Alameda Skatepark

This skate park needs some love. In fact, there is a competition/​benefit just a few days away.
While it is of a higher-​grade design, the concrete doesn’t seem smooth enough, as though they poured it and left without finishing it.
It’s expansive and there are a few things to ride, the best thing about it is where it is located. Maybe, it’s just that it was chilly out – 58 degrees F, but no one seemed to be enjoying much of anything, and usually skaters like it chilly.
It feels as though it belongs on the Naval base, where both of my adoptive parents once worked, because the base has been abandoned, and the skate park almost feels that unloved.

First time I went to this park it was packed with little kids (5 – 7 year olds). I had to wait out the crowd to start skating. The location of this skatepark is awesome! It’s inside the old Alameda Navy Base… you’re skating around history! The park itself is pretty small but it’s doable. Everyone seems to skate one line. the pyramid. There’s a bowl section too… but kinda small. It’s a gated park and free to skate. It’s adjacent to a parking lot, no bicycle parking (use the fence), no bathrooms… just one single port-​o-​potty, and a water fountain. Rules imply you should wear helmet and pads… no one does. Pick the times you want to skate, during the early hours it’s catered more to the kids. afternoon hours the big kids come out (drinks in hand). I usually skate by the entrance of the navy base for a warm up, then hit up the ramps. You’re surrounded by water and the view is amazing… cool to just sit and watch. Also if you have a chance to explore the vacant lots or walk by the water on the main street. do it. A cool and fun saturday fun day idea.

Not the best park around but still a good time if you like to carve around the bowls. Not much in the way of street but you shouldn’t be at a park for it.
Watch out for all the bikers and Rollerbladers, they can arrive in droves. Come here early to avoid any crowds.

This park is pretty good if you want to skate alone. Come here at about 8 in the morning on a thursday and theres only about 1 or 2 people here. Its peaceful to skate. No posers come up to you and ask for a game of skate. Just peace. Its a great park. Worth trying out.

I’ve been going to the Alameda Skate Park since its creation. Though, the past few years I haven’t been skating much, but have recently picked it up again.
I’ve seen pros like Bill Pepper, and the guys of team Spitfire and team Etnies here in its hay day. Overall, its a great park. A good mix of street and vert skating, and enough riding room for everyone.
You can always find a mix of skateboarders, bmxers and even roller bladers here. In the past few years though, this skate park has become more of a domain for bikes than anything else.
One of my favorite things about this park, is if you get a cloudy night, but the weather isn’t too terrible, the lights from the Port of Oakland bounce off the clouds and light up the entire park!

technically, this park sucks. but for some reason you find your spot and have a good time. I was trying out a new deck and was dropping into the bowl all day, carving it up. Then I went to the Martinez park on my way home and with the same deck, ate a plate of shit and broke my wrist.
I just sold that deck.
all in all, alameda is built like shit but that, and its location give it it’s charm.

I’m not much of a skater… I actually can’t skate at all. BUT, I did go here about a month ago on my bike, and it’s a good thing this place was empty because I fell on my ass a couple of times here.
I think this place is great, just because it’s the only one in Alameda, and it seems to be really popular with the kids.

Yeah, it’s a mixed bag, but it’s still my home park :) Good sized freestyle area, lots of varied sized ramps. It’s got a big half-​pipe pool thing that has an easy roll-​in. If you know the park, there’s plenty of long surf lines to ride. Worth the visit if you haven’t yet.

Last summer I lived on17th and Jackson in downtown Oakland. This was the best summer of my life.
I spent my weekdays localizing the city on the Bill Murray, a piece of shit rusted ass bike that I found on the roof of the apartment building. I would strap my skateboard on my back and start going for it.
One of the usuals was for me to head down to China Town and grab some tea and experimental foods then get on the #63 bus and ride to Alameda skatepark. Dude would drop me off right in front of the park.
Alameda skatepark is shitty: poured wrong, sticky coping, small, bad trannies, has wack BMXers, is in the middle of nowhere, is built on super toxic old naval base land (at least as bad as Berkeley, but without the seepage) and can be boring as hell… but does that make it all bad? nope.
There are several redeeming qualities of this place. It is so bad that is is almost good. The crappiness of it all gives it character and pad nazis are non-​existent. You could smoke, drink, turn up the ghetto blaster and blast boneless ones all day if you wanted to. And with the Oakland shipping yards right there, you sorta feel like an outcast longshoreman on lunchbreak.
I would skate the park for hours, many times completely alone, and then take the ferry home. (and last summer there were anti-​terrorist coast guard armed escorts everyday, making me feel like the US government was giving me machine gun skateboarding brotection) How rad is that?
Take Alameda Point with a grain of salt… it aint Oregon or Arizona, and it certainly isnt Bordertown. But sometimes the shittiness of it all is rad.
Goddamn I hate looking at the BMX dude with the ponytail pulled through the hole in his hat though.
***UPDATE*** big ups for 4^th of july chaos here. tons of illegal fireworks and hell-​raising. i’ve never driven so far the wrong way on a one-​way street on purpose in my life. total good times.