Summer Hill

Yesterday marked 2 years since we moved to Summer Hill. Apparently it was also Go Skateboarding Day, so I went skating at Summer Hill. Witness the devastation: 

 

I filmed and edited this on my iPhone using a free application called VidEditorFree. It's a bit glitchy, but it works fine.

Bike Expedition To Gladesville Skatepark

I work rostered shifts covering various news programmes at the ABC. This week I'm on Lateline (if you live in Britain, you can understand this as Australia's Newsnight). The shift starts at 2pm and ends at 10.36pm. There are of course bad things about this, but one good thing is the big chunk of daytime to play in before work. Sometimes I indulge in lengthy peregrinations on my bicycle, like yesterday, when I rode out to the Gladesville/Henley area of northwest Sydney to visit a skateboard park there. 

The journey was around 13kms, which I extended a kilometer by taking a wrong turn, as you can see on this map:

I strapped my board to my bike and was soon on the peaceful canalside paths of Haberfield, but it wasn't long to busy Lyons Road and the grim multi-lane Victoria Road, where a ute-load of passing bogans leaned from their windows to deliver a doppler-distorted roar of abuse. I crossed the Parramatta River by the Gladesville Bridge, where I tried to follow a presumed bike/foot path on the left-hand side as I rode northwards, but had to stop and lift my bike over the barrier onto the treacherous 4-lane road when the path became too narrow to continue. What the hell, Sydney. A lovely blast of salty harbour air punched through the vehicle fumes as I reached the apex of the bridge, and it was not far from there to the skatepark. 

The small park has a V formation that makes good use of the limited space, you can see that on the plans:

There's a couple of interesting obstacles: a jersey barrier:

 ...and a weird origami-style folded metal flatbank:

Then there's the usual - a transitioned quarterpipe, rails, some manny pads and ledges.

It was the first time I'd skated a jersey barrier, and I managed a few wallridey kickturns on it. The metal flatbank was clangy fun. Here I am doing a pop shove-it body varial (sex change?) on it. Yes, I'm wearing a cycling jersey and jeans. You saw it here first.

My New Skateboard Trick

I have invented a rad skateboarding maneuver, which is basically a one-footed ollie (or 'ollie north' if you were born after 1985) with a hand-clap below my extended leg. I predict it will herald a new era of joyous percussive skateboard tricks and I will be accorded the status of a maester gnarchemist (which is an alchemist of gnar). I have naming rights over this banger because I made it up, but I'm not certain what to call it. 

It ought to be a word with 'oly' at the end - "melanchollie" is the best-named trick of skateboarding. Top of my list just now is "Holy Mollie!". The exclamation mark is part of the name. Other suggestions are welcome.

***UPDATE - it is now called the Gosh Gollie!***

Here is a Gosh Gollie! filmed in super slow-motion:

Cammeray Skatepark

I rode my bike to skate at Cammeray a few days ago. I found a good route across Darling Harbour to cut through the CBD, and onto the Kent Street bicycle lanes, before traversing the Harbour Bridge.

wind blows flags on a mast by Sydney Observatory

bike lane across the harbour bridge

Once over the bridge into North Sydney the streets are far less bike-friendly, particularly on the approach to the skatepark, where a triple-carriageway road overpasses a multi-lane highway. The skatepark is bordered by the off-limits grey and green wastelands of the aforementioned roads and a gold course; there is a tennis club on another side. It's the worst kind of austere urban landscape, windswept and unsympathetic. The only people on foot are golfers scowling at the half-acre of fairway the skatepark has deprived them of.

Cammeray skatepark is a plaza-style 'street' park; it has no transition, just flat banks, ledges and rails, which is fine by me. The surface is amazing and the obstacles are fun - the 'whale' thing is a hoot. I would skate there more, but it's further than Waterloo, which is also a nice wee street plaza park.  I stuck some Cammeray footage into this shocking little video of Sydney skateparks that I have cobbled together from iPhone footage. I used Prefab Sprout's King of Rock 'n' Roll because, like my skating, it is the opposite of hardcore. Switch-epic. The music and terrible editing amplify an atmosphere of lameness. I am 34.

 

Three Sydney Skateparks