Monday 9 December 2013

Return to Zombieland

Zombieland started life as a small park in a warehouse in Romford/Harold Hill. It's still a small park in a warehouse in Romford/Harold Hill, but with a cash injection earlier this year, both the bowl and the shop have received a facelift.
The park comprises of a small wooden bowl with a vert corner extension with Red Stripe beer can coping at one end, a flatbank extension with a quarter pipe onto the platform at the other, a mellow hip next to the vert pocket and most of the bowl is furnished with custom poured concrete coping. On refurbishment, the bowl was shortened a little so a very small, 2 foot high micro mini has been slotted in between the park entrance and the bowl. Personally, I don't get on with this very very mellow micro, but the kids seem to love learning stuff on it and the bowl works much better now.
With Harley Miller and Aaron Clapham in on the deal, we met at Krazy Horse Custom Motorcycles in Bury St. Edmunds for breakfast. They do a mean English breakfast at the cafe on a mezzanine overlooking a very spacious showroom and workshop filled with various choppers and custom machines. Another draw is the well stocked Dickies clothing rails with the new Anti Hero x Dickies range in stock. The bird design with the eagle replaced with a pigeon is a personal favourite.
The shop and cafe staff were hanging heavily due to the work Christmas do the night before so breakfast was a little slow to arrive, and George got it in the neck for serving me burnt toast! Poorly people. After chatting with various staff, we left for Romford.
I have made an observation. Over the last few car journeys to spots it has become apparent that the subject matter of conversations on such trips is usually quite dark especially with a certain couple of individuals present. This trip however, little time was spent on the usual themes. This leads me to the conclusion that the older you get, the worse it gets! Age does not dictate social maturity. It's overrated anyways!

Before we hit Zombieland, we took a trip over to the new concrete skatepark under construction in Harold Hill Central Park. The park was muddy, the fences were high and there were men at work, so we looked from afar. It looks like a fun park with a multi level pool style bowl. 
Harley - bean plant

Harley - f/s tail jam grab
Back in the car and off to Zombieland in high spirits.
Rolling around it became evident that the concrete coping is experiencing some issues in places. The beer can coping is holding up well and got a good beating from Harley but a small uneven join in the pocket corner took a bite out of yours truly early in the session! 
It became a fairly mellow and playful session once we'd all had enough of trying to make the 'crete grind and things started to evolve into lip tricks on the small section of metal coping and hip tricks for me & Ron and a bean plant, smith grinds and such on the vert extension and a tail jam frontside air on the wall above the Red Stripes. With these monsters in the bag I thought my camera was bound for its case. But no, Harley had a little more.

Harley - wall ride b/s disaster revert
Wall ride b/s Disaster Revert to be exact, boosting way out above the platform.
I took this from the doorway into the park, over the micro mini. With 3 flashes placed closer to Harley than I was, I managed to shoot in a style I've wanted to replicate for ages. Looking in on a lit scene, not shooting from within the lit area. I managed a similar thing in Euston last week in the dark, but the focus on this is better. I like it.
And so, after a good session with Jay we said our fair-wells and loaded the car. I hope Jay found the deck Aaron left against the wall. Your collection is getting serious now Jay man!

Support your local, and not so local. Go skate Zombieland.