Hillbilly Roller Atlanta Skatepark Tour 08

We had all been talking about an Atlanta trip for a while, and in late Oct, we finally all got our act together and decided to do a quick 1 night trip to Atlanta. I had been wanting to go down and check out the parks for some time, and Jason had said that he was wanting to take his son Cal on a skate trip for his birthday. Bob had been talking up a trip down there as well, and then we found out that the Memphis guys as well as some of the old Bulldog skates guys were going to be down there, so that got us all ready and focused to go.  Bob would be taking his van with his son Louis, Jason, Cal, Kirk, Ed, Donnie.  I opted out of the van ride with Ringmaster Loolo and his flying grommet circus, and decided to drive myself.  My car would consist of myself, Nate, and JD.  The trip was planned, the motel reserved, and the gas tank full, so it was time to hit the road.

Bob and his crew decided to leave a bit early in the morning for my tastes, at 5:30 in the AM.  JD and Nate showed up at my house at around 8:15 and we packed up and got on the road around 8:30.  The trip down was uneventful for the most part, but I had not been down to ATL in about 20 years and I was amazed at how big the place was and how the traffic had gotten much worse. It reminded me of driving in LA.  Thank goodness that we had brought GePuS with us or we would have spent a lot of time going round in circles, which we did anyway, but at least we knew where we were. We called the rest of the Hillbilly Rollers while we were on the road, and found that they were just arriving at the new Duncan Creek park and decided that we would meet them there.  We arrived at around 1:00 and there was a full blown session in progress. There were a bunch of old men there and everyone was shredding.

Duncan Creek is a nice park, designed by Wally Hollyday and built by CA Skateparks, the same people who built our park in K-town. It was very similar to our park so we all felt at home and immediately got the session going. The park had a 3 different flow bowls, a street area, and a mini peanut bowl.  The flow bowls were fun ranging from about 4’ to 8’ and one had a ¾ pocket. The biggest flow/pool bowl had 6’, 7’ and a 8’ round section that went all the way to vert. The small peanut pool was about 7’ and tight in the deep end, and about 4’ deep and really mellow in the shallow end  This vert bowl and the small peanut was were I spent most of my time.

When we arrived there was a big snake session in the mini-nut, so I started in the pool bowl and it was a really good bowl. Before long we were beginning to get it wired. I was getting grinds and some baby airs, and Nate was doing some airs, lein to tails and trying inverts.  Soon some of tht ATL locals came over and skated with us. There were a few guys ripping, and I am not sure of all the names, but I did recognize a few faces from back in the day.  Fred Reeves was there ripping, as was Brian Sneed, Jungle Jeff, and Bambi from Memphis. Of course all of the Hillbilly Rollers were having a good time, Bob, Cal and Louis were ripping it up in the mini-nut, Bob getting some 50-50’s and Cal getting some f-side airs. Donnie was ripping some f-side kick turns in the flow-pool. Kirk and Ed were getting their carve on in the mini-nut.  Jason was recovering from a knee injury so he became the team documentarian. The entire park was packed, and one of the bowls was being used to shoot a rap video, so it was off limit for a bit, and there street/reservoir area looked to be packed to the hilt, so I never really made it over there.

Soon the session began to heat up, so I pulled out my video camera, which of course made everyone start beefing. First I filmed the Rules and Regulations sign that stated “Skateboarding in a dangerous sport” or some other crap, only to turn around and catch Donnie slapping his head in the pool. Nate told me to put my video camera away or he would beef, but I didn’t, so he did. Nate rolled his ankle and that put him out of the skate picture of the rest of the trip. I felt sorry for him, but at least he could be the camera man and Jason would have someone to hang out with while everyone else was skating. 

We skated for about an hour and a half until everyone was tired and hungry, and then it was time to move on.  We decided to head to the motel and check in before we headed to the next park. Brian Sneed, Jungle, and Bambi were all staying there. There was even supposed to be a 3 story parking garage that we were going to skate that night, and we were supposed to be grilling out.  Sounded like fun. As we were packing up and leaving, one of the locals, apparently a cop or something asked us where we were staying.
“Were staying at the Motel 6 on Chamblee Tucker Rd.” Said Bob.
“Oh, really.  I would watch myself over there, it is kinda rough” said the Cop.
What???? Who decided that we would be staying there? Ah well, I thought, It can’t be that bad, I have stayed in sketchy places before.  Little did I know that I would soon be eating my words.

We headed to the Motel 6, and as we rolled in, I didn’t think it was that bad. Other than the closed down “night club” at the entrance to the parking lot, it didn’t look that bad.  Then we saw the type of people that were wandering around in the parking lot. “Mmm, well, it will be OK” I thought “Everyone else is staying here. The Memphis guys had stayed there the night before, can’t be that bad.”  Jason told me that when they rolled in a black hooker came up to them and said “Ohhhhh, white people” and informed him that they should not come out of their room.  But, hell, we’re skaters and we are used to the urban life and being surrounded by the dregs of society, how bad could it be? We should have just left then and found a new motel.  After we checked in, we decided to go up and see how bad the room was.  As we walked up the stairs, we were accosted by a group of very polite crackheads.  They all said good day, how you doing, etc. to us, but it was a definitely an show the locals put on for the tourists. The black guy and two white chicks look like they had not slept, showered, or been sober for days, yet they all seemed very chipper and happy to greet us.  I am sure they were already counting the number of rocks they were going to be able to buy with all the money they were going to fleece out of us.

