Finding Dreamland

[November 8th, 2006] It's late on a fall afternoon at Pier Park, and I'm watching one of the three-week-old skatepark's builders, Mark "Red" Scott—a gnarly, lumberjack-looking dude—appear to crush physics and go feet-over-head in the concrete playground's massive full-pipe. He skates away, apparently unaware that's he's just sucked away the collected crowd's manhood. A teenager drops into the adjacent concrete bowl just after him, gathers speed and spits from the 12-foot-high lip. A camera flashes. I gaze around at the glimmering expanse of shaped concrete and the small crowds formed around its every feature and think, "Yeah, this is a Dreamland."

Last spring, the site, located just west of downtown St. Johns, was anything but. The existing skatepark, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2001, was maligned by local skateboarders as a dangerous, derelict concrete wasteland. Then, in May 2006, after three years of planning, the Oregon-based skatepark-design and -construction firm Dreamland had its way, totally cleaning out the old park and starting from scratch with plans contributed by advocacy group Skaters for Portland Skateparks and with support from the City of Portland. The result is an 11,000-square-foot food court for adrenaline and bruises, featuring the rare above-mentioned full-pipe, high-dive deep mock swimming pools, a learning "fun" bowl and a downhill street course of handrails, ledges and ramps.

It's obvious from the swarms of skateboarders and onlookers that the new park has already won fans and is fast becoming a hub for Portland's skate community—in part because it's the only other place besides Burnside Skatepark to skate for free within Portland's city limits. But Pier Park is just the first in a what's to be a larger network of Portland skateparks: the next, at Glenhaven Park in Northeast Portland (financed by a City of Portland parks levy), is slated to be constructed before 2008.

Skater-owned and -operated Dreamland, which agreed to do the project at cost (nearly a quarter-million dollars), is the company that actually grew from the construction of Portland's DIY skatepark located underneath the Burnside Bridge. Built sans permission on city property in 1990, that park has grown to be an iconic local fixture and source of civic pride. Ask a skater (or PlayStation skater) in New Jersey about Portland, and the first word out of his or her mouth might be "Burnside." Or, after 50 popular parks that've cropped up from Portland to Madrid since Burnside's inception, that word might be "Dreamland."

After watching Red skate the full-pipe, I turned to a kid near me and asked, "Well, what do you think?" His answer: "It's a Dreamland park." He thought for a moment and added, "I've skated so many other places thinking, 'This could be so much better if it were a Dreamland park.'"

WW wanted to figure out what that meant, so we gathered a crew of skaters with far bigger balls than we have to help explain it to us.

Pier Park Skatepark, North St. Johns Avenue and Seneca Street. Park open 5 am-midnight daily excepting curfew restrictions. Visit pdxskaters.org for more info.

Street Section

I had no freakin' idea how to actually get from the street to the skate park. Eventually I just went down what appeared to be the sidewalk, but after a few dirty looks and close dodges, I realized it was clearly part of the skatepark itself. Bob Anderson, 16, explained that the street section is his favorite part: "[It's got] banks you can grind on before you even hit the park."

"Fun" Bowl

The first step in skating bowls and transitions sure as hell isn't dropping off a 12-foot-high ledge. I had a friend get drunk several years ago and try it as his first skate experience. He wound up immobile on his dorm-room bed for the next month as punishment. Pier Park's "grom" bowl, learning bowl or "fun" bowl (depending on whom you ask) has plenty of wide-open concrete to smear yourself on without getting running over, and has a smooth, melted form that calls to mind DalÍ's "Persistence of Memory." Though for Nike pro Seth McCallum, it calls to mind "the perfect learning bowl." He explains that it "translates into the deep bowl, requiring the same muscles...just not as scary." And, it's interesting enough that older skaters can have a good time "dorking around" in it, too.

The Full Pipe

Thirty feet long and 20 feet high, this thing comes with a one-of-a-kind "mouse hole," which is basically the only way of escaping this 12-foot deep section of park. 21-year-old Kale Irwin—by day a hotel valet—summoned the balls to ride it for our camera. "It's scary...it's got no bottom; just continuous," he marvels before taking the plunge. He pulled it off, though, just crossing the midline of the pipe and riding his board above vertical, burying his fear of "the bottom dropping out" and falling 10 feet to the pipe's floor.

The Bowls

They look like faux swimming pools, complete with aqua-colored tiling at the rim and white "11 1/2 ft." depth markers. Just standing at the edge gave one a jolt of vertigo. Yet, all around, skaters are dropping in and riding them like their feet were attached to the walls. Scottish import Cube Cubic is one of a parkful of skaters in love with them. Why? "Aye, [they've got] proper tile and coping, and the smoothest finish. For that kind of ride, it's close to perfect," he says. "I've ridden a lot of parks over the world, and so far it's my favorite." Washington, D.C., native Willis Kimbel, 18, added, "The walls just throw you into other walls...it's never a problem to get speed."