Mikasa Skatepark | Skateboarding Historical past

This skatepark is an fascinating one, Situated in Mikasa on the island of Hokkaido Japan. Now we are able to’t get a date for when this one was constructed, it may probably be 80’s or 90’s, nevertheless it might be even later, we aren’t actually certain. This place is sometimes called the Misplaced Skatepark Mikasa or “The Dying Bowl”. That is the Jurassic Park of skateparks, it’s nestled in between excessive lush mountains, in a very uncooked and untouched a part of the world. Now Hokkiado is the second largest island in Japan, with the capital being Sapporo. Town of Mikasa was one of many birthplaces of coal mining and the railroad trade in Japan. It as soon as flourished with the abundance of coal mining, but with the closure of the mines, it brought on the inhabitants to fall quickly. Extra lately Mikasa has turn into extra of a vacationer attraction, with folks being drawn to it for its agricultural magnificence.

So this park is gnarly, we’ve included an arial shot from Google Maps under. We’ve got by no means seen something like this to be sincere. It’s made up of this concrete S. It isn’t linked to something, it is rather like a freestanding vertical wall that bends round in an S form. Within the centre of the park there may be this large, cylindrical construction, which nearly appears to be like like a flower field or planter field, once more tremendous steep and gnarly. There’s truly a giant tree rising within the centre, so it appears to be like rattling cool. The third part is that this insane vert pipe run that ends at this gnarly bowl. From the sky it virtually appears to be like like a bent thermometer or check tube you’d use in a lab for scientific analysis. The concrete and simply the look of this factor is so ominous, the pipe is actually steep and there are zero coping and even platforms, plus the sides look razor sharp, so it appears to be like like a rattling problem to skate. So as to add to the equation the concrete appears to be like tough as guts so stacking it right here and you’d grind off a couple of layers of pores and skin, that’s for certain.

Once you’re first taking a look at this factor, you would possibly suppose that that is some sort of bunker system remaining from WW2. The bowl might be the remaining basis for an anti-aircraft gun or one thing, its nuts. If any of you bear in mind Lakewood Centre Skateboard World they’d a pipe that appears actually much like this, so i imply this place may probably have been constructed within the late 70’s we do not know. The fashion is actually uncommon, its not your common skatepark setup, it appears to be like like it will solely actually cater for actually superior skaters, so if this place was open to most of the people again within the day, it will have been a dying lure for rookies. So we aren’t certain why it was constructed to solely cater for such superior skaters, there probably may have been competitions held at this spot, however we aren’t certain. We did have one individual on our Fb account hit us up and say that it was initially constructed for curler skating, however this appears insane. If that have been the case I do not suppose they’d of had a sufficiently big hospital within the Mikasa to cater for all of the injured folks.

Throughout 2001 it truly made the duvet of Thrasher. It additionally made a characteristic in a couple of movies from the 2008 Thrasher Japan Tour video. Most lately Thrasher went again to Mikasa and shot a video in 2023. Other than that there are a couple of photos on social media and a few pics posted on some Japanese skate boards. But the small print on its historical past are nonetheless fairly hazy, my first thought is that it was constructed in the course of the time that the mining trade was nonetheless fairly energetic and a approach to cater for the children whose households labored throughout the mining trade, as soon as the mines dried up and folks began leaving the city and the skatepark was used much less and fewer. It’s also mentioned that this place is situated on personal land and it’s closed off to the general public, but, there may be solely a preserve out signal and the skatepark shouldn’t be fenced off. The proprietor has forbidden most of the people to make use of it due to the chance of harm apparently. There’s additionally a household exercise centre situated subsequent door and marketing campaign floor shut by so it looks like this space nonetheless will get folks coming to it.

If you’re looking for a brand new journey, this place can be on the prime of the checklist!