With Extreme Skate Park Builder & Skater Andy Dobson
Interview: Andy Dobson
By Sabine Schenk
Aberdeen, Scotland
Andy Dobson is not just a well-known skateboarder but he also built the amazing skate- / extreme sports park in Aberdeen, Scotland. The park is really amazing. Pool, mini ramp, spine ramp, … You name it, they got it! Transition Extreme is probably the biggest indoor skate park in whole Europe. It’s not just a skate park, there is also an indoor climbing centre included, a basketball place, band rehearsal rooms, a café, … So if you ever get the chance to come to the UK you should definitely check it out. Andy is really a fun guy and he gave us some background information on the park and on the skate scene in Scotland.
Enjoy!
Please introduce yourself!
My name is Andy Dobson. I am a skate park builder based in Aberdeen, Scotland. And I have been building ramps for over 15 years. I am kinda helping out at the management of the skatepark and working two days a week at the skateshop.
You skate yourself. Are you more of a street or ramp skater?
No, I’m just an old skateboarder. Well, I think I am more of a street skater when I first started skating it was all street skating. There just weren’t any ramps. We have been trying to get a place like this together for 21 years. I remember when I got here for the first time when I was 15. We were singing petitions in the skate shop trying to get an indoor place. In Aberdeen there were lots of good skateboarders but there was no place to skate. So we had to travel to Dundee. There was a really good underground scene there where we would just take over old warehouses and built ramps up. During the late 80ies we had one of the best scenes in the UK. So I ended up moving there when I was 17. Finally I came back to Aberdeen and started managing the skate shop here. And I ended up just giving advice to local groups who wanted parks.
This skate park here is pretty new. I already saw that you have got a pool, a spine mini ramp, can you just tell me some more features of the park?
We have got a vert bowl which is roughly based on the Livingstone concrete park. It’s maybe a bit friendlier. Livi is not so forgiving. Our bowl is not gonna punish you so much. If you get it slightly wrong there is still some room for forgiveness here. Because we built it so well, it’s way faster and so smooth. It’s ridiculous. You can go so fast in that. Because there is so much flat bottom it seems a lot bigger than it is. The pool is 9’15’’ and it’s got only 6 inches vert. On top of that bowl we have a 16 foot wide mini ramp. 6 foot steep miniramp with an elbow in it. Main influence for that mini ramp was the Volcom ramp at the ASR trade show which had the elbow and a loveseat in it. We just bowled it out and took an over vert pocket in there. Extension. The mini ramp is pretty serious. Even if the bowl wasn’t here that would still be one of the top mini ramps in the UK. For the wee guys we got a 24 foot wide and 4 foot high mini ramp. We got a whole street section with handrails and ledges with some different size transitions. It’s not all the same transition right through, we also got some whippy stuff there. We got some smaller drive ways and stuff in the middle. The best thing is that it is all made out of wood. It’s like a concrete park, indoors, all wood. You don’t get punished so much. The final surface is birch. The bowl is all birch. The rest of the skate park is ply finished with birch on the surface. Birch is super fast, super hard. The park is 6 months open and it’s doing pretty well.
What’s the average turn out?
During the week there are not too many wee guys who get in the way. So we can just carnage. Hehe. We do coaching sessions in the morning between 10 and 12. And pretty much after that it’s hectic. All kids. Our staff are all bladers, skaters or bikers. So we kinda educate the kids, we raise their awareness of what they might be doing wrong.
You have a lot of BMX riders at the skate park. Most parks don’t allow BMX riders because the packs ruin everything. Aren’t you afraid of that?
Ideally skaters would say, ok, we don’t want any bikers in here. The bikers wouldn’t probably have much of a problem with skaters being there but if it was a park just for bikers it would be a whole different design. The design of the park is something for everybody. But BMX riding today has evolved into something completely different. BMX riding came from guys who took their bikes to the skate park but today people are building big jumps in the woods and stuff like that. The obstacles at BMX competitions are just fucking insane. If you did something like that for skateboarding there would only be 4 guys in the town who could probably skate that. Each group wants something different but if you design it for pro level skateboarding it’s all good. Everyone can use it. There is a huge BMX scene in Aberdeen. When we tried to get a place like this, those guys played an important role, as well. If it were just skaters and no bikers who came here there would be no way this place would manage to stay. We need the bladers to come in. We need the wee guys. We need the bike guys to come in, as well. That’s the only way this place is going to stay open. When we finished this park it just looked so beautiful. Gleaming light. The birch was just so white and beautiful. Me and three other guys built it. And while we were building it we also skated it. There were no marks on it or anything. Within two hours of bike guys being there there were black lines all over the place. The packs were tearing apart the woods, we were like, how is this park going to last?! But now after 6 months it’s all good. It’s pretty tough wood.
Since I am writing for a girl magazine, are there any local girls who skate?
Yeah, there are lots of girls. Since we opened about 20-30 girls from Aberdeen come in every now and then. We were thinking about doing a girls’ night here. But we were also trying to do a lot of other things. This park has got so much life in it. We still grow. We keep people exited by putting in new obstacles and stuff. We just got a new handrail. The skate shop here is going to pay for new banks and stuff. We want to get the girls’ thing going, for sure. It’s really important. I am stoked to see 30 wee lassies going for it. We just came back from a coaching session the other day and the best wee rider there was a girl. I just came back from a trip to Kopenhagen and I went to the Malmö park. There were about 10 girls who were killing it. And they just were skating for a couple of months. We definitely want to get the girls’ night going.
Who came up with the name Transition Extreme?
It’s got nothing to do with me. I don’t like the name at all. I was told, we just call it Transitions skate park. And to me it was a 2.7 million pound project we got to get the commercial for us. So therefore the commercial image is going to be promoted. They wanted to get the commercial aspect in at an early stage. And luckily we had guys from art school who were doing the website. And the guys who skate and ride bikes were looking on the website and saw what was going on at this place. Bikers were writing some stuff on the website and skaters, too.
Ok Andy, that was a lot of information! Thank you for your time and good luck for all your future projects!
Ps.: Andy was actually saying a lot more but I had to shorten the interview a bit. Sorry, Andy! ; )
I am leaving for Aberdeen tomorrow and I will report on the Volcom skate contest this weekend at the skate park. So keep checking our website for the write up on it!
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