The One and Only SKATE PARK project status
The following news overviews some of what we've done with The One and Only skate park project in France before deciding to relocate ourselves and our dreams back to Fowlerville, David's hometown.
This covers the time of our summer events, 2002, until the construction of our final skate park in Saint-Lys (Nov. 2002).
(click HERE to go to return to project status archives)
Thank you for visiting and good reading!
November 2002:
DONATIONS to the Dream of Dirt in France:
We planned some super dirt trails in Castanet. We even acquired several metric tons and cubic yards of prime clay-based dirt. We bought tools and were ready to go. We especially wanted to do something for the members of Hopeless, the group of BMX riders in Castanet who've been trying for five years to get something from the town.
It didn't work out, sadly. At least not during our time there. We just couldn't wait. Hopefully, Castanet will do something for these great BMX enthusiasts living in their community.
Before we returned to the States, we split up all of our tools that were bought for the trail building project--wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, picks--to Hopeless in Castanet and to T-Crew, another group of devoted BMX riders who maintain the super trails in Lacroix Falgarde.
Here are some CLASSIC PICS of our French friends letting it all hang out on the trails at Lacroix Falgarde (some of the best dirt trails in the region of Haute Garonne) near the grtand Garonne River on the edge of the town of Lacroix Falgarde, near Toulouse.
Stephane Lafitte, a member of Hopeless, on BMX, Pierre Labadie, a member of TSS (Tolosa Street Skating), on all-terrain inlines and Mickael Gramont, downhill dirt racer, on mountain board.
May 4-5 2002:
EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!
On Tuesday, April 30th, we began construction of our modules for a street contest of inline, skateboard and BMX in the parking lot of the site of our May 4-5 event, modestly named Extravaganza. Here are some images of what we mean by "module."
Intended to be a preview or an aperitif of our future skate park, The One and Only, we had a street competition with BMX, inline and skateboard, a tournament of inline hockey, a tournament of softball, demonstrations of graffiti, juggling, longboard, freestyle BMX, live music, DJ, and really, a lot more.
For this event, we were on t.v. three times, in two different newspapers three times, and at least 700 of our closest friends came to a place they normally wouldn't visit, during an intermittently rainy weekend to participate in the best event of its kind. Actually, there has been no event of this kind before... Here are the posters we put up around Toulouse to attract people to our strange event.
Oh boy.
Here we
go:
Extravaganza
Here are photos of our first event.
Here are more photos of our first event.
Here are still more photos of our first event.
Here are even more photos of our first event.
The EXTRAVAGANZA, May 4-5, a la plaine haute, in Castanet, was not what we expected. We didn't really expect anything, because we had no previous conceptions. We found out it was a lot of work to plan something this big and complicated. Just two people (or, one and a quarter, with a year-and-a-half old boy thrown in).
David and Andrée were lucky.
Together, we were lucky enough to think of most of everything. We were lucky enough to have good people to help us. We were lucky enough to be able to do it, period. Lots of things came up that threatened to torpedo the whole thing. Maybe the thing that helped is that we didn't care about the event. We cared about the people and the time we could give them.
We designed and made t-shirts. We organized and planned and built modules from scratch. Buying tools, renting a place to build, organizing a work crew, etc. We organized a tournament of softball and a tournament of roller hockey. A competition of BMX, skateboard and inline skate. We organized and rented sound equipment for three live bands. We organized demonstrations of BMX freestyle, juggling, longboard, roller hockey, graffiti.
It rained. Power cables shorted out. Microphones quit working. People were injured on the street course. Windskate people didn't show up. Someone stole signs. Someone stole power cords and microphone stands.
But it was a real success. Because we pulled off an event that made 700 people smile and enjoy themselves watching and taking part in a unique event.
Will we do it again? Yes. The same way? Maybe not. We're older and wiser now.
Exposure
par Télé-Toulouse (TLT)
TLT is the local television station for Toulouse.
Our first exposure to the other side of the magic talking box was on the night of February 7th. From 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., Roulez Rose, the biggest skate club in Toulouse, held "La Nuit du Roller" (Night of the Skater) a soiree for inline and quad skaters at the Havana Cafe, near Castanet. There was a large percussion group, slalom demonstrations, skate dancing and a lot of music. It was a party on wheels. We showed up at 9:30. Guillaume was fascinated by the percussion band.
We were getting ready to slip out around 11:30 after a publicity campaign of putting up The One and Only skate park posters and passing out brochures. Delphine Cizeau, president of Roulez Rose, said, "don't go anywhere! TLT is here and they want to interview you."