We got up to our room, a smoking room across the parking lot from the office.  It was obviously a smoking room from the smell and the number of cigarette burns in the carpet. There was no trash can in the room, no ash tray, a single towel, a single bar of soap, no stopper for the sink, and the beds were sketchy. The back for the TV where the cable connects had been ripped out and then repaired, probably from having the TV thrown across the room. But there was a bible, but I am sure that half of the pages were missing from being used as rolling papers. I looked back out the door and down the balcony, and there was another sketchy black dude watching us from the corner.

I went downstairs and around the corner to check out the other guys rooms.  One of them was about in the same shape as ours, missing everything, including the TV remote. In Bob’s room, there were small nicks and hole in his TV screen where someone had been doing a bit of target practice with their BB gun.  Who the fuck decided that we were going to stay here? Oh well, I guess I was trapped in hell, so I might as well make the best of it.

We packed back into the cars, left the hotel and headed out for the next skatepark and a bit of food on the way. We were looking for Pizza, and we found a little place called “The Mad Italian”.  The food was good, and the name of the place was correct.  Our waitress didn’t look Italian, but she sure was mad that she had to serve us. We finished up and continued on to the next park, Brook Run. 

Brook Run is located just a couple of exits and a whole world away from the crackland hotel.  The area is filled with nice large houses, churches, sidewalks, beautiful yards, and a really nice public park, at the back of which is the skatepark. Most of the parks in Atlanta seem to have very nice atmospheres, are well kept, clean and everyone there is polite and nice. I think this is because the park is supervised and always have someone on-site to take care of problems.

Brook Run is also a pay-to-play park and this helps tend to keep out the bad element that can be found so often in the skate world.  The park is nice with a big plaza style street area surrounded by banks, ledges, and stair sets. The is also a really nice flow bowl with lots of levels, bowls, a ¾ pocket and a loveseat to ride over. But the main attraction for most of us was the big pool.  A modified peanut pool with a 7’ deep shallow end and a 11’ deep end with pool coping and tiles. The pool rocked and although the coping was a bit large, once you were on it, it slid very well. There was a great old man session going on in the pool with many of the same guys that had skated with us at Duncan Creek. The Memphis boys were there, along with Fred, Mark and a bunch of Atlanta locals, and then of course all us old hillbilly rollers from E-TN.  By the time we got to the pool, I was already worn out from the fist park, but I was able to muster up enough energy for a few pool runs. It was a struggle, but I was finally able to get some grinds, carves and cess slides over the hip in before I had to quit because my legs were turning into wet noodles.  Everyone was ripping, but Fred and a couple of the other ATL guys were really blowing up with grinds, ollies, 50-50’s and more. I dorked around in the flow bowl for a bit and then I quit to check out the rest of the pool session.

Before long I was ready to go back to crackland and mellow out with a bit of liquid refreshment, but everyone else was ready to stay.  Soon Nate and Donnie were ready to quit as well, so we swapped JD for Donnie in my car, and we three headed back to our Ghetto-tel. We stopped at the Kroger’s near the park, probably the nicest Kroger’s I have ever been in and stocked up on supplies for the rest of the evening. When we got back, seemed that the riff-raff was taking a afternoon nap, and we didn’t see to many as we unloaded everything from the car, and I mean everything. I took a shower although the bathroom was really sketchy, and we sat down for a bit of liquid dinosaur fuel and turned on the TV to watch the Vols get their ass handed to them by a much superior Alabama team. As the home team ass stomping began to get boring, we decided to see what was up with the rest o’ the crew. It all seems a bit fuzzy to me now, but at one point there were quite a few people outside of the Crack-tel 6 skating in the parking lot. Of course this rose the ire of the manager, who immediately came out and started to raise hell, threatening to call the cops.  Never mind all the hookers and junkies that were standing around, SKATEBOARDING IS A CRIME! A crime much more dangerous to society than drugs, junkies or prostitutes. Well the crazy skaters finally calmed down and returned to their rooms. 

I when back to my room, and Nate was passed out and no fun, so I decided to go visit the Memphis boys for a while.  They were hanging out and talking shit, so I did the same for a bit.  Then I left to go back to my room and realized I had left my new DSLR camera down there. So I went back and talked some more shit, and then walked out of the room without my camera again. I didn’t realize this for a while, once I had returned to my room.  It was getting late, and I knew the Whore-tel 6 was kinda sketchy and I had forgotten which room the Memphis boys were in, but dammit, I didn’t want to lose my new camera, so it was once again out into the dark crack infested night.  I began to wander down the balcony, looking in room windows, knowing that the Memphis guys had left their curtains open, I calculated that I could just wander around in the general area until I found their room.  Bad Idea.  After passing a couple of rooms filled with crazy people and passing a couple of guys lurking in the dark corners of the stairwells, I noticed that a couple of them seemed to be kinda following me. 

