Tofino, BC

Met up with Fleur and headed out to Tofino, which is kind of like Canada's California. Tofino is a pricy little town on the west coast of Vancouver Island which thrives on ecotourism. We did things like surfing and sea kayaking in the rain, sleeping in the car, and sampling the local cafes. The rain cleared up long enough to get in a little session at the skatepark, super fun. We made friends with a local skater (Jane) and she shared with us some local knowledge. We hit up some little street spots, creating obstacles with crates and planks. Jane works for Friends of the Clayoquot Sound, which strives to protect the surrounding ecosystem from pressures like the possibility of an open pit copper mine. If your in the area check out their projects and see her hard at work, like in this picture.

Victoria, BC

Goin' solo again. In the capital city of British Colombia. Wish I had more time at this park, lots of room for everyone. Been living my fantasy of stuffing my face with pounds of blueberries and raspberries.

Vancouver, Canada

Not sure exactly how everything happened in Vancouver but it was pretty epic. I found myself doing things like lounging around on Michelle’s couch reading old Villa Villa Cola skate zines while listening to classic rock records. There was a lot of racing around the city on fixed gear bicycles (thanks Michelle, for giving me the one with breaks, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here today). There were many skateparks to session and even more girls to shred with. Also included was fireworks, disaterdaze, BBQs, night swimming & bonfire at the beach, baseball, and tons of epic vegetarian food (yeah, visit the Naan restaurant while your there). It seemed that everyone had a motorbike and everywhere I went this super old ghetto blaster was following us around. I don’t know how I got roped into carrying it. Thanks for the cupcakes! the good times! You guys rock!

The Majestic Unicorns

As soon as I got to Vancouver BC I found myself in the heart of the Majestic Unicorn territory, and I was lucky enough to hang out and skate with these girls. The Majestic Unicorns are among many skaters in Vancouver who ride motorbikes and skateboard. They will deny any gang affiliation, and claim only to be a motorbike club. A couple days from now they’ll strap boards and sleeping bags to their motorbikes and head down the coast to skate San Francisco and parks along the way. Be on the lookout and if you see them say hello and hook them up. They’re awesome! But watch out, after chilling with these Canadians you’ll want to buy a motorbike and join the madness.

Michelle Pezel Interview and Antisocial

Antisocial is a super chill skate shop in Vancouver. Its got a mini ramp, art gallery, and some rad employees. When I walked in I was lucky enough to meet some local skaters to session with. Michelle, co-owner, and president of the Vancouver skateboard coalition, subjected herself to the following interview:

Name: Michelle Pezel
Age: 29
Occupation: I work at a skateboard shop like a big fat looser.
Years skating: I think I started when I was 15. 13 or 14 sad years.
Favorite Place to Skate: I like lots of places... I really like Lincoln City... anywhere with my pals.
Tell us a little about the skate scene in Vancouver: Its a good time, we're all friends up here. Its nice and friendly, not so kooky.
Most awesome thing about antisocial: We sell skateboards, have mini ramp, are open everyday, girls work here.
What else do you do besides work/skate: Ride a motorbike, ride a bicycle, hang out with friends.
Advice to other girl skaters: Just skateboard.
Favorite Food: I like all sorts of food. I like the vegan raspberry cinnamon bun that they serve at the coffee shop (next door to Antisocial) everyday except today (Thursday). (Also) salad, Mexican food (Check out Budgies Burritos), anything that's edible and not hurting of the animals.
Any places I must see while I'm here? No, uh, Vancouver. Stanley park is real nice.

ORCAS ISLAND

Orcas Island has been a destination for skaters as long as the skatepark has been in existence. This park is epic and has amazing flow, you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

After the Skate like a Girl summer camps we (instructors and friends) headed out to the Island for a few days of skating and camping. There's a great farmers market, little restaurants, and a co-op... my appetite was back in full force after the previous week's "incident" so I was inhaling coffee, fresh pastries, and pounds of blueberries and sugarsnap peas. There's a built in BBQ at the skatepark so some of the crew was cooking up hot dogs and oysters. We skated till our legs were sore, went on little hikes, and swam in the lake. The whole trip was pretty luxurious and the last night I found myself at a campground that had hot tubs and a sauna overlooking the ocean. Wow.

SLAG Summer Camp

Food Poisening

I was tabling for SLAG at sub pop and I really didn't want the burger but I was hungry and it was free... big mistake. It was really bad, I mean the food poisoning, I mean both ends simultaneously bad. So I've been out of commission and converted back into a vegetarian.

If you see some guy with one rubber glove running around like a chicken with his head cut off and grilling burgers, heed the warning.

