Mark Hubbard of Grindline Skateparks @ The Sideways Guide!



Mark Hubbard of Grindline Skateparks Interview by The Chraveler

The Chraveler interviewed Mark Hubbard of Grindline Skateparks in October, 2003, as he walked down the street in Spokane, Washington. Mark is a rad guy.



TSG: Mark, This is Colin from The Sideways Guide. MH: From where? TSG: The Sideways Guide…I called you this afternoon about doing a short interview. MH: Oh yeah. Let’s do this. MH: “Go home, go home!”…Some pitbull’s following me around! TSG: Uh, ok? How many parks does Grindline have going right now? MH: Five: Spokane, WA, Athens, OH, Carbondale, CO, Milton, WA…actually I think its just four right now… TSG: How far along is Carbondale? MH: It’s getting rebarred right now, so it should be ready for concrete in two weeks, three weeks…


Trinidad, Colorado's Grindline-built skatepark - definitely a skate track

TSG: Isn’t it getting kind of cold up there? MH: No, nope… TSG: Alright, I didn’t know if- MH: We built Trinidad last winter, we didn’t start that until November or some-Fuck! This dog, this pitbull is following me! TSG: Where’s the owner? MH: I dunno, I gotta run across the street…Alright…now he’s following me again, oh well…Come On! Come On! Yeah, whatever, go on… TSG: I hit up Trinidad this past summer, I think it was the most fun I have ever had at a park. MH: Really? TSG: Yeah, I was impressed, the whole thing is like one big toboggan run, you could go from the top all the way down to the bottom and then pump all the way back up again… TSG: How did you get involved in building skateparks? What happened with the Schmidt Park Bowl? MH: Well, we just started wanting to build our own stuff, because no one had built anything fun. We figured if we built something in a public area, that they might let it slide, and you know, see how much good it would do. We were trying to spur the skatepark movement. TSG: Was this before or after Burnside? MH: After, like 1991, it was going on at about the same time, because Burnside was started in 1990.

West Linn, Oregon

TSG: Were you friends with those guys who did Burnside? MH: Yeah, I lived down there (Portland, Oregon) at the time, and I was in on the original movement, but them I moved back to Seattle, where we started the Schmidt Park bowl, and we would go back down (to Portland) and help them. TSG: I read on the Grindline website (http://www.grindline.com) that the project was stopped before the concrete was put in. What happened to you guys, in terms of consequences from Johnny Law? MH: Nothing really happened to us, they just said take out the rebar, and fill in the hole. TSG: After that what happened with building parks? MH: After a little while, Red (Mark Scott) came back from building a park with Team Pain, and I was all excited, like” Who do I call?”, and Red said “call Lenny Byrd,” and so I called to get on with Team Pain, and they said, “No, you Northwest fools are too crazy,” and they wouldn’t let me do it (join), and then Red landed a park in Lincoln City (Oregon) in 1999, and called me up. TSG: Was it originally a Dreamland project? MH: No, Lincoln City was just, Lincoln City, you know, we all just worked for the Parks and Rec Department. TSG: There wasn’t an official company yet. MH: No, we didn’t have any idea that it was gonna turn into anything. After Lincoln City, we all just went home, and we were like, “That was fuckin’ awesome!” Then Newberg (Oregon) happened, and we were like “fuck”, and I started a website, grindline.com, to do t-shirts, and I started putting (pictures of) the parks on there. Red wanted to call his company Dreamland, and then we decided to both go with our own gigs, because there was a lot of work (parks to build).