Now, I may have had a couple of beers, and my decision to retrieve my camera may have been based on faulty logic, but I realized that I was a white boy in cracktown with a wallet full of travel money, so I did a quick turn about, headed right back to my room, locked and bolted the door, turned out the lights and went to bed. I had realized, a bit late maybe, that no camera is worth getting mugged or killed for and that I could get it back in the AM.  I didn’t sleep to well the night, the bed suxed and I had strange dreams of being pursued by evil men all night.

The next morning, I woke up and looked out the window to see the traveling circus van getting ready to leave.  Suddenly everyone was hot to get out of our meth lab of a hotel and get on the road. Apparently, they had been having some problems with the rest of the hotel residents. Ed had caught site of a very tall person of questionable gender dressed in total white being escorted to the car by a small black man dressed in an all white captains uniform.  This was followed by a couple of freaks busting into Kirk and JD’s room and asking if they could have the room until checkout time after Kirk and JD left. The tale told says the they had to give them money to get them out of the room.  Needless to say, they were in a hurry to leave, but I was still half asleep and having not woke up in to good a mood, I was rather grumpy. I hurried to get my stuff out of the room while several people hassled me to get moving.  This did not improve my mood.  Fifteen minutes after waking up, I was in the car and following Bob with no idea where we were going or what we were doing.  We finally made it to a Waffle house a couple of interstate exits up and settled in for a big breakfast. I was still trying to understand why when I got off the interstate exit why this area looked so nice and suburban, while just a couple of miles away, there was a raging ghetto scene, even though there was no nearby ghetto in evidence.  Atlanta is a strange town.

After breakfast, we decided to go to some old abandoned ditch park.  Bob said it was just a couple of miles up the road.  So we followed.  After about 10 miles of going around in circles and getting lost, despite the fact that a GePus was being used, my car decided to bail on the wild goose chase and head for the sure thing at Brook Run.  Apparently later they found the place and had a good time, but we were already on the way to the pool at Brook Run.

About half way to Brook Run and the pool, we had a change of plan and decided to head to the Mountain skatepark that was in the same general area of Atlanta as Brook Run.  Mountain turned out to be a pretty fun park, mainly consisting of a large, multi-level flow bowl.  There was only one local there, but he had some good lines which we tried to copy until he did a face slap into one of the walls due to a piece of candy that had been thrown in the bowl.  The candy locked his wheel up and he was tossed face first into the opposing wall. Needless to say, he was not to happy. We took a few more runs to warm up, but then decided to head to the big pool at Brook Run before our energy reserves were completely drained.

We arrived at Brook Run around 11:30 and there were still a few guys left from the Sunday morning Old Man session.  We padded up and got out there. I was still a bit foggy, but slowly getting in a better mood now that I had eaten, but the day was still young and my agony was not over yet. As we got the pool and started to get going, I recognized several of the old guys there from the session the day before. Mark was there, and Peanut was working in the park office.  There was also one tall older guy that I thought that I recognized from back in the day. Finally JD said something to me, calling me by name.  Suddenly the tall guy looked and me and said “Jay Cabler?!! Your Jay Cabler?!!! You broke my leg!!!” Suddenly it all came back to me and I recognized who it was.  One of the old Ranchero Ramp guys from back in the day, Tim Humphreys.

About twenty years before, we had all been at a contest in Greenville and I had “taken him out” during a warm up session before the contest. We had both dropped in on the ramp at the same time, and some how, we hit, full contact in the flat bottom of the ramp going full speed.  I saw him coming at me a split second before we collided, and I ducked and schwunched down into a low tuck and caught him right in the shin with my shoulder.  He had to be helped of the ramp and was not able to compete in the contest. I knew he was hurt, but I didn’t really realize that I had broken his leg.  He told me it hurt for a few days before he went to the doctor only to find out that it was broken. 

Of course he gave me a pretty hard time about it, even though it had happened 20 years before, but I tried to take it all in stride as we got our pool session on. Tim was ripping hard doing f-side and b-side grinds and two wheel carve grinds in the shallow and the deep end of the pool. Mark was ripping, and JD was doing some nice f-side airs in the shallow end.  I had a lot less energy than I did the day before, and was trying to take it easy, but I got a few good runs in. After about an hour and a half, we were all pretty burned out and ready to head back home.  We piled in the car, beat, bruised, and battered, both physically and mentally, and started the long drive back to K-ville.

We had a great time on our ATL tour, and now we know what to do and where to go next time we go down. All three of the parks I skated were great, but there is still a lot of stuff that we did not get a chance to stop at, and the word is that there will be several more parks being built over the next few years. ATL has got it going on, and I can’t wait to get back down there and session.  But next time, I am picking the Hotel.