Willow Glen Skatepark - CLOSED

 

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Jack D.

Oakland, CA

9/3/2008

As of this writing, the Benicia Skatepark is a memory and also a heap of rock and dust.   It may have been a picayune matter for the City of Benicia, and financially it wouldn't have made a lot of sense to keep the park open.  Even so, the city officials who have zero cognizance when it comes to the historical importance may have hesitated, even for a small instant, if they knew what it was they were interring into the annals of history.

I'll call it Benicia Skatepark, because that's the name it had before the X-MTV-Volcom Park or whatever it's called bodysnatched it.  I never heard anyone call it Willow Glen.

It all started back in 1987 when the spot was a parking lot for Willow Glen park.  You'd park your car there and walk over the incline and back down into the grassy play area, but few people were going there since the playground at 1st Street park was three times the size and a lot safer for the young'uns.

Skaters are masterful, unsung opportunists, and a few locals decided the parking lot was as good a spot as any for a couple of launch ramps, especially since the police were cracking down on skaters downtown.  The locals started going to meetings, and with the support of merchants who didn't think much of skaters but were enthusiastic about the prospect that a skatepark might keep the kids the hell off of their property, Benicia Skatepark soon became a reality.

You can't argue that the park has become outmoded since the money and mainstream interest skateboarding has garnered in the past 10 or so years has yielded bigger, better places to skate.  Younger skaters today might laugh at Benicia Skatepark the same way they'd laugh at a stop-motion movie or an Apple iie computer.  

But us dinosaurs understand its historical significance, and a lot of people over the years have carried some rich memories away from Benicia Skatepark.  Here are a few of mine:

- On a hot summer day back in '88, when there were a lot of kids sessioning but few who had money, three skaters from Napa stole a cold case of Gatorade from the back of the grocery store across the street (it's now a gym, right?).

- Lunchmeat.  I have no idea why people called him that, but he scared the hell out of me.  He had a trucker hat with his favorite band, Nirvana written on it back in black sharpie.  Was that in 1989?  That guy was such a snake.  I heard he received a generous beatdown for it, but I wasn't there.

- A kid named Wade Speyer started showing up.  Wade always had a board that was beat to hell.  I had a theory whenever he got a new deck, he fed it to an alligator and waited for it to be shit out before he skated it.  But he ripped.  RIPPED!

- Yoda's.  Yoda's was the very green, densely arboreal area on the other side of the playground.  If you walked down a trail from W. K Street, you'd find a number of little clearings that were hidden from the street.  They called it Yoda's, I always assumed, because it looked a lot like the Dagobah System.  I smoked my first joint there.  The Benicia FD torched Yoda's in 1995 or 96, probably because of all the drug taking and underage drinking that went on there.

- The Asian brothers from Vacaville.  The younger one was Vincent, but I forget the name of the older one.  The older one was a hessian and I think he was tourettic.  They were nice, but they were fucking INSANE!  I think Vincent wanted to kick my ass once because I told him I didn't like Slayer.  I'm afraid to list some of the shit they did for fear that they might read this and then come and find me, so I'll give Vincent some props.  He was doing late shove-its over the hip in 1991.

- Wade ollied the entire stage.  He got speed running down the hill from Taco Bell and just pushing like hell.  I know nobody topped that, except maybe Mike Schwartz, but I didn't see it.

- Can't forget the local rippers: Sean, Chav, Tyler, Mike and Jason, Chris F, Mikey (RIP Mikey, even though we never liked each other).  I know I'm forgetting people.

Us old skaters know that if the 1990's taught us anything, it's that events didn't occur, and that things don't exist unless we can watch them on video.  I'm sure the city will turn it back into a parking lot or put in a Starubucks there in the near future, so for the sake of historicity, here's a short list of videos featuring Benicia Skatepark:

Anti-Hero, "Fucktards": brief, but Julian Stranger does a line that pretty much sets anything else filmed at Benicia to rest.  Doesn't get any better.
H-Street, "Hokus Pokus": "Nor-Cal ripper John Deago!"
Santa Cruz, "Troops of Tomorrow": Benicia's own Mike and Jason Schwartz serving up a bowl of shred.
Blind, "Video Days": Rudy Johnson, Jason Lee and Mark Gonzales all have lines.
World Industries, "Love Child" (sigh, if you must): Chris Branagh doing a late shove-it off one of those totally useless bumps.

Yeah, I know I'm leaving a ton out, but the amnesia's already setting in.  

RIP Benicia Skatepa

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