Paved Wave - Cocoa Beach, FL

An early skatepark brand by a duo who built 3 Florida parks within weeks of one another.

Owned and operated by George Henderson and Ray Griffin, Paved Wave was built by trial and error. Henderson said it took 54 days to build and cost $60k, partially due to the substrate experimentation that took place.

The largest run at Paved Wave was 300 feet and ended in a 12 foot bowl. It had a 33% slope then dumped into another downhill drop to swing back behind the starting point where riders would climb a 30 foot high ramp to drop in again. The idea was to provide continuous runs with the least amount of walking. It included two shorter slalom runs at 150 feet that worked on a similar principle, and there was also a flatland/freestyle area.

Six weeks after completing the Paved Wave in Cocoa, Henderson and Griffin built its clone in Pensacola which had not only the same design, but the same name.

In an interview with the now-defunct floridaskater.com back in 2001, Bruce Walker said, "It was one of the most dangerous parks I’ve ever ridden...because of the way they cut the concrete off sharply at the edges of the runs.  If you fell with any momentum near the edge, the concrete was like a huge knife blade waiting to rip into your flesh.  The owner was kind of sketchy as well.  Once he kicked every single skater out of his park in the middle of a skateboard contest.  Somebody made him mad and he lost it and screamed that everyone had to leave.  I never went back again and shortly thereafter he was out of business and the Paved Wave was paved flat."