In a far corner of the dance hall, under powerful camera lights, Andrée answered questions and described what our skate park will be, while David stood by, holding Guillaume, who spent the whole interview reaching for the camera and microphone.
A report on La Nuit du Roller, featuring us, was broadcast on a regional news segment called Le Journal on Friday, February 8th. It was re-broadcast every two hours, and re-broadcast again on Saturday. An expanded report, featuring more of the interview with Andrée, shots of the posters describing our park, and brochures and signature sheets, aired on a Sunday broadcast, Plus de Sport.
The reporter, Benoit Ruiz de Conejo, then invited us to be guests at a live broadcast about BMX. The focus of the show would be modified to feature our skate park!
On Monday, February 18th, we were at the studio of TLT in Toulouse, on live television for a 40-minute show called Oxygène. It was a special about BMX riders in the region and the need and complete lack of structure for serious enthusiasts of the sport. This was a round-table discussion with five guests and the moderator.
Andrée represented the future skate park and missing structure, The One and Only. Alex Baret, designer and co-owner of Twentyvelocross, a successful Toulouse-based bike manufacturer, represented the economic side of the issue; Monsieur Paix, adjutant mayor in charge of sports in Toulouse, represented the mairie (city government) of Toulouse, and Gilles Magrini, adjutant mayor in charge of urbanism in Castanet, represented the mairie of Castanet.
The controversial subject of this show was: Why did the Mairie deToulouse say "no" to us in August, when we were touring city governments in this region, Haute Garonne, with our proposal for a center for BMX, skateboard and inline skate---and why did the Mairie of Castanet say "yes?"
The show was broadcast live at 7:20 p.m. on Monday, re-broadcast three more times that day, and again several times throughout the week. It was a hit. The producers mixed great music and cinematography and the discussion was interesting. Guillaume added his own commentary during the round-table discussion, and a tug-of-war between him and Clarke (Christophe's dog) in the studio audience, added to a great atmosphere.
Andrée was super, presenting what we're all about: creating a "sanctuaire de l'extreme" (extreme sports sanctuary) for enthusiasts in Southern France.
Jumping ahead three months:
On Thursday, May 2nd at 7 p.m., the regional news program Le Journal, aired a report about an upcoming event, Extravaganza. A camera crew had visited le Complex Sportif de la Plaine Haute in Castanet earlier that day. They filmed the assembly of our new modules, interviewed our builder, Christophe Canitrot, and Andrée and David (yes, David spoke French on camera), plus they took footage of local BMX riders trying out the new modules.
As before, this broadcast of Le Journal was re-broadcast several times. In this edition, we were compared to the annual competition in Palavas les Flots, an extreme sports competition that lasts two weeks and last year attracted 250,000 spectators. It's one of the biggest things in France for extreme sports.
"Before you do this---(shots of guys flipping around on BMX and inline skates), you have to do this---(shots of our guys building modules in a parking lot)." That was the angle of the report. Talking about a local Palavas, where there would be demonstrations of unique team sports, juggling, professional hockey players, professional BMX riders, competitions of extreme sports, live music, graffiti, and a lot more. Yep, that's us.
Every Friday on TLT, there is a show called, C'est le Weekend, where the different reporters (sports, culture, news, cuisine, news, theater and film) sit in a studio and present the different activities going on in the region that weekend. And so, a discussion of our event by the whole group of reporters, complete with clips of construction and extreme sports events and interviews with Andrée, David, builders and riders, was aired three times on Friday, May 3rd, and re-broadcast on Saturday. This could account somewhat for the more than 700 visitors that found their way to our event during an on-again off-again rainy/sunny election day weekend.
On the Sunday, May 5th broadcast of Plus de Sport, our event, Extravaganza, was featured, with footage from Saturday's activities. And it was re-broadcast...imagine.
Altogether, we've had six different broadcasts on TLT. The sports reporter is very interested in our next event, called Dirt and Culture, to take place in September.
Newspaper & online
We have been written about five times that we are certain of--in newspapers and online publications. Photos taken at our last event, EXTRAVAGANZA were featured in a national BMX magazine, Cream. No doubt, there have been other instances where someone mentioned something about us, our events or our project. The nature of what we're doing is of great interest to the skateboarders, inline skaters and bike riders in France. And these people talk.
We were featured in the January 25, 2002 edition of O Toulouse, a weekly newspaper with a very large circulation. It's the main weekly Toulouse area paper. The title of the article is "Skate Park a Castanet: un reve a roulettes" (Skate Park in Castanet: a rolling dream). Beatrice Colin, a writer for the paper, visited us on January 23rd with a photographer.
We talked for an hour or so, and then drove to the Canal du Midi, to the location of our future skate park. Here is the article. It's still not translated into English yet, Mom.
