A Tough Grind

The surface of the concrete may be consistent, but the shades of color are not. "We didn't want this to look like a big parking lot from a distance, so Joyce found some extra money to put in the coloration," Bernstein explains. "One of the shades is called 'Sandstone,' and the other's 'Santa Fe Red.' It's a nice touch."

He points out a number of light poles. "Lighting wasn't in the original plan. That's another thing Joyce fought for." Bernstein ascends a staircase to a 28-foot circular platform in the center of the park. "We'll have lots of benches for spectators, but this will be the main viewing platform. With the exception of this shelter, everything in this park is skateable. And I suppose some of the skaters may find a way to skate this as well." Black grind marks on the curbs forming the shelter's perimeter indicate that some already have.

Bernstein surveys the park from his 360-degree vantage point. He calls attention to a series of gradually deepening undulations along one border of the street course. "We call that 'The Fish Ladder.'" On the other side of the viewing platform from the street course are five vertical skating arenas, including a "Clover Bowl" of interconnected four-, five- and six-foot-deep craters and a ten-foot-deep chasm dubbed "The Big Dog."

There is a gigantic black tarp stretched over another bowl nearby. Beneath it are a dozen construction workers, along with Mark Taylor of the Architerra Group (one of two architects, who, with partner Dean Pearson, were hired by the city for the project) and local skateboarder Doug Fletcher, editor of the online skateboarding and snowboarding magazine FaceShot.

Fletcher is 33 and always wears a helmet while skating. "I'm too old to worry about whether it's cool anymore." He started working with the Skate Park Task Force about two years ago and regularly travels to the construction site on days when the workers are pouring and shaping cement. "I'm here to represent the skateboarders," he says. "We see things in angles and curves that others don't."

Fresh cement has been poured along one wall of the bowl beneath the tarp. It's drying quickly, and in Fletcher's opinion, it's drying in the wrong shape. "There's a bump in it," he keeps telling the workers with trowels, who continue to speak Spanish and more or less ignore him. "Guys, there's a bump."

Fletcher takes his case to the foreman. "It's coming together as an 'S' shape when it needs to be more of a 'C,'" he says. The foreman orders the workers to cut down and start reshaping the cement, which is obviously beginning to set. Time is short. Two men in hard hats start spraying chemical retardant on the cement to slow down the irreversible process. Fletcher draws shapes in the air with his hands. The foreman watches closely. It's an odd scenario: a construction foreman who knows next to nothing about skateboarding taking instruction from a skateboarder who knows only a little about construction.

Fortunately, the architect is there to act as translator. Taylor pulls out a pad and sketches the needed changes: "What we have is this; what we want is this." The foreman nods and starts working the cement himself. Ten minutes later, the wall has been redone to Fletcher's satisfaction. "You can see why a skater needs to be here," he says.

A car pulls up outside the skate park, and two skaters in their late teens get out with their boards. Bernstein calls out to them, "Just a few more weeks, guys." He thinks he recognizes one of them as a kid he ran off from the park a few nights back. "I caught him and a friend skating and told them they had to leave because they were trespassing. He said to me, 'How can we be trespassing if you're building this for us?'"

Bernstein readjusts his sunglasses, then smiles. "You know, I didn't have a very good answer for him."