Thursday, September 20

Bikes at Burnside

By Josh Root
EXPN.com

The Burnside skatepark in Portland, Oregon is a shining example of what a skatepark should be. Designed, built and ridden by the people who use it. Not by some parks and rec committee or construction company, but by people who actually know what is important.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's a group of skaters in Portland decided that they needed a place to ride, so they found a nice covered spot under a bridge in a dingy part of town and started building. Late nights after work, hiding wheelbarrows and tools from the junkies, filling the transitions with trash and other crap to save on concrete. Little by little it started to happen. By the time anyone figured out what they were up to, that park was well on its way. Somehow, the owner of the land was persuaded to donate it to the city and "The Burnside Project" was turned into an official city park. The rest, as we all know, is history.

Daniel Randall checking in with a nosepick on the cinderblock wall.

Skate tours, BMX videos, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, inline kids, and road trips across the country to see the park that real riders built themselves. All of a sudden, a dirty smelly park with uneven transitions and dented coping has become one of the most famous skateparks in the world.

I moved down to Oregon in The spring of 1997 to work at Morrow snowboards as an assistant to their photographer. It was pretty fun, but I was living in Salem, which at best is a boring town. And at worse is really sketchy (Salem has: two prisons, a mental hospital, and Oregon's state legislature, which are all bad news as far as I'm concerned). So I ended up spending a lot of time up in Portland. Eventually I hooked up with Portland's close knit group of BMX riders, and began spending days and nights shooting photos of them at Burnside. I've always liked shooting photos there. The underside of the bridge has crazy patterns on it which make black and white photos look great, and the monotone greyness of the whole place makes the riders in color photos stand out beautifully. I guess I don't really like having to lay on the filthy ground for 20 minutes to get a shot, but as long as I rememebr to wear crappy clothes and burn them after I'm done, it isn't that bad.

Aside from finishing the final corner and adding a fence or two around the outside, that park hasn't changed all that much since I first started going there. The riding has gotten a lot crazier though, and the Portland BMX scene has blown up like crazy. But all the same guys that I shot in '97 are still getting up early to miss the crowds and rolling to the park at 7:30am.

Here's a small gallery of some of the shots I've taken over the past few years. Some of these guys are flying around the country for contests now, and some are still working the night shift just so they can keep doing what they love. But all of them tear it up at a place called Burnside.