Spot Check Tag

13 Jul

Posted at 04:21h in archive by


Photo from Google Maps

Toronto’s red/rust coloured curved wall can be a fickle spot. Situated in a busy and high traffic area, trying to ride it on the wrong day and time may leave you dodging pedestrians and possibly kicked out. However, if the stars align and you end up there at the right time you can have almost endless attempts at whatever you have in mind.

Originally intended as piece sort of sculptural public art, the wall has popped up in numerous videos over the years, at the local level and beyond. It’s been ridden heavily by Chris Silva in numerous ICC videos and most notably his wall to whip in BMXFU3 (at the 2:26 mark), Garret Reeves does a wall to hard 360 in the OSS video Football (2:09 mark), and Jared Washington does a barspin out of it in Cuts (0:38 mark). These are only just a few of the tricks and video appearances (that are available online to link to) that come to mind when I think of the spot.

It is slanted back ever so slightly, and described as grippy and fast, but don’t expect anyone to tell you exactly where the spot is. We’ll leave that up to you to search for one of Toronto’s most popularized spots and have your hand at the red curved wall.

27 May

Posted at 00:32h in archive by

Montreal has a lot of good spots, amongst these spots lays the world famous Big-O. The Big-O mini has seen alot of shredding over the years, it only takes one carve through the mini’s tight trannies to realize how ridiculous some of the things that have been done there really are. Whether it was Van Homan’s double peg on the fence (seen his 2001 Parts section) or Dillon Lloyd’s flair in 2009, alot of good shit has been done at the Big O mini.

The Big O mini was originally built as an entrance tunnel for athletes at the 1976 Olympics and has been around since. The Pipe was threatened with destruction in the summer of 2006 by the Montreal Impact soccer team’s new stadium, however skaters who have been skating the mini for over a decade fought hard to keep it alive and it is still standing. The soccer team organization agreed to leave the pipe there so long as they could use it as a secondary entrance during games.

Mike Fiz – Luc E    Picture by Alex Ji