Colin Powers writes:
In ’94 I moved to Oregon and had to check out the infamous Burnside. A concrete vert park built by skaters on abandoned city land, how cool. Went with my old skate buddy, Peter. (We built a whole bunch of driveway ramps in ’76 and ’77 and then a halfpipe in ’78 as soon as we saw the first “Rampage” pipe in Skateboarder.) So Pete and I skated Burnside like the old guys that we were, trying to find lines that didn’t involve ollies or dropping in.
There was this guy absolutely tearing the place to pieces – finding high speed lines everywhere, hitting inverts and super-long grinds. Seemed like he knew everyone there, but when he saw our old school boards we started talking. Pretty high energy guy.
Turned out he was from West Virginia, doing a big west coat trip. Living out of some shitty little car with his kid who was about 8 and skating around with oversize pads. Had a young looking girlfriend, too, I think. He wrote out his name on a piece of brown shopping bag – Brewce Martin. Said he had a farm with some big ramps in Appalachia – next time I was in the area, I should check it out. I thought, yeah. right.
Over the years I’d kind of bump into that piece of paper, in an old wallet, desk drawers, always kind of laughed at the “ew”. Finally lost that scrap.
In spring of ‚’05, Laurie and I were talking about new documentary ideas and I wondered out loud what ever happened to Brewce – sitting at the computer… I googled – holy shit!!!! skatopia!
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