The legendary Burnside Skatepark in Portland, Oregon

TSG: So eventually you guys went your own ways for business reasons? MH: Just because I wanted to get parks (built) in Washington, because that’s where I am from. TSG: What kind of influences do you draw from when you are dreaming up a skatepark design? What goes through your head? MH: Well, everything I have ever seen or skated, and people’s ideas right there in the town (where the park is to be built), because they are usually the freshest. It’s all about right now. You can’t design a park for a city, and then it goes out to bid like a year later, and then it gets built a year and a half later. Then that design is a year and a half old! Skateboarding is always evolving, it’s something new every day. With all this experience that we have gained by being allowed to build what ever we want (by the community), we’ve been fortunate. It’s given us a lot of design experience, and better chances to experiment with different ideas. TSG: So in a situation such as Trinidad, they said “Yeah, build whatever you like." MH: Everybody says that. Every park I have ever built, since Lincoln City, that’s why everyone has heard of every single park we’ve built. TSG: There is a separate design department of Grindline, right? MH: Yeah, but that’s just to get the ball rolling, because it takes time (for a community) to put everything together (on their end) before we show up. We give them the construction documents, and they we’ll do field changes. Sometimes it will look similar (to the plans), and sometimes we’ll go totally off (in another direction). TSG: But once the pipe (coping) is in place, you can’t change too much then, right? MH: Yeah, I am talking about when we are digging. The more freedom you give yourself in the field, to just stare at the thing for hours, and have people give their input. That’s how we come up with our best work.

Grindline built this - the Ballard, WA bowl

TSG: That’s a really cool design philosophy, but have you encountered resistance to it? MH: Cities always question it, but I’ve heard every question in the book, and I’ve answered them a million times. TSG: It seems that cities would always want a documented plan, though. MH: Yeah, but then they’ve got this big bowl, and then this (separate) street course (for ideas), and I look at them, and I ask, “How in the world are kids gonna get out of the bowl? They answer “I dunno?” And I am like, “well, they're gonna be stuck in there, shriveled up in the morning, all dehydrated!” Then I tell them, “we’ve got to bring the bowl out a little and run it into here (and extend it into a snakerun design), TSG: How’s Athens, Ohio looking? MH: Athens is looking a lot like its design, because we are working with a general contractor, and they put in the drains right away (effectively finalizing the design of the park). I tried to make that park bigger, gnarlier. I wanted to put in all sorts of different little things, but when you are working for a general contractor, they freak out, because they’re gonna have to pay more (and profit less), and we (Grindline, when working for ourselves), try to spend all the money on materials and labor, and a general contractor wants to make some money. TSG: How’s that capsule (at Athens) coming along? MH: Real good. TSG: Is that a new design to build for you? MH: Yeah, that’s exactly it. You take Port Orford (Oregon), and extend it into a fullpipe. TSG: Is the elbow fullpipe at Dillon, Montana still on? MH: Yeah, that’s going down, whenever they’re ready for us. That’s gonna be a good one.

TSG: What are some of your favorite parks? MH: I like that new Louisville park. I’d like to see us get two and a half million, and see what we could do with that. We could blow that thing away, but I really do like Louisville. I also like Orcas, Burnside, Newberg, West Linn. I just like whatever I am skating at the moment.
	Grindline cares

TSG: Sounds like your design philosophy. Where do you see skatepark design going? MH: What I have been thinking about lately is, like tracks, skate tracks. You start here, and go on this insane line. TSG: Would be like snowboarding, like on a boardercross track? MH: No, not snowboarding- it would be like skatercross, Jumps, and big walls you gotta 50-50, and then walls you gotta air, and then canyons to jump – a skate obstacle course. Just some sort of idea where you take off from one spot on like this five minute run where you don’t hit the same thing twice. You just go on a run, you gotta jump this pyramid, and hit this this funbox, then go off these stairs, then you hit a euro ledge, and then you go into this roll-in, and then you hit a pool wall, and then a berm and a bank, and an oververt corner, and then into a snakerun – I mean long skateparks! TSG: Sounds like Trinidad… MH: That’s just touching the surface. Something like that, but like a mile long.

foggin' the fullpipe	torchin' the concrete

*For more information about Grindline Skateparks, visit their website at www.grindline.com...*

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