Pools at Foreclosed Homes Transformed into Illegal Sk8 Ramps

Well, this is one effect of the housing meltdown I didn't see coming -- a resurgence of hardcore sk8 culture. Skaters in Southern California are repurposing dried-out pools in the backyards of abandoned, foreclosed homes, cleaning them out and transforming them into illicit skate parks. Let a thousand reverse ollies bloom. Snip from New York Times article by Jesse McKinley and Malia Wollan:

In these boom times for skaters, [a 27-year old Fresno skateboarder whose alias is Josh] Peacock travels with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buckets, shovels and a push broom, risking trespassing charges in the pursuit of emptying forlorn pools and turning them into de facto skate parks.

“We can just hit them back to back,” said Mr. Peacock, who preferred to give his skateboarding name because of the illegality of his activities.

Skaters are coming to places like Fresno from as far as Germany and Australia. Mr. Peacock said his floor and couch were covered by sleeping bags of visiting skateboarders each weekend.

Some skateboarders use realty tracking sites like realquest.com and realtor.com to find foreclosed houses with pools, while others trawl through satellite images from Google Earth. On the Web site skateandannoy.com, where skaters trade tips about how to find and drain abandoned pools, one poster wrote about the current economic malaise. “God bless Greenspan,” the post read, “patron saint of pool skatin’.”

Skaters Jump In as Foreclosures Drain the Pool (NYT, Photo: Jim Wilson)

• [bernie]

  Tom – if the pool is full, I believe the owners will be held liable if someone drowns there while they are gone. (i think)

  My favorite part of this article is this photo which goes to show that skate photography isn’t as easy as it looks – the guy is clearly bailing:

  http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/29/us/29pools.large2.jpg

  • [Antinous]

    Based on my experience, insurance companies are much more nervous about empty pools than full ones. They threatened to cancel me if I didn’t get it finished and filled.

• [gollux]

  Start paying them to do this. In mosquito country, this is much needed vector control to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds. Add to the kit, mosquito control discs to be left behind to prevent mosquito breeding in any water that might accumulate during rainfall.

• [Anonymous]

  This is eerily similar to the skating in empty pools that was done by the Z Boys in the 1970′s in Los Angeles. At that time it wasn’t foreclosed homes, but rather still-occupied homes with pools drained due to the drought.

  See the documentary “Dogtown and Z-Boys.”

• [jaypee]

  Note to Xeni: A ramp is a ramp, a pool is a pool.

• [Dan]

  Related, but in my opinion, much cooler:

  http://www.charlotteobserver.com/business/story/388121.html

• [tishykb]

  Sounds fun, yea, till you actually buy one of these homes and have to have your pool replastered because the dry, hot las vegas sun baked the crap out of the empty pool and cracked the plaster, or at very least have to repaint the pool because of the graffiti… thanks to the skate rats here, i’ll take my $5000 for the replastering now please. and another few bucks to fix the drain covers you smashed in… hey, i was a kid once, but as s’far as i’m concerned, go to a local skate park and skate there. quit doing damage to people’s (future) homes.

  (and really, you should never drain a pool, it’s not to much a problem here in vegas but in most cities the water table is pretty high, and a drained pool can eventually pop out of the ground and float on the water table like a rubby ducky in your bath tub. not good.)

• [Joe]

  Given the West Nile virus issue, if these guys drain any abandoned swimming pools that were left full, they are doing a public service (getting rid of mosquito breeding grounds).

• [MomTheBlog]

  ha – the perfect place to skateboard – plus you can use the slide and really break your neck :P

• [Anonymous]

  #36 and #43

  I skate, and I skate pools when someone else finds them and takes me to them…and it takes a long long time to learn and master them (especially if you’re all grown up when you start out). I assume that graf artists can legitimately say the same thing about their “sport.” And my point is that one thing is rarely the other, simply because there’s not enough time and energy to dedicate to both if one were so inclined.

  My impression is that the people who skate and the people who “write,” the graf crowd, are two distinct groups with little crossover. They both take advantage of unregulated space and use it to pursue happiness, only the skaters must do it during the day when they can SEE and the graffists must do it at night to avoid being caught.

