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by Aaron Gates
Mat Ridgeway – powerslide in the funnel
Airspeed Skateparks was one of the companies that helped bring us into the modern era of skatepark design. While Grindline and Dreamland were carefully constructing some of the most well known advances in this area, Airspeed was building obscure and outlandish parks in rural Oregon. Although the other two builders were doing exciting things and building parks that flowed well and worked for the majority of skateboarders, Airspeed focused on building obstacles that nobody had ever seen before, often on their own dime and sometimes without the city planners’ knowledge.
Although most of the guys on the trip didn’t know it, this trip through Oregon was mostly designed as a pilgrimmage to Geth Noble and Stephanie Mohler‘s three biggest masterpieces.
Airspeed was birthed out of the Golden Triangle – Medford, Ashland, and Talent, which represented a giant leap for Oregon skateparks. Oregon’s now established skatepark builders were once just a bunch of skaters with a passion for building parks, many volunteering to gain experience.
Airspeed’s parks have been both lauded and criticized, and both sides of the coin have merit. They built things that nobody had ever seen or imagined, but the parks were often centered around those features with less thought and effort spent on other areas. The “street” obstacles at most of these parks are pretty laughable, and the transitions outside of the main bowl at Reedsport are very strange. Faults aside, Airspeed makes my favorite parks.
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