Skate Parks....

damnyanks

Can anyone explain to me why when rollerblading was such a massive fad in the Dublin region that no skate parks were open.

Eventually the one in dundrum was opened and bray had a small crappy half pipe

Yet once everything dies down someone decides to open like 3 or 4 of them!

TacT

Rollerbladers mainly skate at a skatepark out in Santry where "Kart city" was the only attraction, it's an indoor spot with about 10,000 square foot of rams and a midi ramp (small vert).

They run sessions every two hours and afaik it's approx 7-10 euro in for the time.

Ramp 'N' Rail on the Drumcondra Road Upper also has an indoor park where bladers can skate (although the course is closed atm due to massive problems with insurance the shop remains open for business, although is skateboarding based as opposed to rollerblading, best look up Kart city in santry in your yellow pages for more info)

Ramp 'N' Rail is opposite Breaks Snooker Hall and across the road from the texaco garage beside the Jury's Skylon hotel.

They run a morning afternoon and evening session you can ring 01-8377533 for more information and info on when the course will re-open.

There is talk of a skateboarding/rollerblading public park being built on the southside atm, I'll keep ya posted.

I would say the reason more parks didn't open was because at the time there were a whole load of new things appearing and people just saw is as another fad (which it isn't although I see it like the early days of skateboarding when it came in died out did that a few more times and here we are still, we're not going anywhere

Cake Fiend

I used to skate (inline) about 6 years ago, I used to get pissed off at the fact that there were no dedicated parks to it (although that was before Central Bank etc had the sense to weld little metal knobs on the handrails, hehe...). It wasn't till after I gave up skating that things like these (and the ****holes in bray and dundrum don't count) started opening up. I was thinking of taking it back up again (half fitness, half fun), so I'll check out a few parks around the place. Maybe some of the boarders who skate in these parks can give opinions of them?

Also - is there still the same bull**** blader-boarder animosity around that there used to be 4-6 years ago?

TacT

a bit, but thankfully not nearly as much as there used to be. Ramp 'N Rail was great but I'm not sure how things are going to work out for them on the insurance front.
A good couple of groups of bladers came up and I always meet the same guys out skating and we get along good

damnyanks

Dundrum was ok but some times one or two ramps may of been missing!

kayos

Well at least Dublin has some parks there are none in Galway and to be honest there are a load of boarder's down here (inline aint that big from what I have seen). What I dont get is why the government would not create places like skate parks to keep the kids off the streets and give them something to do rather than going around robbing cars and getting into trouble. I know that is a massive generalisation but hey its true for a lot of kids.

kayos

TacT

I know there is a good community of skaters in Galway two lads named Dave and Aaron afaik run the surf/skate shop down there and they have some really talented kids, we need parks in North/West of Ireland atm, Dublin and the South are pretty much sorted!
There was talk of a development (there's always talk heh) for Galway but nothing has come of it thus far. Although Eyre Square's not too bad for a roll around provided your not there for the arts festival
Kayos We managed to get Guinness Ireland to give us room for a park, paid labour and the money to buy materials to construct a park to do just that! Get kids off the streets! Give them something to do, even if it is only a choice! They need it.
This Park will be free in for the kids and the guys running it will be helping them with any queries/history questions/safety/general junk the kids would like to know about. The way the guys are looking at it is "If we can get one of these kids interested and stop him from wanting to try heroin (extreme example) because of his interest in skating, then we're on our way to winning!"

Mystic Fibrosis

speaking o parks on the southside, my friends and I sent in a few letters to the corporation and theyre finally building a skatepark in bushy park, over the old tennis courts.

Samba

There was meant to be a skatepark put there but according to my sources there are problems with insurance there too, something to do with what's been happening recently in the U.K.

Apparently the underwriters of the project have overused their quota for Extreme Sports because their contract entails the U.K and Ireland.

Pity, was a perfect Venue for it.

Hell there's a perfect field for it everywhere I look, Insurance really pisses me off.

Hopefully I'm off to check out this park in James's Gate tomorrow I got a little update on the info involved, here it is.....

The Digital Hub are building up office
areas around the liberties and along the quays.
They have been Sponsored by Dublin city council & Guinness.
They are on a mission to bring digital tech to inner city
kids and the public in general, in order to help us
remain competitive "in an evolving global economy."

<Here's a snippet taken from the brochure about them>

"By taking advantage of the current innovations in technology,
to develop high value sectors such as digital media, we will sustain growth In the Irish economy in the long-term."
Two lads from Roughmagic Films Co; have designed an
editing suite for digital cameras that can edit in realtime;
some fancy new software for video editing
All kids in any of the various projects around The City Centre
are covered to skate on the premises.
The Idea behind it being they will film them and demonstrate
their software and bring technology to the kids in a fun way
hopefully inspiring them