As you drive through many of the neighborhoods in this area there seems to be little differences in shapes and colors. I am not sure how many faux-adobe houses and apartments there are in this town, but they all share common traits such as white or beige coloring, a clay roof and a small, water wasting grass yard that has a couple of palm trees in it. Its like someone forgot that this is the desert and decided that it was to hard to part with their So-Cal lifestyle that they had to bring it with them.
Lets thank whoever decided on erecting this structure and surroundings. Wow, what a beautiful structure. McDowell Mountain Ranch Park is a multi use building that houses a gym, an aerobics/dance/yoga room, a swimming pool with a water-slide and one of those pools that is made to flow like a river (looks sweet for those hot days) and the skate park. The building itself is a work of art; constructed of metal that has slowly turned a rust color accented by simple, natural wood stripes and areas of opaque glass. The simplicity of the structure and its natural surrounding give it a feel of belonging and not placed there without thought or consequence.
We arrive to be greeted by several skater kids all very curious about what we where doing in their space. One young kid asked if it was someone’s birthday and when I explained to him what it was, he was like ‘oh ya, I’ve been reading about this’, and skated off to tell the others in the park. Within an hour there where over 40 skaters doing their saturday ritual of going from one end of the park to the other taking jumps and trying out a new moves. If you are not familiar with skate parks there are some things you need to know like the obvious of not standing in a skaters path or even on the cement… think of it being bad form like when someone steps onto the tennis court in the middle of your long rally or someone walking across a green as you are swinging a club. Yes, skating is a sport and now days parents who grew up skating are doing it next to their kids in much the same way you might have gone and toss the baseball around with a son or daughter.
It was interesting to see how people who where not familiar with the space entered it. Instead of going through an entrance way on the side of the skate park, many resorted to going into the building and avoiding the skate park and would emerge from a door behind the ball. I was asked by one woman where the best place to view the ball was as I pointed across the park to a seating area in a far corner. She had a look of puzzlement and not quite sure how to get there. What was even more interesting was how she turned around went through the building and walked the outer edge of the fence to a spot just behind where I had pointed, she took a couple of pictures and left. Many people and families would only look at the ball from what I would call the back side of the ball avoiding the skate area. It was quite silly.
Many viewers and skaters came and went. One little guy who I am guessing to be 12 years old came up and asked me about the ball and what it was about. I asked him what he thought it was about and he wasn’t sure. I explained to him what the artist intended to a very perplexed and confused look. I then said; “have you ever seen as many old people out here as you have today?” (old being over 30), “uh, no”, “maybe the artist is trying to show that skaters arrant as bad as people think they are and is trying to show them that by bringing them here”. He then looks over his shoulder at his concrete playground, turns to me with a smile on his face and says; “thats cool”, and then skated off.
Is this project about the ball or the interaction between groups of people who may have never come together but for a couple of minutes in a suburban skate park?
We finish our day with one last bit of excitement. As I am taking the ball back to the van, I decide to take it through the park. I ask a skater if he wants to ride the ball down a ramp on the way to the van. After his short trip another skater asks if he can jump over the ball….. uh, why not. What came of that was captured in images that are below this post.
RedBall in the park
Jumping the RedBall on the way out.