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| HEAVEN / BUCKY LASEK'S BOWL |
| BLKPRJKT |
High-velocity coping analysis. Bucky tears into an opening session nose glide...
...and then quickly takes it into the strobosphere.
Grow a pair. Grape up. Get hot. Easier said than done on rare occasions. Just how does one react when confronted with riding something so big that it literally puts the fear into them? Most of us know that feeling. That place where the rubber meets the road, and it feels like the difference between surfing Zuma shore break or tow-in Maverick's. Bucky Lasek probably had no intention of confronting anyone with his brand-new backyard structure except maybe himself. What he is indeed challenging is the decades' old paradigm of long masonite flat wall and the conventional back and forth mindset. Fresh off of his victory at the Vans Protec Pool Party just one week ago, he invited some friends out to test ride this concrete canyon, and he is already putting the pedal to the metal. That's the beautiful thing about skateboarding, self-challenge is it's own reward. And beyond that, Bucky just might be setting the stage for the next evolution in skateboarding by taking his astounding vert ramp mastery into new territory, after all he's got the all-terrain skills to back it up, and push the limits quite a bit further. We hit him up with a few general queries about this monster he has dubbed "Heaven".
Bucky testing contortionist tactics over the hip.
CD: First off, can you tell us just how huge this thing is (measurements/dimensions) and what was the idea behind building a pool this big?
BUCKY: Well, I always wanted to build something nice and big. I've always ridden these bowls that just didn't feel right. They were all kind of whippy. They were really tight, fast, and it always hurt when I fell. I just wanted to relate what bowls are today to what vert skating is becoming with the big trannys. It's a lot easier on your body. You can go a lot faster and a lot bigger. So, we built this bowl. It's 13.5 ft. deep in the arrow head section and it's 12.8 ft. in the round. It's on a slight slope and I made all the hips 45 degrees or less. Real mellow so you don't get caught with any sharp edges, so you don't get jammed up.
CD: What are the tranny dimensions?
BUCKY: The tranny is 11.6 ft. in the arrow head with two feet of vert and the round is 10.8 ft. with 2 ft. of vert. The shallow end is 8 ft. tranny that almost goes to vert.
CD: We first heard about your pool plans about a year ago, but how long has this entire process taken from inception to completion? How did you come up with the design?
BUCKY: My original design was three bowls connected with hips. The more I thought about it, the more I knew it wouldn't work because the hips were just too tight. So, this concoction took about a year or so. I drew it up. I kind of took the plans off of vert ramps and bowls I had skated and combined them. Shanghai has an arrow head that I kind of like whipping through and getting speed from. I also like the YMCA ramp which is an old XGames ramp that had two corners towards the ends. But the ramp wasn't bowled in. I always knew it would be kind of sweet to bowl it in. So that's where the arrow head shape came from. The round , well, I love the combi but I just wanted it bigger and more open so you wouldn't get caught in the toilet bowl effect. I built it 10.8 ft. which is a little bit bigger than the normal round. We experimented a little bit and I think it works good.
CD: When you were a kid, did you ever imagine you'd build something like this someday?
BUCKY: Not as a kid, but from when I first moved into my house. We've been here about five years we had a little over a half acre on top of the hill that was never landscaped or anything. It was just a dirt hill with rocks... no man's land. I always envisioned building a bowl up there from day one. When Billabong, Vans, and Rockstar got together and backed up my idea of building this mega bowl it was a dream come true.
CD: Who was involved with the design and build of the bowl?
BUCKY: I came up with the design. California Skateparks drew it all out and put the wheels in motion. My friend Rob Astefin came out. He has a excavation company. He did all the ground work, leveling, and dealing with the city. Inspections took a good 5 months. What we initially thought was going to take a week or two for the dig took almost 6 months.
CD: That's a lot of dirt to move.
BUCKY: Man, I want to say we moved like 50 truck loads out of here. Half of that was rocks and big boulders.
CD: How does riding concrete of this scale compare to riding a vert ramp of the same size?
BUCKY: Well , It's something I have always envisioned. To have corners and more hips. With vert , it gets tapped out. You get bored of doing hard tricks back to back. With bowl skating, I've always enjoyed doing corner airs, hip airs and just whipping thru the shallows. I had this vision of taking that to the next level. To just build it on a bigger scale. You know? It really works. It's amazingly fast, you can blast, and you kind of have fun just grinding and carving.