The writer got what we're about. We're happy with her article. And lucky.
* Jumping ahead to May 3, 2002, a second O Toulouse article previewed our event, EXTRAVAGANZA. The title of the article is "Sports extremes a Castanet."
* Then we had an article on May 3 previewing the EXTRAVAGANZA in La Depeche du Midi, a daily newspaper that reaches the Southwestern part of France.
* On May 24, we had a super article about our future skate park, our story and our event, EXTRAVAGANZA in La Depeche. The reporter visited our event and had planned to stay only a few minutes. Two hours after he first arrived, he stopped by our table again (we had brochures, t-shirts and info on our future skate park) and enthusiastically said that he'd be happy to come to any event we did and also that he'd be very interested in covering any developments with our park project.
Another article appeared on March 18 in an online newsletter called Infosport.org. This newsletter is sent to professional sports organizations and all the city governments in France. Somehow, someone got access to the details and put together a pretty informative article about our park. It's a good chance they visited our website and adapted their article from the information there. Anyway, this is what was posted (hopefully, the link still works... if not, just go to http://www.infosport.org/sport/Actualites/archi11/160302.htm).
Look here to see the articles that were in print relating to the EXTRAVAGANZA.
Dream Extreme
An announcement was posted in the April 20th edition of the official journal of French associations. It declares that an association called Dream Extreme was created on April 2nd, 2002, by David and Andrée Weimer in Haute Garonne. This association, the journal states, was created to promote and support "les sports de glisse" (sliding sports--skateboard, inline skates and BMX and others like that). It would do this by organizing events, activities and demonstrations and constructing modules for competitions. Here is a copy of that listing.
Well, we created an association because it's much easier in France to work as an association. Just two people are suspect, but an ASSOCIATION is really something. In fact, until we get the park running profitably (probably after the second year), we'll operate it through the association. In France, associations are special organizations that enjoy tax breaks and assistance from the national and regional governments. And ours happens to be an association that will promote regional development and growth.
Our logo is cool. Well, that's all for associations for the moment.
June-July 2002:
Here is a description of our event. We want a one-day blast. We're starting construction of the dirt trails on our property. We've got a mountain of excellent clay-based dirt out of which we will sculpt the best dirt trails in the region. A local group of BMX riders from Castanet that calls itself Hopeless, will plan and construct the things, along with help from kids in neighboring towns and Toulouse.
We obtained a couple of pairs of all-terrain inline skates from a kite shop called Boomboree in Toulouse, and together with TSS, the aggressive inline skating association we're buddies with, we started really putting together a show on the dirt trails at Lacroix Falgarde, just along the Garonne river--these are the best trails, all around, at the moment. We're training for a demonstration at our next event. Sales of all-terrain inline skates are low because this is a stupid adaptation of the sport. It's too dangerous and too hard going down hill or trying to skate across grass. It's just hard work to get anywhere...normally. But on the dirt trails---oh boy. It's spectacular. The guys bounce around like kangaroos, doing 360's and 540's off the dirt sculpted ramps, doing heel clicks and other normally skate park-associated moves.
We also organized a team of five snowboarders/skateboarders to train on mountain boards. Mountain boarding is a great sport, growing rapidly. But nobody's ever picked up on the idea of mountain boards on dirt trails...yet. At least not in France. Well, we're going to build a special great big pile of dirt with a large ramp on top to give these guys good speed. We're going airborne!
By the way, dirt trails means sculpted dirt shapes designed to let a BMX rider fly through the air like Superman, using their momentum and the force of gravity to propel them into the air again and again. There is a technique called "pumping" where gravity and good timing are used together to let a person fly without effort and without pedaling, from one module of dirt to another.
The sole manufacturer of mountain boards in France, Kheo, is supplying some of the boards for our event. We met the owner at a mountain board session in Toulouse on the weekend of May 25,26. The owner, Chris Simon of Paris, is positively interested in our park and definitely interested in this event. There will be a stand of Kheo boards at our Dirt & Culture event.
The photographer of our Extravaganza, Aude Sturma, will have an exhibition of her photos of inline, skateboard and BMX; an association that does airbrush painting, l'Air Mural, will do demos and paint people, helmets, bikes, boards and anything that doesn't move; the DJ Bass Tronic will supply the great musical setting they're known for, Twentyvelocross, the sole manufacturer of BMX bikes in Toulouse will have a stand; The One and Only will have a stand, there will be a food stand, an MC to keep things exciting, a longboard cruise along the Canal du Midi and demonstrations of BMX, mountain board and all-terrain inline skates with best trick competitions. Et voila!