Seattle WA and SLAG

I arrived in Seattle and was welcomed by the 'Skate Like A Girl' (SLAG) posse. My welcoming included fried eggs, outdoor feasts, a plethora of skateparks with a whole crew of girls to rip with. If your in the area you must attend one of SLAG's super secret skate dates (check out their website for more info). It's worthwhile to be skating with a bunch of local rippers. These girls are super chill and fun to be around. Its definitely powerful to show up to a place you've never been and instantly become part of a community.

Aside from skating, I worked with SLAG to assemble gear for the week long summer skate camps for girls. Our first group was 14-18yr olds. They came from a wide array of backgrounds and ability levels. Girls who couldn't even push the first day were rolling off of curbs and doing kick-turns on the tranny by the end of the week. Others were dropping in and ollying onto ledges. Everyone was pushing themselves, bonding, and getting amped on skateboarding.

Aberdeen, WA

When I showed up to the skate park I found these three older women smoking cigarettes and watching somebody’s son. I was hitting them up for some info on cheap motels and one of them told me she wanted to see me skate because she had never seen a girl skateboard before. Her friend was like ‘I have, in the sixties I saw a girl skateboarding.’ I gave them some SLAG stickers and managed a weak boneless tail-plant. They were satiated.

As for the Hotel… I don’t really know where in Washington it is but I recommend it. I had to park on the lawn and go through this elderly man’s house to get to my room. He had a stroke and can’t see too well so I had to go behind the counter and ring myself up as well. I was really tempted to put my dyslexia to use during that transaction.

Toilet Paper or Subdivisions?

The thing I noticed when I got into Washington is that the clear cuts are right along the roadside. They don’t mess around with that 50 ft buffer you find along the 101 in Northern California and Oregon, so that you can pretend you’re driving through a pristine, limitless natural resource. In Washington they even have signs telling you if it’s a third growth Douglass fir plantation or what not. I wonder if anyone has tried to make a skate deck out of Doug fir?

Astoria

I missed the park at first and ended up downtown, pretty cool place. I went into this cafe that advertised serving stumptown coffee. I had all intentions of getting salad after my whole living off of gorp and fish & chips the last few days. However, when my lunch came, I found myself eating a pastrami sandwich and potato chips.

Seaside

As soon as I am out of my car I have another kid hassling me; “do you skate? Where’s your board?” There’s no place like… um, the skate park. This park has a crazy maze of bowls and pockets, all connected. Never seen a park quite like it, too bad it started raining after 20 minutes. Oh yeah, that’s why the grass is greener up here.

Cannon Beach

The park was supposed to have its grand opening today but it started raining so I left town. You can see a couple of kids practicing their extreme running, they were really stoked about the park and giving me a really hard time for not wearing a helmet. There’s a REALLY good bakery in the south end of town called Waves of Grain on S. Hemlock and Delta. They’ve got good coffee and wireless as well.

Nehalem

Nehalem has a masonite half-bowl with a cover, pretty sick for a town of under 300. If San Francisco had a ramp for every 300 people there would be over 2500 ramps in the city! I figured I could sleep there if it rained but this little kid was taking refuge at the ramp so I headed up the coast and took my chances hiking to the beach for the night, and risking the sleeper waves and tsunamis… So I hiked to the beach and it smelled of sea salt and sitka spruce and I missed the rain completely. It was epic. How nice to wake up to the birds on the sand at sunrise. That was until I got back to my car and had a parking ticket worth twice as much as my last hotel room.

Bay City

The tone was set for Bay City when I stepped out of my car into a giant pile of puke. The park is small and sweet but by no means Oregon’s finest. There were these three maybe seven-year-old girls using the ramps as slides. One was wearing heels (I didn’t know they made heels for kids) and licking the bottom of her friend’s flip-flops. The third had those shoes with the wheels on the bottom, and they all had chocolate or dirt or something smeared all over them. I really wanted to take a picture but it’s probably unlawful to take pictures of random children and post them on the internet (so I posted this beetle I found instead). This BMX guy tried to buy my car from me which was pretty tempting given my current circumstances, however I didn’t want to be stranded in Bay City so I hit the road.

Lincoln City, AKA Skatetopia

So that’s where all the skaters are. Seriously, Lincoln City is surreal. The park is ever expanding and despite a couple random bowls on the periphery, there’s this upper part with the blue paint, then the lower part with the rain covering, and now this insane downhill snake-run that ends in a giant bowl. Check out the picture of this girl Kim bailing at the top just after being inches from the coping. She got up relatively unscathed. Kim traveled here from Portland in a spray painted motor home with a couple other shredders. There was another woman from Portland on scene at the Lincoln City skatepark and a couple local girls causing trouble and ripping it up.

