Three Skateparks Near Port Adelaide, South Australia

It's rare that I find myself anywhere with time to kill. On a recent Saturday my partner invited me to Port Adelaide so we could eat fish and chips on the beach and watch the sun set after her NIA class. This gave me four hours to kill. I decided to take my skateboard.

Suspecting there were quite a few skateparks not too far from Port Adelaide, a quick search of skateboard.com.au for Adelaide Skateparks proved me right.

Whilst my partner did her class, I borrowed her car and decided to visit three skateparks that weren't too far away including The Pennington Mini Mini, Regency Skatepark and Royal Skatepark.

All of these parks I've never visited before. You can see my impressions of each in the video below, along with some pretty basic skating from me (sorry, I'm seriously out of practice from my hey days of the 1990s). I've also written a few notes on each skatepark after the video too.

Pennington Mini Mini

The Pennington Mini Mini

Ramps this small are hard to find. I suspect, even though it was probably built by someone not fully schooled in basic ramp design, it's a gem for anyone just learning ramp skating.

Good ramp design for skateboarding means your board should be able to 'rock' on the coping i.e. when your board is placed perpendicular to the coping and the middle is resting on the coping the wheels of your deck should not touch the platform or the ramp, creating a 'rocking' effect that allows you to perform board slides and other tricks.

On the Pennington ramp it's just not possible to rock on the coping, creating a situation where you can just roll your wheels over it, in or out of the ramp, without any risk of hanging up and falling off as a result. Hence if you're just learning, not only do you not have far to fall but your chances of falling from a hang up are almost none.

Intermediate to advanced skaters tend to laugh at ramps like this but I find them so much fun because you can learn almost any kind of lip trick, where your board stays above the coping and out of the ramp, with little chance of falling hard. Once you've got them on a ramp like this, it makes it so much easier to take the trick to higher ramps.

Regency Skatepark

The one thing I really like about Regency is you can skate the whole park (performing lines of tricks) if you want or you can just choose a section of the park you like and skate that. It's big enough that one skater using the park, isn't going to get in the way of everyone else.

That said, there isn't a lot for complete beginners here. However, if you're prepared to take some risks with some slightly larger ramps, pads and banks than feel safe, you could progress fairly quickly.

For me, the two side by side mini ramps were a highlight, even if I couldn't do much more than drop in and carve around on them. I'd certainly consider coming back since the smaller of the two ramps was about the same as my old backyard mini I built back in the 1990s.

Royal Skatepark

Royal Skatepark is one of those small parks that council's install where they lack vision for how much of a family space a skatepark can be. Where as Regency skatepark is integrated into green park land with playgrounds, BBQ's, plenty of shade, tables and space to just kick a ball around, Royal skatepark is tacked onto a spare bit of land alongside a sporting reserve. It has nice grassy area around it but not much for anyone to do except watch their kid skate.

Despite that, it's a good beginner park if you're wanting to learn any kind of slide or grind. None of the rails or pads are too high though a couple are placed in relatively tricky locations to get a decent run up to.

There are no transitions here, everything is banks - and they're relatively steep at that so take a little getting used to.

I didn't spend a lot of time here, even though I had the park to myself for a short while. It's the kind of park that, once you get a few people using it, it's easy to get self conscious because you start getting in each other's way. Thus everyone has to watch you stuff up and get out of the way so they can do their line.

---o ---o--- o---

That was my visit to three skateparks near Port Adelaide. If you know the area you're probably wondering why I didn't visit Semaphore skatepark on the foreshore. The main reason was because it's on the foreshore, making it the easiest one for any skater to get to and know about. I was looking for more out of the way parks, less likely to be busy on a Saturday afternoon.

As well, although I haven't skated Semaphore, I've been there enough to know there's very little for a beginner skater to do. To make the most of Semaphore you need, at minimum, a decent ollie (I don't) to really enjoy the central fun box that is the main feature of the park.

I hope to do this again some time with three or more different parks. With any luck I'll have learnt a bit more and remembered to take a tripod. (Always pack a tripod because leaning your camera up against things really limits your filming!).

Should you be interested in the deck I'm skating, get a better look at the graphic in my online skateboard shop.