  I’ve often skated a spot into the dusk hour, even a public skatepark, on one day, and then returned the next day to find it completely blanketed in half-ass graffiti (it’s never the high quality stuff that gets into skatespots, somehow, it’s usually the wannabes…)

• [Tom Hale]

  Quick!, someone photoshop some helmets onto those kids in the photos. Remember, safety first!

• [bertin01]

  Check out the Skate Deck Show taking place at Columbia College Chicago March 6 – April 2

  Click on the link and scroll down to reSESSION

  http://www2.colum.edu/sgc/Exhibitions.html

• [Nomade Moderne]

  Interesting that the article does not mention that fact that the entire style of skateboarding you see today was partially invented and perfected in empty swimming pools during a California drought as it allowed for moves similar to surfing. See the excellent documentary: Dogtown and Z-Boys.

• [Anonymous]

  Haha, this is awesome. If anything, it should be a boom to the real estate market. Someone please turn a house into a skateboarding shop and hotel with the pool in the backyard.

• [ArtF]

  Ah, the memories….nothing better in the world than grinding some nice pool coping.

• [Darryl]

  I remember seeing a teaser for a documentary about skaters draining and riding pools in the Oakland hills after the 1991 fire (my high school English teacher lost her house up there — I don’t remember her having a pool though).

  Anyways, it was on Current TV, and here’s the link: http://current.com/items/76390102/skating_through_the_ashes.htm

• [Cowicide]

  And the skaters and surfers shall inherit the Earth.

  http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/waveheight.html

  P.S. Note to jaypee

• [SpaceMonkeyX]

  It’s all fun and games until some skater breaks his leg and sues the bank for not properly securing the backyard fence, which would have prevented the skater from trespassing.

  I joke, but you know it’s gonna happen.

• [Itsumishi]

  @ #23 Frank_in_Virginia

  This skateboarding isn’t a crime.

  The trespassing is, the skateboarding is just incidental. And whilst there is a chance that some kid could sue for damages after hurting himself in a pool, the event is quite unlikely. Skateboarding kids fall over and hurt themselves constantly, they understand this risk and accept it.

  People that sue each other over things that are their own fault are whats wrong with so much of this world (and the reason kids can’t have fun doing all the things we did!)

• [codereduk]

  Funny enough, I’ve just been re-watching my DVD of Dogtown and Z-Boys. I’m sure that’s where these posers got this idea from.

  The writer of Ecclestiases is correct, there really is nothing new under the sun.

• [Maddy]

  #36 — you’d paint over skater graffitti? really?

• [Takuan]

  if you stretch polyethelene film over the top and put a potted plant on the bottom, is it a greenhouse?

• [diluded000]

  I was doing this down at a drained municipal pool in Atlanta in, what 1977? The photo reminded me of an old magazine picture of a kid digging into a cereal bowl filed with tile and the caption, “don’t ride what you can’t eat”.

• [Ernunnos]

  That is k-rad.

• [Anonymous]

  LOL at people demonizing skateboarders and the culture. Skateboarders are all growing up, and so is the sport. Don’t buy the propaganda. Jeez, ever since they started building public skateparks all over the place, incidents of property damage and crime sure seem to have dropped. Cant find a waxed curb for the life of me, except in front of a few skateshops around town. I am all for guerilla skating when done like this.

• [Dillo]

  Wow…this just warms my aging skate-rat heart.
  Everything old is new again. This just rocks :)

• [hassan-i-sabbah]

  It is if you’re Cheech and Chong!

• [hassan-i-sabbah]

  It is if you’re Cheech and Chong!

• [arkizzle]

  #19 CODEREDUK
  “Funny enough, I’ve just been re-watching my DVD of Dogtown and Z-Boys. I’m sure that’s where these posers got this idea from.
  The writer of Ecclestiases is correct, there really is nothing new under the sun.

  What exactly makes these guys ‘posers’ and not ‘skaters’?

  And since they are skaters (duh) they already knew about skating pools, because pool-skating never went away. This wasn’t presented as a new turn in skating, rather a new turn in pool availability.

