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| >> above images courtesy of georgiaskater.com / more here | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tony Hawk's Secret Skatepark Tour @ SPOA Sunday, September 18th. > click here for slideshow |
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| >> above images courtesy of georgiaskater.com / more here | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| >> Article from The Athens Banner-Herald published Monday, September 19, 2005 | |||
| "Tony Hawk brings tour to local park / Athens gets glimpse of skating greatness" | |||
| By
Merritt Melancon Although the Skate Park of Athens had its grand opening in April and skaters had been using the park months before that, it had its christening Sunday when Tony Hawk and other top skaters and BMX bikers filled the park's 12,000 square foot concrete bowl with their aerial aerobatics. Some of the best skaters and BMX bikers in the country, and about 5,000 of their fans, came to the fledgling Skate Park of Athens Sunday for the last stop on Hawk's American Wasteland Secret Skatepark Tour. |
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Skateboarder Bob Burnquist flies above the heads of Tony Hawk, in red, and the MTV2 video crew during a vert ramp demonstration at Hawk's American Wasteland Secret Skatepark Tour held at the Skatepark of Athens in Southeast Clarke Park on Sunday. | ||
| Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff | |||
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"I never thought I'd see Tony Hawk skate in Athens," said Reed Deamer. Deamer has lived and skated in Athens for six years, long enough to see many of the city's popular but makeshift parks torn down, and helped build the new park. For the Athens skaters and bikers like Deamer, who petitioned the Athens-Clarke County Commission to include the skate park in Southeast Clarke Park and raised about a quarter of the funding for the $200,000 park on their own, Hawk's visit confirmed that the park project was not only well worth their struggle, but had reached an almost unimaginable level of success. "The kids in this town were the ones who really pushed for this park," said Lorretta Adams, co-owner of Feral Skate Shop. "This is their park; that's why they're out here, and that's why they're so excited about this." |
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Erwin Ganschow, center,
and approximately 5,000 other spectators, according to Athens-Clarke
County Police, attended Tony Hawk's American Wasteland Secret Skatepark
Tour at the Skatepark of Athens in Southeast Clarke Park on Sunday. Hawk
and his crew of pro skateboarders and BMX bikers showed off their
talents on the cement park as well as a portable vert ramp that was set
up for the event, which was filmed by an MTV2 crew for a TV special. |
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| Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff | |||
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Jason Thrasher, an Athens skater and photographer who helped raise funds for the park, frequently calls SPOA the best park on the East Coast. Having Tony Hawk's tour come to the park is his proof. "Tony Hawk is here because we have a great skate park," Thrasher said. "That and he donated $10,000 to help build it." Hawk had donated money to help build the park through the Tony Hawk Foundation, which helps fund public skate parks across the country - the rest was paid for by skaters who collected donations, sold T-shirts and CDs and held benefit concerts. The rest of the funding, to the tune of $145,000, came from local sales tax money from the county. While many of the skaters who helped build and raise funds for the park were out to watch Hawk and his cronies, the exhibition also attracted younger skaters, their families, adolescent girls hoping to get a glimpse of their favorite pin-ups and random folks who were looking for something different to do on a Sunday afternoon. |
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BMX biker Rick Thorne takes a photo of his fans. | ||
| Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff | |||
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"I'm having a good time," said Stephen Pavlick, 50, who lives across the street from the park and biked over with his son to watch. "The tricks these guys do are amazing. I usually watch this kind of thing on TV - X-Games and the other competitions on ESPN. I like it. And really, this crowd is just so varied - it's nice to see." But the wide range of ages at Sunday's event, from tattooed twenty-somethings to 70-year-olds with their grandchildren, may go to show that the park has a broader appeal than many thought - which may make it easier to raise funds for the second phase of the park. Thrasher doesn't know when the next phase could come to fruition or even what might be in it. "Just more skate park," Thrasher said. "We didn't know what we were going to get in this phase until they started building." |
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*FLAGPOLE
article here! |
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