Comments

How to Transfer Any Line Art to Your Griptape - Easy Skateboard Griptape Art Tutorial

Dog Star Griptape Art by TET Griptape art is once again gaining popularity amongst modern skateboarders. For those of us who have tried to create our own griptape art, using paint pens, you'll know reproducing your design onto the grip, without making any mistakes is incredibly challenging. Mostly because you just have to go for it and draw the design freehand, with paint pens, directly onto the griptape. You can make the odd mistake here or there but if you get the proportions of the design completely wrong, it can be very difficult to fix. Often you just have to live with the mistake. To address the problem I've come up with an easy way anyone can transfer a line art design to their griptape, removing almost all the anxiety of getting the proportions wrong. In fact, you could do this with any line art design, even if you have no drawing skill at all. Watch the video below to see my technique in action and/or skip past the video where I highlight the basic steps to get your de

Skateboard Trick Tips: Two Ways to Ollie North (Ollie One foot)

You have to be quick to see my Ollie Norths! Ollie One Foots, otherwise known as the Ollie North, is one of those skateboard tricks you learn and then tend not to do very much as more interesting trick challenges grab your attention. However it does look really cool if you learn how to kick your front foot well past the nose of your skateboard. Still shot from Braille Skateboarding's Ollie North tutorial. I was inspired to make my video below, showing two different techniques to achieve a successful Ollie One Foot, when I not only saw that Braille Skateboarding's Tutorial used a different method to the one I had learned but also, when I looked at various other video tutorials, I discovered yet another technique, with no one using the method I had originally learned. Braille's method is to simply Ollie and drag your front foot past the front of your board. The second method I came across in several video tutorials is to Ollie, drag your front foot and tap your

Are Ion Thrusters the Future of Flying Cars? Spoiler - Probably Not But... Hover Boards... Maybe?

Undefined Technologies Ion Propulsion Drone prototype 3D concept image. You may have heard of Ion engines or, more likely, Ion thrusters. NASA uses them on their spacecraft to help maintain a craft's position or to propel them through space. Upon hearing that you might think they're big, powerful engines, but actually they are not. They work well in the vacuum of space but, once any kind of atmosphere and gravity is involved they'd be hard pressed to launch you off the ground if you strapped four of them to your lawn chair and yelled "up, up, and away!" I am no expert on Ion thrusters - they're basically magic that science has an explanation for. If you want to know the details, The Space Techie website has a layman's explanation . Build Your Own Ion Thruster Earth based Ion Thrusters work a bit different to their space based cousins by Ionizing the same air that we breathe to create thrust (an effect known as Ionic-wind ). While they sound highly soph

Book Review: Brand It Purple by Ashley Knoote-Parke

Ashley Knoote-Parke. Image: Facebook It seems almost redundant to review Brand It Purple given you probably won't find a hard copy edition without digging into the second hand market. The book's author and publisher, Ashley Knoote-Parke, seemingly, disappeared off the face of the Earth around about 2015. Which is a story in itself. However, the book is still a very informative guide and, while not specifically targeted at women, many may relate more to a book written by an experienced female entrepreneur. Brand It Purple is a personal marketing and branding guide released in 2009 by then, star on the rise author, Ashley Knoote-Parke, an English born, South African expatriate, who made Adelaide, South Australia her home. There she started her own publishing company releasing a photographic, coffee table book of South Australian sights, along with books showcasing female, then male, entrepreneurs. As well she published 'Brand It Purple'. I came across the b

I'm Joining the Illuminati Brotherhood By Personal Invitation of Hiltom Rothschild... Wait, What?

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart

Movie Review: Force of Nature - The Dry 2 (2024) No Spoilers

Eric Bana returns as Detective Aaron Falk in Force of Nature - The Dry 2 , and that's the only real connection between this and 2020's The Dry . This is an all new mystery set in a new location. I will say, given that it's either wet or rainy, with the incoming threat of a major storm for most of the movie, the filmmakers really missed a trick in not renaming the film, The Wet. Back when I reviewed the first film I noted that I would love to see the second book made into a movie too, and here it is. This time Aaron and his detective partner, Carmen (Jacqueline Mackenzie), head into the mountains to investigate the whereabouts of a missing informant, who disappears on a workplace, team bonding retreat. All the performances in this film are easily on par with the first, though I do think some pretty outstanding actors really didn't have a lot to do here. In terms of mystery the first movie was better constructed as a who dunnit film you could play along with. Here you mo

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog