate as there were no parks in ireland at the time except a small mini in the back of Clive's Skate Store.

So when 13 years later I was stoked to see the photos of Dundees' new park, after a few false starts I finally got there.

I walked in and it seemed like an office more than a park, but hey its 2005, things change. Signed all the forms and laughed at the kids trying to blag their way in for free, you know the trick "my mum will be here in minute to pay, can i go in now?"

When i walked in I was faced with the most perfect park in the uk.....FOR BIKERS. Yeah it happens all the time, there must be only one park designer in the UK and they are bmx'ers. You see what gives it away is a few things, firstly the size of all the ramps. With the exception of the pyramid which is a sane size,and one ramp at the back wall they are all massive.

Then there are the transitions – not too mellow but critically the angle at the top is usually steep before the coping so bikes can grind the coping without being on their side. And the tell tale sign – a wall ride that has side ramps leading into it.

Now "you're just an old scared fart who has no guts to skate big ramps any more" trueish, BUT
I know of a park in Ireland that was like this and worse. And it didn't do very well because the amount of people who CAN ride big steep parks is few and the beginners have no hope.

The night i was there I was one of 3 people on the main park on a board. The other two kids were local and had got used to the pyramid but would not dare stall on the ramps, let alone rock fakie on the monstrous coping. However in the tiny beginner's area there were 12 skaters crammed into it.

So if Dundee is to be fair to all, take two feet off most ramps and mellow out the big transfer box in the center which is perfect for back loops.

This is almost certainly not going to happen but I hazard a guess there are more boarders in Scotland than bikers, so maybe it makes financial sense. Because most kids will try and learn but after a few big hits they might just not bother and go skate somewhere else, or worse, give up.

I have the utmost respect for bikers. I have tried it and it hurts when you slam on to your bike, and you have to have kahunas for it, or be a bit touched. But the designers are a bit selfish when they blatantly build parks that are spot on for bikes and an extemely steep learning curve for skaters.

"What about the rollerbladers???", I hear you say. ƒ@*% the rollerbladers. They think all things in the park are for sitting on and doing little dances on the low blocks. God i cant stand em, they got all the good spots in Dublin skate-stopped. Because some little weiner broke his arm or went home crying and their folks sued the respective building owners for thousands for having not considered the risk of marble ledges.

And then everyone had pay to use parks to skate ,where all the ramps are designed by bikers and sat on by bladers.

Roll on Edinburghs skatepark!!!!!

13.11.04

Skateparks. Good fun? A great facility? Or a place to put all the skaters so they will never skate the streets again???

Well, a park is great if it is designed properly and the one planned for edinburgh is world class.
As a facility it would be amazing – skaters would have a central location to skate and hopefully a safe one. Across Europe I've seen beautiful skateparks built in dodgy areas and not one skater to be seen anywhere.

Why? Because if it aint safe you don't care how good it is. (The French love this approach – fancy a skatepark in Fallujah pierre?...oui.)

As for a solution to the problem of people skating on the streets and scratching the big companies' marble blocks...hmmm?

Skaters are easily bored so while there would be far fewer skaters on the streets there would also be the ones for which a park is not their preferred terrain all the time. One you always hear is "Hey – haven't they built a place for you guys to do all this somewhere else?"

But what else are skateparks for?

I am just back from France and there are parks everywhere, in many small villages and in almost all towns. Some are good and some are lethal deathtraps and some are just sublime, especially when mixed with sun, like Marseille.

But when i asked a guy who worked for the town council why all the parks were built, he replied that the more young people skateboarded the less likely it was that they would get bored and be a problem for themselves and police – it was a natural high and something to do other than drugs or drink. Skateparks and skating are an alternative to boredom.

Well not all skaters are tee-totallers but they do belong to a group, they do have something to do that isn't expensive and they usually dont hang around on a saturday drinking buckie and white lightning.

I work with young people between 13 and 25 who are like that (and some who aren't but have similar problems). I also work in the prisons. There are as many reasons for people having these problems as there are people, but it usually starts with boredom. Skating – and a park to do it in – helps to aliviate that.

A few years back when one by one my mates gave up skateboarding, I found it hard to skate on my own and soon ended up smoking and just hanging around. Then, as I got bored, I tried all sort of stuff to liven up the weekend when a plank and four wheels used to do it.

