Skating Musmeci

A comment for the post on Sergio Musmeci's bridge over Basento river in the Italian town of Potenza, included the link to the cover shot for skateboarding culture magazine 6:00 am. Since I really like the bridge, this offers a chance to post a few more images of it.

[Daniele Galli on the cover of 6:00 am magazine, photo by Fede Romanello, via]

The blogger Lorenzo Bini (Lorebini) had previously discovered this amazing concrete landscape and wondered on the Bastard Blog whether anybody had used it to skate. Skater Daniele Galli picked up on the post and drove south to do it, as shown on the dare devil cover shot above. via

[Image by Lorenzo Bini - follow the link to more images of Sergio Musmeci's viaduct]

I'd love to see more images of skaters using concrete - perhaps discovering new cool concrete 'landscapes' discovered and appreciated from the perspective of the skating culture.

Skating superparks and swimming pools

[Scroll through the images below to get to a cool movie I just came across - 
A hint: this image is from California Is a Place]

This post features skaters, or rather two quite different concrete landscapes...

Last month a really large skatepark opened in the public Copenhagen park called Fælledparken. - the project was carried out as collaboration between Copenhagen Skatepark and the city of Copenhagen.

Besides watching the talented skaters who finally have a serious place to do their stuff, your concretely blogger must admire the craftsmanship involved in concreting the smooth concrete landscape.

[Image from Fælledparken Skate Park,
Photo: Lasse Kofod from this site]

[From the construction of the Fælledparken Skatepark. Photo from Copenhagen Skatepark]

[poster for the opening of the skatepark]

The blue surface painted on the poster above clearly resembles the water of a gigantic swimming pool. The short movie "The Cannonball" has beautifully gray images of empty swimming pools in Californian suburbia as the venues for a group of skaters who may be among the few who see an opportunity in the financial crisis of the recent years, which have caused foreclosures - and lots of empty pools for these pool skaters to 'surf' in Fresno, California. The concrete reality here is, of course that the empty pools are such clear symbols of the situation; loans that were taken (and offered, of course), as well as just plain overspending. - sigh...

[Image of skater by the pool... so to speak, from the California is a Place blog]

Through the skaters, the movie brings an interesting optics on the recession and on the foreclosure monster as the directors call it on the web site for a whole series of Californian stories - and on this eye for discovering concrete landscaping for four little wheels.

The movie was directed, produced, and shot by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari.
Without further ado - do watch the movie.