• [Frank_in_Virginia]

  @10 “…they are doing a public service…”

  I don’t think so, nice words don’t make a criminal act “good”.

  Sorry, some skateboarding is a crime.

• [manicbassman]

  Just wait until the banks start employing armed guards to patrol the properties… I’m expecting Blackwater style shoot first ask questions later style guarding…

• [UglyDeafMuslimPunkGurl]

  hahaha nice. that shouldn’t be surprising to you, though.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    It makes perfect sense, I’m just sayin’ — was this the first thing any of us thought when we saw the numbers of foreclosures in the area? No, of course not. A lot of conditions parallel the 80s though, so sure, why not. New or reborn “street art” forms: a small silver lining to a huge cloud of horribleness.

• [Frank_in_Virginia]

  @24 It isn’t within the legal rights of these kids to define what performing a service is. They are trespassing. Typically that is an illegal act except in the rare case where you are saving someone’s life, like breaking a window to pull someone out of a burning building. I didn’t like the idea that this performing a service was viewed as noble. It isn’t. It is a means to an end, and the end is a criminal act. (@30)

• [Purly]

  Lemonade from lemons! This is seriously awesome.

• [Avram]

  Frank @21, the act of slapping some bold and italic tags around the word “is” doesn’t actually make a weak argument stronger. Joe pointed out that these skateboarders are performing a service — draining abandoned swimming pools — that will cut down on the spread of disease in their community. And they’re doing it at no cost to the taxpayer. How is that not a public service?

• [zikzak]

  First we’ll be unemployed and bored, so we’ll take over the pool to have fun.
  Then we’ll be poor and hungry, so we’ll take over the yard to make a vegetable garden.
  Then we’ll be cold and homeless, so we’ll take our crowbar and make a home out of that abandoned investment mistake.

• [Anonymous]

  Just like the drought in the 80s. watch “Lords of Dogtown” for an entertaining fictionalized re-telling. the big drought was definitely responsible for skateboarding taking off in So-Cal back when, maybe this will be a revival?

• [Anonymous]

  While I wasn’t thinking of skateboarding exactly, when the downturn became obvious, a number of us began anticipating a resurgence of punk-rock culture. For example: outskirts of Scottsdale, AZ kind of sucks for live entertainment. But it might suck a lot less now that there’s all this cheap housing! It could be like the set of Repo Man or something.

• [Takuan]

  the day the banks start guarding empty properties is also the day they will all catch fire.

• [Takuan]

  they could throw a few gallons of poison into each pool.

• [Sean Craven]

  This is officially my second-favorite use for abandoned swimming pools.

  My number one?

  Well, it seems that since no-one’s really taking responsibility for these pools they’re turning into breeding grounds for mosquitoes, some of which carry West Nile…

• [minTphresh]

  we used to do this back in the 1980′s! oh, to be young again! i recently found my old stick and took it out to the sk8 park. man, am i old!

• [Tom Hale]

  Come on – they’re trespassing aren’t they? And, someone above was correct, if they were to be injured in one of these pools, some bank would probably get sued for not filling it in when the previous owner was forced to leave. The best thing for the kids to do with the unmaintained pools would be to add some mosguitofish, throw in some aquatic plants and make a nice little pond. Throw in a few crappie and in a few months, you’ll have yourself a secret fishing hole. Teenage skateboarders do enjoy maintaining ponds and fishing – right?

  Well, that was probably a bad idea – fill it up. The next owner can always have it dug out.

• [edluv]

  not to get all defensive about my town, but fresno’s not really in southern california. i’m pretty sure so.cal doesn’t claim us.

  we’re central california. about 3 hrs from l.a., and 3 hours to sf. and lest anyone think we’re some backwoods hicktown, fresno’s right around 500k people. even though our last mayor was alan autry (bubba).

• [Halloween Jack]

  See also the scene in Snow Crash where Hiro crashes into the empty pool and Y.T. is skating circles around him.

• [mjfgates]

  Now, if somebody were to just set up some ramps, people could jump from one pool to the next. Neighborhood skate park? Try “skate park neighborhood.”