Epic mini ramp/bowl skate session at Woodward West

This is a recent warm-up jam session at a mini ramp bowl at Woodward West, in Tehachapi, CA.  A bunch of pro skaters, the only one I can identify is Andy Anderson, one of my favorite skaters to watch these days.  He's the only one with a helmet on.  But they all rip.  This is a really rough cut of the raw footage of the jam session, and the whole thing is off the chain.  If you like mini ramp skating, check it out.

For those not aware, to the best of my knowledge, the first skateboard mini ramp was invented in 1987, in Costa Mesa, California.  A few blocks from the Vision Skateboards main building, on Towne Street, Paul Schmitt (aka Professor Schmitt of Schmitt Stix, New Deal, etc.) and a few skaters rented a house, and built a 9 foot high halfpipe in the backyard.  But the neighbors complained, and city officials came. They said that, to appease some obscure building code, the skaters had to cut the ramp down to six feet tall.  Originally it was either an 8 foot transition ramp with a foot of vert, or a 9 foot transition.  When they chopped the top of the ramp off, they had an 8 or 9 foot transition cut off at 6 feet.  The mini ramp was born, and it became known as the Towne Street ramp.  Skaters from all over sessioned there at times, and realized there was a whole new genre' of tricks, mostly lip tricks, that you could do on a mini ramp.  The idea of backyard mini ramps started to spread.  At the Vision Skate Escape /NSA season finals in late 1988, Vision took the idea of the back to back vert ramps from the Powell-Peralta Bones 3 video, the Animal Chin ramp, and built a double ramp, with a vert and mini back to back. That was a first for a skateboard contest.  

In my 1990 self-produced BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend, in 1990, I had footage at what I thought were the first three mini ramps ever in a BMX video.  I shot footage at the H-Ramp (2:05) in Santa Ana, CA, pro freestyle skaters Primo and Diane Desiderio's ramp (19:43) north of San Diego, CA, and Mouse's Ramp (38:05), the Bad Boys Club clothing art director, near San Diego.  Going through a bunch of videos earlier this year, I learned that someone else (Eddie Roman's 2-Hip Ride Like a Man, or maybe the Dirt Bros. Video, I can't remember), also had a little bit of mini ramp footage in their video, a couple of months earlier.  

By about 1989-1990, more mini ramps were popping up, like the Blockhead Ramp, a mini bowl outside of San Diego, and there were mini ramp sections at the huge Powell-Peralta skate zone, built for their skaters, in Santa Barbara, CA.  From those, as they showed up in videos, the backyard mini ramp idea spread around the U.S. and the world.  So there's a little bit of the history of mini ramps in the bike and skate world.     

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Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Creative Life 5/18/2019

I don't have my own photos available at the moment, so here's a clip that gives a good overview of the riding and skating spots up at Woodward West.

Wednesday I went with Rich Bartlett (from Block Bikes, who I'm doing blogging and stuff for now) to Woodward West, for the first time ever.  At a little over 300 pounds, and having not ridden hardly at all for years, it was a trip seeing such and amazing bike and skate park.  The dirt pump track up on the hill is now concrete, and I was jonesin' from the beginning to roll around a little.  But I didn't have a bike, and would have most likely wrecked myself in a dumb crash.  My job was to hang and get some still and video footage.  My stills are not on my computer yet, and we haven't gone through the video, was had some of the big concrete flow pool, the pump track, but mostly the foam pit session.  There will be some of that on the Block Bikes Blog soon.

After being stuck on the East Coast, away from serious riding spots, for a decade, it was insane to see how much good stuff there is at Woodward West.  It was seriously like walking into an actual location with most of the stuff we used to dream about as riders in the 80's and 90's.  Amazing stuff to ride in every direction.  I can't wait until I get a bike and can at least begin to carve around there some day.

The night ended back here in Lancaster, with a trip to In-N-Out, California's most loved burger place.  A post session meal with a a handful of really good riders talking bike stuff.  Good times.

Then, about 2 am or so, I woke up with really bad stomach pain.  I thought it was just indigestion at first, but it was a really intense, deep gut pain, something I'd never felt before.  A few hours later, that led to a trip to the emergency room, blood tests, and a CT scan.  Still in tons of pain (but having no insurance), I was released, with a minor hernia I've had for years being named the culprit.  In any case, I've been in bed, barely able to move, for the last two days.  This morning I'm feeling better, though still pretty week since I didn't eat, and barely drank water, for two days.  I also managed to lose about 11 pounds in those two days.  That sucked on every level, but I'm now under 300 pounds for the first time in like 4 years, I think.  After doing a little research this morning, what I was feeling in my gut sounds a lot more like a gall stone getting stuck than my hernia, which is in a different place than the pain was.  So I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it sucked, and I'm now on the mend.

Since the most to California, I've been trying to acclimate, and working long hours on the Block Bikes blog and social media, to pump up the new online store.  I haven't bee doing any of my scribble style Sharpie drawing for about a month now, the longest stretch of not drawing since 2015.  I have been doing a little doodle art, black and white Sharpie drawing, in the evenings.  I've also been ignoring this blog to some extent, so I should get back to more regular blogging here over the next several days.

That's it for now.  Now I've got Block Bikes work to do. 

I'm finally learning 2003 computer skills

OK, I'm finally learning how to play with photos in a computer.  Just having a little fun with that amazing pic of Ron Wilkerson blasting the Mega Ramp at Woodward West at this year's Old School BMX reunion.  How many people do you know that can do this... and then buy a senior coffee at McDonald's an hour later? 

Video from Old School BMX reunion 2018

Here's the first edited video clip I've seen from this year's OSBMXR at Woodward West, courtesy of Nick Noble.

Mat Hoffman Instagram footage.

I've seen Ron Wilkerson's huge air on the Mega Ramp on Facebook, and Gary Laurent's huge backflip over the mega gap, but can't find them on YouTube or elsewhere.  I'll add more links to video here when I find them.