tour de sk8

This summer my boyfriend and I have planned a tour of the local skate parks. I'm doing this project, because I've always loved skateboarding, despite not really being able to skate with any confidence. With my planner background, it seems like my desire to learn more about the public realm and physical environment is almost unquenchable (unless I'm burnt out..). Anyways, I've already put together the map below to outline our sites and begun identifying the key components we'd like to measure. My boyfriend has been skating since he was 8, so I'll be relying on his expert knowledge to provide further insight into compoenents like the flow of a park. There's definately a few terms that need to be defined on our part, and a scan of the available literature. I'll be collecting all relevant aspects of the project below for my own enjoyment. And you the reader, if you're even there haha.

literature

• Ottawa Skateboard Park Standards: https://osa-media.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/OSA-Standards-for-Ottawa.pdf
• Ottawa Skatepark Association Skate Park Strategy; https://ottawaskateboard.ca/posts/lighting-at-charlie-bowins-skateboard-park/
• Ottawa Skatepark Association Audit of Local Skate Parks: https://osa-media.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Evaluation-of-Ottawa-Skateboard-Parks.pdf

locations

site elements for consideration

• interface wth surrounding site including: natural environment inferface, cultural environment Interface, interface with the public realm, proximity to food and water, proximity to washrooms, proximity to shade structure
• connectivity including: pedestrian and multimodal access and parking, vehicular access and parking, and proximity to a bus station or stop
• maintence of the site
• materiality
• flow
• variety of features
• general skill level required to feel comfortable in the park
• lighting
• signage
• was there a community consultation process?
• is there programming at this park? and is there storage to accomodate programming?
• time of day (arrival and departure time)
• number of park users during the visit
• mini interview questions - what's your name and where are you from? how long have you been skating? what's your favourite thing about this park? whats your favourite feature to skate in the park? can you show us? what's something that could make this space better? what's a place locally that you would recommending skating(street, indoor, park)?

methods

Okay so the methodology and final outcomes are beginning to appear clearly! We're going to be joined by a 2 of our friends, which will definately make this a really fun experiment. I have also been considering trying to do a few video interviews with people who use the parks we drop in on. I'm really inspired by the interviews that have been completed by Jenkem Magazine with regular park users. I think will need to print off sheets with field to track all the info I'm aiming to collect over what I'm assuming will be a few days of driving around if we want to get a good chunk of time at each location. I want these guys to have fun lol. I might also invest in a point and shoot camera I can easily gather video footage. It's looking like the final deliverables of the project will be a video or maybe a series of videos indicating the highlights of the qualitative outcomes, and maybe some cool data representations. Overall, as little writing as possible haha.

outcomes

My Boyfriend and I had a chance to visit two of the skateparks. As I'm collecting data, Mitch spontaneously decided to film at one of the parks we visited where there were some locals (who were not children lol). So excited by this addition to the project!!