One of my first sessions at our new skate park in Itaipaiva/Petrópolis, RJ - Brazil
As we expected, the park is full of critical mistakes. And that occurred because the company that won the public sale wasn't specialized in building skateparks =(
We even tried to contact RioRamp Design, a company based in Rio which built its major and most important parks, and they even GAVE us their project. But of course the town hall/responsible company took it for granted, ignored all the skaters from the city and kept it on their stupid project. Shit happens.
We ended up with a quarter pipe that has a shoulder in its middle; the ledge and the pyramid are rough as hell; the corners are of awkward quality. The best obstacle is the two-leveled-ledge-manual-pad, in the middle of it.
Despite all of that, the skaters from the city are really happy about it and every weekend until March it was f*cking full. Then we had quarantine and it reopened around August. Since then, every time we have a sunny day, it'll be full of skaters and we can already see the evolution of the youngers, the comeback of OGs and come up of new skaters.
It's been years since we started asking for a new skatepark or spot and a reform in the old skate spot - you can check it here - which we lovely call 'Ash Tray'. It was built in the 2000s because a priest didn't like people skating in the staircase of the local church and asked the town hall for a proper spot.
Welcome to Petrópolis hahaha
Even like that, we have a really nice scene, thanks to the resistance of OG skaters who kept and enhanced it since the 90s, when people skated in roller skate square and in front of the church I just wrote it above.
Special thanks to Edu Pessan 'Stuart' and SoMa, our local skateshop where I'm proud to work nowadays.