These days I still skate and love it, and although I got through all the mad bits of drugs and drink and messin with the law, other folk aren't so lucky.

04.09.04

The suits on their way back from work must have thought i was gone a bit in the head department but they felt like they wanted to see me fall and I probably would not disappoint them.

I had been trying to dust off some different things that I remembered been able to do down 5 or 6 steps flippy-catchy-ankle-snappy-things, you know the ones that your foot end up under your nose and then your back foot lands on the board and wrecks your day.

Well I had landed a few and I was getting cocky. As I stood in Tollcross at the Bank of Scotland I found myself thinking I could skate better than ever.

Push, roll pop, flip SMACK, F**KING SHI*.

I thought lots of stupid thoughts and grabbed my ankle, and knee and hip and then i gave up grabbing things...it all hurt.

When I used to fall I just lay there, swore and got up and got on with it and looked forward to a big gnarly scab. But now I felt like calling an ambulance and "getting it checked out".

"WHAT A FAIRY" i thought to myself, security guards and my mum used to say that and I would just get back out and skate. I had hit the old skater zone where i no longer was able to spring back up and say "I just tweaked it, I'll just skate it off".

A skater i used to know in Dublin broke his finger on set of steps and just straightened it up and skated the rest of the day, and told me he waited till late that night to go to A+E to avoid the queues.

Another thing bearing in my mind was bills and loans cause as a young skater you kinda had it made if you got injured, no school or college and sitting around all day until the urge drove you to try and skate with a cast on. But now injury means no job and no money, that sucks.

So I decided to take it easy and so what if I can't flip stairs no more? That night a friend from Glasgow told me about a park he had seen by the Kelvin river in Glasgow and it all seemed to make sense with all these parks I can be a old skool carver and not care.

But those of you who can still fall hard and not break this means you have no excuse, not to push yourself to maximum stoke.

Go big or go home.

28.06.04

"Youth is wasted on the young", I dont know who said that but i will bet you a Gregg's Steak Bake he was no spring chicken.

Yeah falling hurts all of us, but more so when you get older. And in skating terms that's past 18, and yeah I am. I have skated for 14 years now with varying levels of intensity from all day every day to once a month while injured. Certain things help to get you going, stoked, and there's nothing like a big skate jam to make you feel invincible.

This was Livi on Saturday night, I had thought it was in july but I was wrong and luckily i found out it by accident that it was on.

Tent? Check. Board? Check. Beer? Check. Ready to go.

When I arrived I was amazed to see how many skaters there were and straight away lots of "alright pal? we a you fae?". The fact I am Irish seemed to go down well with a few of the more hardcore partyers.

Some of the skaters were a little worse for wear and some guys had drank to much and were hitting the 'crete hard. But others who had held off were pulling some big moves and sweet lines.

One guy (sorry i am not too good with all the names yet) was getting waist height from mini section into bowl over in the newer part of the park. And fast long tailslides were order of the day for many.

But the best part was when all other areas of the park were ignored, and a bowl session kicked off. Five or six guys just took the pool to bits – frontside five-0's, tailslides, blunt to fakie and some real fast carving.

But after it all died down it was the saltire flag being brought through a frontside grind that stole the show. This event is just amazing and unlike any in the world.

You Scots are so lucky to have Livi.

31.05.04

As a skater from Ireland I was really stoked when I first went through Edinburgh on a bus last year, ledges, plazas, gaps and enough steps to bust a million sets of kneecaps.

I thought back to the dusty days of R.A.D. magazine (showing my age) and remembered Livi photos and something about some square with a weird monument of to one side.

Straight off the bus on to my board, and straight down town. Ah right no map and no clue of where I am goin. Then I hear that sound that could only mean a board rolling on a pavement.

A quick hey and question session later and i have all the info I need. So I skated Bristo– sweet but the old blocks have seen better days. Skated the Sheraton plaza – pity I was told to stop skating by security as that kinked marble ledge is giving out free concussions.

But of that first week livi was the real prize it was just as it was in the photos (but colder)and was a dream to skate, comin from a country with no free parks. And only two-ish in the whole country. Then someone told me about Perth, well that's a whole different story.

Scotland is up there with some of the best skate spots in the world. Weather's not as good as the U.S. but the attitude and skaters are more friendly than Barcelona and kebabs, whoa!!!