From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-d-skateboarding-slo-20150809-story.html
SLO Skatepark is a dream come true for skaters who have tired of the monotonous white-on-white concrete landscape of most skateboard parks. The $2.2-million skatepark, funded in part by a $25,000 grant from the nonprofit Tony Hawk Foundation, it is large and features many creative elements.
By Barbara Odanaka
August 8, 2015, 9:00 AM
Fern green. Antique amber. Copper patina ….
Decorator colors … for a skateboard park?
It’s true in San Luis Obispo, where the planners behind the city’s skate park looked for fresh ways to give skaters not just a great playground but a lovely thing to look at too.
SLO Skate Park, which opened Feb. 28, is a dream come true for skaters like me who have tired of the white-on-white concrete landscape of most skateboard parks. At first sight, I felt like Dorothy, board in hand, feasting her eyes on a Technicolor Oz.
The $2.2-million skate park, funded in part by a $25,000 grant from the nonprofit Tony Hawk Foundation, features many other creative elements.
“Concrete Jungle,” a public artwork created by artists Jed Joyce and John T. Jones, provides shade in the form of steel and aluminum “trees,” which double as near-vertical skate structures. (The trees proved too tough a climb for my skate skills, but I appreciated the challenge.)
I also loved the Wave, the curved, concrete structure hanging over the park’s snake run, as well as the pieces of recycled skateboards used as decorative tiles inside the skate park’s pool.
SLO Skate Park isn’t the first to incorporate public art projects into a skate structure. In 2007 artists-skaters Judi Oyama and Jimbo Phillips designed the iconic wave mural that adorns the Ken Wormhoudt Skate Park in Santa Cruz.
But overall, this may be California’s most artistic skate park. And, I hope, the start of a trend.