AIRSPEED SKATEPARKS; Stephanie Mohler Interview

Reedsport, Florence, Waldport, Toledo and Newport all have epic skateparks located on a 70 mile stretch of the Oregon Coast. When I got to the park at Reedsport I was blown away. Why don’t I live here? Then I hit up Florence and had an equally good skate sesh and a really good cup of coffee on the waterfront. All of these parks were designed and built by Airspeed Skateparks, which is co-owned by skaters Geth Noble and Stephanie Mohler. They’ve got skater women on their building crew and are dedicated not only to the best quality skateparks, but also environmental sustainability, diversity in employment, and community building. They have been busy this summer building a new park in Portland and another in Nederland, CO. Thanks Airspeed.

NAME: Stephanie Mohler
AGE: old
WHERE DO YOU LIVE? On the road mostly in North and Latin America
OCCUPATION? Large scale functional concrete sculptor / Skatepark Designer and Builder, Co-Owner Airspeed Skateparks LLC
WHY DO YOU SKATE? Passions pick us...................
WHEN DID YOU START SKATING? A decade ago
HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN BUILDING SKATEPARKS? I had a portable wood working shop that I carried around on my van while moving from skate spot to skate spot. I made picture frames from old broken skate decks with my portable shop and one day I was poaching the Southern Oregon Talent skatepark prior to it's completion and meet Geth Noble (present day Co-Owner of Airspeed Skateparks LLC) whom was shaping out the Twinkie on that job and a friend mentioned to Geth that I built these skate picture frames. Geth checked out the frames and said "you should build concrete forms for skate parks!". I didn't really believe him at the time (he was hitting on me) but time passed and the comment sunk in and my vision of what I could build expanded. Four months later I was living in Yunnan, China studying Chinese painting and I couldn't stop thinking about skatepark design and construction. I decided there to leave my job in China and move back into my van and check out the potential of skatepark building for myself. I volunteered on the Newport, Oregon skatepark and then the Newberg, Oregon project happened right after. At first I volunteered and after 90 hours of volunteering I was hired on the job (at the time Newberg was built none of the present day Northwest companies were in existence we were all hired as employees to the City of Newberg) It was on the Newberg Skatepark job that I learned to finish concrete and my passion for skatepark design and building was to push Geth and I to start our our company with the vision of designing and building world-class innovative structures, a company where female skaters could also design and build, and a company focused on developing more environmentally sound design and construction practice. Geth and I broke away from the other builders on the Newberg project and founded Airspeed Skateparks in 2001 and have been living the dream ever since.
WHATS THE WORK LIKE? Physically demanding and stressful but extremely fulfilling once the park is in the ground.
WHATS THE CREW LIKE? A family
DO YOU HAVE A BLUE ROOM ON SITE? Don't even know what a blue room is!
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED SKATING WET CEMENT? No, laugh.
HOW SOON INTO A PROJECT CAN YOU START SKATING IT? Sometimes within 3 to 4 weeks.
FAVORITE PARK? Our latest park Gabriel Skatepark Portland, Oregon
KNARLIEST FALL? Florence 2004 carving over the Double Death Hole
FAVORITE SKATING TRICK? Backside airs on vert
OTHER SPORTS/ACTIVITIES? Speaking Portuguese, painting the essence of plants, medicinal herbalism, surfing, backpacking, adventuring, plus reading and writing.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT SKATING? How little gear one needs to get such joy!
ADVICE TO OTHER GIRL SKATERS? Follow your passions, dreams, and heart. Know that it can be really hard sometimes to do so and there will be obstacles along the way but what you ultimately and eventually get out of pursuing your dreams is a strong sense of self, personal expansion, and self worth regardless of outcomes............take the journey it's what you were put on this earth to do.
ANYWHERE ELSE I SHOULD GO BESIDES SKATEPARKS WHEN I’M DRIVING HWY 101 THROUGH OREGON? Camp in the dunes, hike onto the beaches and into the costal forests, swim in the fridge water, and stop in the coffee shops and chat with the local people. Laugh.
ANYTHING ELSE? Na..........ride on.

Newport: a good place to get fish and chips

Waldport

This is the most amazing use of 6,500 sq ft ever! You can pump around the perimeter of the park and gain incredible speed, you won't want to stop. The park is in the trees and it smells like cedars. Where is everyone? Did I miss the tsunami warning?

Florence

Reedsport

Why don't I live here?

Bear with me

Oregon pace

Oregon is a good place to set the cruise control, and the ONLY place I've gotten a speeding ticket (and seriously, I wasn't speeding). I think there's this unspoken law in California that the speed limit is actually 9mph above the posted. Well, the Oregon state troopers mean business, especially when it comes to those of us cursed with CA plates.

Port Orford

I indulged on a $40 motel room overlooking battle rock. In the morning I slept in and still had the skatepark all to myself. There's a coffin to the left of this giant blue bowl and more to come. Some guys working for the city were there taking down the fence, which was only three feet high and half way around the park to begin with. I wish California would take some notes from Oregon and loose the high security jail bars and obscure hours.