Gromfest Competition July 23rd at Huntington Hills
Royal Boardshop presents another Gromfest competition, this time at Huntington Hills on Saturday, July 23rd. It’s geared to skaters aged 6-14 and always tons of fun!
Deer Run and Midnapore Skateparks Update
The City of Calgary has awarded the construction for “skatepark sites 5 and 6” (Deer Run and Midnapore). The same team responsible for the construction of New Brighton skatepark will be working on these: Wilco Construction with Transition Construction and Radius Construction. These guys have a lot of experience building quality skateparks so this is good news! It’s likely these three parks will be the best-built to date.
Our City contacts have let us know that construction will start later this season; at least one of these new parks will be completed in 2016. New Brighton is on track to be done within the next few weeks. Calgary skateboarders will have more new concrete parks very soon!
Deer Run Skatepark concept
Midnapore Skatepark concept
Have a Great Summer!
We’ll be taking the summer off board meetings to– what else?– skate! We’ll still be updating the site with any info related to Calgary skateboarding. Feel free to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter too.
Have a great summer and feel free to join us at our regular monthly board meetings (second Wednesday of each month) when they start back up in September.
“So Stoked, My Dudes”
Unless you’ve been living/skating under a rock for the past two weeks, you’re probably aware of Calgary skater Kyle Conway‘s now-legendary appearance on CTV news. When asked by reporter Jamie Mauracher what he thought of the change to the bylaw that will now allow ramps on private property, he replied, “I’m so stoked, my dudes”, gave a quick dab and a “skurr” and skated out of the frame. All this after boardsliding the big rail at Southwood Skatepark!
It’s gone viral. In the past couple of days the clip has been featured on Metro Skateboarding, Gawker, Vice, Huffington Post, Mashable, Esquire, and the list goes on. Councillor Woolley tweeted about it. It’s even been remixed into a really bad trap song:
The reporter has been a good sport about what has become the meme of the moment. We asked Jamie about it and she said, “I’m surprised it took off. I just made him promise to answer my question and not swear”.
We got in touch with Kyle to learn more about him, his skating, and what’s happened since the clip went viral:
What’s the deal with the video? It was live, so did you plan what you were going to do with the reporter?
So, pretty much the reporter told me to just do the trick and then stop and come up beside her and just say I’m stoked, but my friend Connor gave me the glasses to use and said it would be funny so I wore them.
Did you think it would get big?
No I didn’t think it would get big, but once Metro posted I was really surprised haha.
What area do you live in? Do you skate Southwood a lot?
I live in Cedarbrae in the Southwest, and yeah I’m pretty much at Southwood every day.
How long have you been skating for?
I’ve been skating for about seven years now.
Photo by John Rajic
Who do you skate with?
I mostly skate with Jay White, Justin Stephen, Caleb Nicholls, Ben Renton, Cole Stephens, Logan Stouten, David Richard, Kevin Burley, and Jesse Foote.
I mostly skate with Jay White, Justin Stephen, Caleb Nicholls, Ben Renton, Cole Stephens, Logan Stouten, David Richard, Kevin Burley, and Jesse Foote.
How many Instagram followers have you gained?
I think I gained about 2000. I had 1400 before or something like that.
Did you get the idea from the “It’s Wednesday my dudes” video?
Yeah, I got the idea from the “It’s Wednesday my dudes” Vine clip.
Do you think a lot more people will build ramps at their homes? Any shout outs, thanks, or anything to add?
I hope more people will be building backyards ramps, and I’d love to sesh some of them! And shout out to my dudes.
Changes to City of Calgary Ramp Bylaw
Last year, we aided Councillor Evan Woolley in writing a notice of motion to change the outdated ramp bylaw which prohibited ramps on private property.
We’re happy to say that, on June 20th, city council passed updates to the bylaw which will allow ramps that are 6 meters long by 5 meters wide by 1.5 meters high (or smaller) on private property.
You can see how each councillor voted here. View the statistics of what citizens of Calgary thought from City of Calgary Engage studies here.
The bylaw isn’t finalized yet. City staff still need to do some consultation on the wording of the new bylaw. This will likely be completed this fall. We’ll keep you updated.
Read more about it in the Calgary Herald.
We’re extremely grateful for Councillor Woolley’s support on this. He’s one of the forward thinking politicians on council who has supported skateboarding since he got into office. Give him a high five or buy him a beer if you see him!
Go Skate Day 2016 at Millz, Huntington Hills, and Southwood
Again this year, CASE will be at Millz for Go Skate Day on Tuesday June 21st! We’ll have some contests, give away some prizes (thanks to our generous sponsors – see the poster below and please support them when you buy stuff!), and have a great time celebrating everything that skateboarding stands for!
There will also be events at Southwood and Huntington Hills skateparks. See posters below:
