Here's the update on the design for the Lafayette bowl. We had to cut the size down because the contractor didn't realize that the last bowl was almost 3,000 square feet. I almost like the new design better though. Hopefully he'll be able to do the new design which is 2,300 square feet. The decks are only 3' on the new design to cut down on size. I'll keep you guys updated!
Just a little heads up... I talked to Jon P. (owner of Buck Nutty's), and from now on, every Tuesday will be bike night at the park and it's only $5 to ride. Everybody starts showing up around 5 PM so try to come out!
Tommy Manasco was nice enough to send over this little update for all you internet prowlers. Here' what Tommy had to say about the short weekend trip to Pensacola, Florida:
"Brock, thought you may want these for the site. Me, Erik and Caleb went to Florida for the weekend to stay with Evan and Dylan who was in town from Tulsa. Dylan broke his ankle and put the bone through the skin at X-Park doing 360 fakies out of the quarter. He had surgery and was on crutches the whole time, but Erik threw down some bangers and it was a cool weekend to say the least."
Here are some pics from the Panhandle Adventure:
Erik Stevenson with a boost up a nice slanted obstacle.
Evan Butts toothpicking a sub he built near his house.
Hopping a fence in Florida- Erik Stevenson.
I'll be leaving BR tomorrow morning for the Rock N Roll Tour and I won't be back til July 7th so I don't know how many updates will be posted in the next few weeks.
DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY!
First of all, let me say beforehand that I never want to work on another concrete ramp, much less pick up a bag of quikrete ever again. With that said, I will tell you how the local BMXers (and 2 dope skaters) of Lafayette built their second (R.I.P. on the first one) concrete quarterpipe.
Here are some specifics. I'll start off with the dimensions of the ramp. It is about 8 ft. wide and 4 ft. high with a 6 ft. radius. The deck is 18 in. wide. The cost was about $125 or so. It probably took over 100 hours of labor between getting all the supplies, building the shell, filling it up with bricks, and pouring the concrete.
Ever since some old school skaters built our first concrete quarterpipe, I've always wanted to build one. Then I saw the piece that RideBMX did a year or so ago and I knew I had to do one eventually. Well, the summer rolled around and I had the time so I decided to get it done.
The first and most obvious thing that I needed to do was build the shell for it. I decided that a 4' tall quarterpipe wouldn't be as hard or expensive to build as a 6 ft. tall quarterpipe, but it would still be fun. I didn't take any pictures of the construction of the shell because I didn't remember to. If you don't know how to build a regular wooden quarterpipe with coping, then you shouldn't be working on a concrete quarterpipe anyway.
After the shell was completed, I brought it to the location where it was going to permanently be and placed it exactly where it needed to be. This is important because once you start filling it up, you obviously won't be able to move it.
After this, I started filling it up with bricks. I chose bricks because I felt that they would be more consistent and self-sustaining than dirt (since the quarterpipe was not going to be against a solid wall). The guys who built the RideBMX quarterpipe used gravel, parking blocks, cinder blocks, and cheap quikrete from what I remember. I thought that bricks would be easier, cheaper, more organized, and simpler so I went with bricks instead. About 3/4 of the bricks were from finished houses where there weren't enough bricks for the contractor to stack up and return to the place where he bought them from, so instead of throwing them away, we used them for our quarterpipe. The other 1/4 of the bricks were given to us by Victor Boutte so a big thanks goes out to him. Filling up the quarterpipe with bricks was definitely the hardest part of building the ramp.
After we finished filling up the quarterpipe with bricks, we laid down 2 4'x7' pieces of square wire on top of the bricks. We bent one piece so the deck would have square wire on it too. This is very important because it helps to prevent the concrete from cracking after it dries. I believe that the RideBMX quarterpipe had old chainlink fence but they had problems with keeping it from sticking out of the concrete so I just paid $8.00 for 2 pieces of 4'x7' square wire and they worked out perfectly.
Once we had everything prepped, we purchased about 15 bags of concrete per trip and kept making trips until it looked like we would have enough concrete to finish the quarter. We ended up purchasing 48 bags of concrete but we only used 42. I believe the guys who built the RideBMX quarterpipe used a high quality concrete for the surface layer of their quarterpipe but we used the cheapest concrete at Lowes for the entire thing and the finish still looks smooth enough for skating (this quarterpipe is for both BMXers and skaters).
I called in Wesley Potter to do the finish because he's very, very, good at finishing concrete. This quarterpipe could not have been done without him. Wesley is crazy and he rules. Go buy one of his paintings from Politics in Lafayette. Pick up an Icon shirt while you are there.
I highly doubt anybody could have made such cheap concrete look so good. Also, at Lowes, if a bag is busted, then you can buy it for $.25 so we saved a lot of money by digging around and finding most of the busted bags.
In the end, it was a very expensive headache and I made Little Jeff and Cory promise me that they would never let me take on a new construction project again. Speaking of Little Jeff and Cory, I'd like to thank them along with Davey, Nick, Nate, Johnny, Lacie, Wes, Ryan, Ross, Victor, and the wonderful employees of Lowes for helping to make this project a reality.
Here are some pictures and sorry I didn't start taking pictures sooner when I was closer to the beginning of the project!
DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY!
DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY! DO NOT RIDE THE RAMP UNTIL SATURDAY!
Yo, sorry for the lack of updates, been busy in the BR. First off, David Gamble moved back to Las Vegas over the weekend. David was a good guy for the BR scene and his riding was basically off the hook (icepick the wallride anyone?). He's has mentioned moving back to BR eventually but only time will tell.
David with a Hippity-Hop at the Dirt Road Bicycles two year anniversary party.
We had some visitors over the last weekend here in Baton Rouge. Lil Broc Raiford and Colin Sanford came up to ride yesterday. Luckily the rain held out so the young guys could sneak in a session. I missed out on that due to prior obligations but from what I hear some cool stuff went down.
I'll be heading out of town for a Props trip on Wednesday so it will be up to the other guys who are supposed to update the site to keep you guys occupied. Until next time, keep riding.
Hey guys, sorry there haven't been too many picture posts over the last few days but I have been pretty busy. The weather was CRAZY down here on Tuesday but everything looks good for the rest of the week.
To make up for the lack of posts over the last few days here are some pictures. Some are new, some are old, but they all have something to do with Louisiana BMX.
This first one was shot by Tommy Manasco almost a year ago. Tommy, TJ and I took at weekend trip up to Nashville, TN to ride the concrete park and hang out with Chris Mahaffey. We were about an hour outside of Nashville when I called Chris to let him know where we were but he wound up taking a last minute trip to Atlanta to film. He's a super nice guy though and he wound up letting us stay at his apartment the entire weekend while he was out of town. All three of us rode the concrete park for about 11 hours on Saturday, which is something I don't really get to do too often. Good trip for sure.
This one is Micky Marshall shredding the Majestic Thrillseeker. Micky, Cody Miller and David Gamble had been working in Mississippi for the last few weeks but decided to come home a little early which is good news for BMXers in Baton Rouge. (Pic: Erik Stevenson)
Speaking of David Gamble, here he is doing an icepick in his soon-to-be-former living room. David is leaving BR for the desert oasis known as Las Vegas. Will he return? Only time will tell but one thing's for sure, we all enjoyed his stay here in Baton Rouge. David is a nice guy with some skills on the BMX. (Photo:Erik Stevenson)
Over the weekend I was doing some thinking about how to go faster on my bike. I took a page from the roadbike crew and decided to shave my legs. I didn't have a good razor so I thought that sliding my leg against some bricks would be a suitable alternative. Probably not the best idea. It didn't really hurt until I got in the shower, where my whole leg felt like it had been lit on fire. Now I have a new Rueben tire tattoo and a killer brush-burn across my left leg. So sweet!
That's about all for now. Big props to Ooti for posting the Lafayette news, even if it was about a naked dude. Also, big props to the Ooter for keeping the scene rolling in Lafayette- he's been working hard for a few years and it's good to see some stuff coming together. He claims I will be moving to Lafayette soon because they are building some killer dirt jumps. If that's the case then I'm there! Oh yeah, another shout out to Ooti-Tang for bringing my bag back from Austin. I needed that deodorant bruh!
Hey, since there is no guestbook, tell me what you think in the comments section of this post!
I got the word that the design I had posted in the news a couple of posts back SHOULD be the final design for Lafayette's very first concrete bowl. So hopefully construction on that can get started in the next couple of months. Here is the design again in case you don't feel like scrolling down.
Danny Josa, the Hungarian PRO!, said he's moving back to Lafayette with his girlfriend, Dori, on August 11th which means that he may or may not be moving away from Hungary sometime this year. Here is a picture from the first time I rode with Danny at Buck Nutty's. He didn't think he could do a turndown over this line but I convinced him otherwise.. December 04' I believe, wow!
I went to Austin recently with Cory and 3 girls. The girls did stuff like this and Jake Finley got naked and wrestled with them. Notice the grass on his shirt from wrestling, pre-naked.
My friend, Ben Kelgrin (one of the BMX directors at Woodward West) had a part in the new video "Cuttin' It Deep" so he sent me a copy. I highly suggest that you pick this up.
To help Brock out with his goal of posting a new picture 365 days a year, here is a new picture of Cory Meadows busting out a high, sweet, tucked 180 off the 911 memorial ledge in downtown Lafayette. A picture of him just hanging out too bruh.
I spent all night "finding" bricks for the concrete quarter we are working on in Lafayette. Expect a "how to build a concrete quarter because that wooden one you built last year is too shitty to ride now" soon. It's going to be similar to the one that RideBMX did a year or two ago. Seriously, I've been "finding" bricks since 11 PM and it's 6:12 AM now. Good night.
Hey folks, its Friday and the weekend is almost here. Unfortunately, the weather isn't looking so great but hopefully it will hold out. Anyway, here's a pic for you to gander at while you sit inside during the rain:
As you can see, David Gamble never turns down an opportunity to get a good picture. That's probably the gayest caption I have ever written.
Here's the picture of the day, this one coming from Erik Stevenson's camera. It's lil Pat on the concrete hip in downtown Baton Rouge. His bike has been painted since, and let me tell you, its a doozie of a paint job.
Broc Raiford is heading to the Dew Free Flow tour this weekend in Atlanta, GA. Those kids in ATL are in for some trouble- that kid was boosting the box jump Sunday at Dirt Road. Good luck Brock.
If anyone has any news hit me up with that email-bmxman187(at)hotmail.com
