These kids were SOOO excited! We got them in a few days before it was officially opened and a city counsellor was pissed. Pissed! Apparently he has kids of his own and he didn't know it was going on. He tried to shut us down but the bond was still with the contractor and the counsellor couldn't do anything. For once, insurance wins one for the kids.
Houma Louisiana had a skate shop for years with no skate park. When the park was finally approved, they started construction in september but it rained all winter and everything fell way behind. They brought a concrete crew in from Texas to trowel out the surface and when they were done, they did a crawfish boil, and here we were invited, just before we shot this. I don't know that they ever got any images because they were heading off to Mobile Alabama and I lost their contact.
Some of these skaters were really pretty good. One of these guys said he had a sponsorship deal, though I've heard that at parks a couple times.
We tried staging some, in hindsight, it looks pretty fake.
This kid was so gung-ho to be the center piece of the whole shoot, so we lined up the other skaters on the rail and tried to get them to cheer on the little one. But then it was too scary to be in the big bowl with all the big kids so I guess we did this instead.
The architecture firm that designed it (Duplantis) didn't have a big history with photography but did have one architect who was really interested. Turned out he wasn't very interested in the shots with the kids, but we had to do it. I mean, prior to opening day? Really all we did was go to the skate shop and tell the owner what we were planning. He assembled everyone with model releases and took care of the whole thing, then missed it all because the shop was open and he was working the store.
These are what the architect was after. We were unsure of the wet concrete / dry concrete, then it rained just a wee bit and the decision was made for us. He didn't really want the shots with the random kids in them, possibly because his own weren't there, probably because his boys were pretty young. They did come on this the second day, were super excited to have the whole park to themselves. It literally rained five minutes in.
Shipping container bathrooms. I just love Kyle. He is so badass. He built the K+B building from the last post. He's a boy from the bayou who went to work in the big city, then came back to his hometown. And brought this:
For them:
We posted a couple images on google maps and google didn't believe it was really a skate park. It took weeks for them to approve our pin placement, as though no one in southern Louisiana would ever have something this cool and it was too hard to believe.
Shipping container bathrooms. It is pretty hard to believe.