Journey — 1991 Summer Skatepark and Gallery Tour

In the northern Denver suburb of Brighton, Colorado, we discovered a small public outdoor park with a mini ramp and some street obstacles.  I was practicing blunt to fakies and launching.   This park wasn't very busy at all, so I spent a lot of time here practicing and enjoying the outdoor mini-ramp.  It had a painted metal surface which made it pretty smooth and weather resistant. The height was a comfortable 4' and it was very easy to ride.  Here's where I learned to do frontside nosegrinds to fakie. and frontside 180 grinds. The half-pipe was really well-built, and...

   After Kansas was our the furthest west we'd be traveling - to Denver Colorado.   We were actually staying in Denver for a vacation, so this was the perfect opportunity for me to check out all the local skate spots throughout the city.   Jamaica Jim's was an amazing skateboard park with a large indoor space filled with ramps and transitions. There was an indoor bowl, which was quite popular with the locals.   I was definitely interested in getting familiar with riding a bowl as the opportunity didn't come up too often.  Shown below with my New Deal...

 We headed west again towards Colorado where we would meet up with family.  Wichita was the next major city on our stop, and we came across a skatepark called BJ's with a shop attached to it called Sessions.  The shop had all kinds of old school skate gear and a full indoor park area.    The park was well made and full of options. The riding surfaces were smooth, and it was not very busy, which made it easy to practice without bumping into other skaters.  Unfortunately, we were just passing through so didn't have much time to stay and...

Further west from Springfield, MO is Joplin, Missouri, where we found another local skatepark.   Bullet Skateclub was very cool indoor park with some amazing deals. This skatepark was laid out very well with several ramps to choose from.  I couldn't skate as well as some of the locals here, but at least I was a fairly good photographer.  This shot of one skater getting some air off the mini-ramp was taken using my mom's Minolta, handheld, manual click camera.  We didn't get to stay here for long as we were just passing through, but I was definitely glad we stopped...

 Our next stop was Springfield, Missouri.   It was an indoor/outdoor skatepark called Rad'z, and a hangout spot beside it called The Hanger.  Unfortunately, we didn't take many pictures, so my recollection of the park, or skating in it, is very vague.   We did find a youtube video of what's left of Rad'z/The Hangar. It's kind of interesting to see this video, and seeing the Hangar when it was fully painted compared to how it looked much later: Found the location of Radz skatepark 2018 Springfield, Mo - YouTube So that was Rad'z!  Too bad I didn't get to skate here....