But before this happens, we have to build the dirt trails. We had to cancel the June 30 date because the town of Castanet doesn't want us to do this event. Something about too many events in the month and oh, the farmer wants to wait until his grain crop is cut on July 7th. So we start constructing the dirt trails after the first week of July.
the
FUTURE!!
During this time, from May until
June or July, 2002, we broadened our search to include any town that showed
an actual interest---beyond mere words. Castanet-Tolosan, we felt, didn't
feel that a skate park was a priority. They talked but didn't do anything
to actively support our efforts. We learn slow, but we learn...
Visiting
Palavas les Flots and other events in the area
The Out
Session in St. Orens, Roll'Heures in La Ramee, FreeRide in Villemur sur Tarn,
Activ' Air in Toulouse, Toulouse MTB Mountainboard Session, Skateboard Championship
of France in Albi
There were a lot of events in May and June (Ours was first! Basically because we stupidly planned it for the weekend of the first round of elections--France votes on Sundays).
However, being entirely objective, we checked out all the other events we could get to, to compare and to learn. We were surprised. We did a better job than all the others. The atmosphere at our event was evidently superior. Our event was FOR and done BY the people who do these sports. All the other events were sponsored things, financed by companies who sell shoes, skateboards or cell phones. The focus was on something called money, or somewhere else, like wanting to impress people, but ours was focused on just doing a good event because that's what we came here to do. What a difference.
We were surprised, and heartened. With no prior training, we pulled off an event that excelled, and matched and beat all the other events in terms of organization, unique-ness, quality, enjoy-ability, and all that kind of thing.
May 16-17 2002:
Miscellaneous
May 16th and 17th, our modules were rented in Pau, a town 250 kilometers southwest of here, for an initiation of BMX and skateboard. We organized a crew, rented a truck and shipped them over there. They put the modules together, the modules were used and seen by people, and our crew took the modules apart and returned them to storage in Baziege.
Our skate park is disassembled for the moment, in Baziege, under plastic, waiting for a home. It has been raining for a solid week now (as of June 8th). We're anxious to find a home for this great skate park. Basically it is a promotion park. One that we donate free to the town that wants our park to be there (and then later incorporate it into our permanent park).
We've had a second meeting with the mayor of Baziege. He is the vice president of Sicoval, a regional development organization that looks for projects to support and give property.
We're more busy than we can imagine. And yet, we're getting good at it.
People from Bordeaux and Paris know us, via the grapevine. People here walk up to us and say they saw us on TV or read about us in the paper. We have a great relationship with the kids and people in the sports we've contacted. Really positive. We think we can open our park this year, realistically.
Sept. 2002:
This dream would have worked in Southern France. Without a doubt. We learned that things move more slowly than we prefer, but that is something we could deal with.
Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week on a project is not too tough. But we, as a family, needed to be where we were comfortable, at least.
Strictly as a necessary family decision, David and Andree decided to return to the U.S. It broke our heart to not do everything we were planning for the extreme sports practitioners in Toulouse and the surrounding region. Truly.
So we did everything we could before we left.
November 2002:
Beginning the first week of November, 2002, we built the best and most unique skate park in Haute Garonne, in a small town called Saint Lys. Here is a story told with images.
This town had an adjutant mayor with a simple commitment to doing something for its significant BMX rider population.
We worked closely with the riders and built a park to their specifications, modifying our EXTRAVAGANZA modules (click here to see what we mean by extravaganza) and we added a new trick ramp. We organized young helpers from Saint-Lys in an apprenticeship to module building.
TLT (Tele Toulouse) was there, as was the mayor and a couple of hundred of the best and most dedicated riders, skateboarders and inline skaters from the region. A 45-minute super extreme sports show was broadcast and we got to tell all our friends, on this show, why we were leaving them.
It was bitter sweet. The best time we could possibly have hoped for. We'll never forget our friends and dream-sharers in France. When we build our dream here in the U.S., we will bring our designer and builder, Fabien Koudoyor and Frank Fleouter, as well as anyone else we can get over here, to work on the project!
It was a real adventure, one we wouldn't trade for the world. Too many people to thank and more good then we can describe.
This skate park is a rock. The wood is double-treated: exterior usage wood, impregnated with preservative from the factory and sprayed with a creosote-like substance after assembly on-site. All modules except for the smaller, movable, practice modules are anchored solidly into the cement. All modules are fastened together using Torx, anti-rust wood screws from 3 to 8 inches in length. All metal rails and metal plates were treated with industrial rust-remover and painted with outdoor long life anti-corrosion black paint. All guard rails were secured with galvanized brackets and extra-long Torx screws. SOLID.
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a bientôt!