CD: Did it seem like a logical extension of the upsizing of traditional vert ramps, to take a pool and just scale it up, and take your high-performance vert skills to a bowl that matches those dimensions and push the limits beyond what you can do on a ramp?
BUCKY: It just makes sense to me. If I'm gonna keep skating vert, and make it fun, then I needed to do this. I'm stoked it's worked out because everyone is enjoying the ride along with me.
CD: How did you decide to go with the Golden State coping rather than standard pool blocks?
BUCKY: Well , I went for the coping because of the neighborhood I live in. I didn't want it to be real choppy and gnarly. It keeps the the noise down. Besides, I wanted it to be a lot faster kinda like a vert ramp so you don't lose your speed. I like it. I think it works great. It's not as loud and it's fast.
CD: Do you think that your pool is going to finally put bowl riding back on the map for the major magazines?
BUCKY: I don't know. I think It's definitely going to put something back on the map. It's going to take the right kind of rider to ride my bowl. It's on such a large scale you gotta have the big pump and big airs. You have to be able to handle the speed. I think a lot of riders will be intimidated by it, but in general this where I think vert skating needs to go.
Overview from the 8 foot hot pocket.
The round.
The arrowhead.
Miller casually floating a large lien some 18 feet above the floor.
CD: What was your first run like?
BUCKY: Well, I had a couple of them. The first drop in I was missing half the tiles, coping, and I couldn't grind yet because it didn't have grout. The speed with just carving, it was pure joy. Chris Miller came over and he couldn't wait to carve around. We couldn't wait to get the coping done. Now the coping is done , the epoxy grout is in so it won't get gnarled up. The tiles are done. IT'S ON.
CD: During this project, did you ever think "Oh my god. What have I done?"
BUCKY: Oh yeah. First of all, the hole was humongous. That's one thing. But when they started pouring the flat walls, it didn't visually look skate-able. It looked like tall buildings standing next to each other with no flat bottom. I thought to myself... What have I done? What have I created? This thing isn't even going to be rideable. It's sooo massive.
CD: What's the best and/or funniest reaction you've gotten out of someone who sees it for the first time?
BUCKY: Well, I've gotten a mix. I think the funniest reaction was when Kevin Staab showed up. He couldn't stop smiling about it. He said it was something he'd always dreamed of. He also told me the next day that he had a hard time sleeping because he couldn't stop thinking about it. HAHA
CD: Who hasn't been out here yet that you would really want to see come out and ride?
BUCKY: Well, my original vip list consisted of Tony Hawk, Chris Miller, and Peter Hewitt. Those guys have been out here just about everyday since it's been ridable. I think to add to that list would have to be Christian Hosoi , Jeff Grosso, and of course Derek Krasauskas. He's my number one guy. I gotta fly him out here.
CD: How would you feel if someone came out here and was afraid to ride it?
BUCKY: You know what? Every time I see someone come up the hill and see it for the first time, I expect that they're going to have a hard time riding it. If you're coming here for the first time, you should EXPECT to be humbled.
CD: Could you see your bowl becoming the measuring stick for the next stage in pro skating, with massive concrete bowls becoming the feature vert events? Do you think that your peers would accept competitive vert skating moving in this direction?
BUCKY: Well, to answer that question, I don't think they're gonna be too stoked because I have it here in my backyard. But I would like for vert skating to get to this level. I definitely think it needs to. We've always said that we need to stop making so much flat wall . We need to make something more visual and a lot more exciting to ride. I don't know if X GAMES or Dew Tour are gonna build concrete like this because of budgets. I do KNOW that I'm gonna have a party at least once a year and that's all that matters.
CD: Can you tell us who supported this project, builders, your sponsors, anyone else involved, etc...?
BUCKY: Thanks to my sponsors Element, Independent, Von Zipper, Wendy's, Boneless, Ogio, Randoms, Protec, Type S, and especially Billabong, Rockstar and Vans for making this dream come true. They helped me with my vision of this mega bowl which I'm calling HEAVEN. Also, thank you to California Skateparks for making it a reality.
CD: Any last words?
BUCKY: I hope it's nice to me and doesn't hurt me too much. See you in heaven.
Parting shot. This is the future.
-BLKPRJKT / PHOTOS MRZ |
Thursday 28th 2009f May 2009 09:20
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