Remz ? Mei you. Razors ? Mei you.

Old skates

Shanghai drives me crazy sometimes. We here have a 70 Million RMB skatepark (more than 8 Million US$) but no correct skate shop. You sure can find some boards and fitness skates at the Century Park subway station but nothing really serious, as far as I know.

Shanghai is a huge spot for aggressive skating with all its new buildings and their rails, stairs, walls and smooth surfaces, and it would take neither many people nor many time to convert even a small part of the Shanghaiese population. After all, even a small percentage of more than 20 Million of people should be enough to invade the streets and populate the SMP skatepark.

If you are stuck in China without your aggressive inline skates you have three solutions :

  1. go to Shenzhen or Hong Kong
  2. order on a website which delivers in China
  3. face the 5 meters depth bowl with your little sister’s Playskool skates

(one of these solutions leads you to death for sure)

This post is a good occasion to say one or two more things about the SMP skatepark which opened a few months ago. It certainly is big, it may even really be the biggest in the world. But one of its goal should be to develop skating in Shanghai, and I doubt that a beginner would find seducing the idea of jumping in the 6 meters per 42 meters half-pipe. Most of the park is like this : big, too big. The maintenance of these 12 000 square meters is also preoccupying ; many elements of the competition area, which turns to be much more accessible than the rest, are already rusting. Many bowls are often polluted by dust, leaves, cigarettes and sometimes (sigh) dead mice. A few weeks ago, one of the bowls bottom was full of iced water. And I do not even talk about parading with their car or motorcycle on it…

I do not claim to be a professional skater, I hardly can do the basic tricks, but this money could have been used more wisely. Maybe they could have built several smaller skateparks in less isolated locations. And now that it is done, they could spend money in maintaining their investment.

I remember being alone in this skatepark, really alone. I remember also tourists shipped by bus spending 5 minutes facing this curiosity. I would like to think that it will change.