Extreme sports lovers of all ages agree: The creative and efficient design of Eugene’s newest skate park is what keeps BMX bikers and skateboarders alike coming back for more. Bethel Skate Park, located on Babe Ruth Street across from Bethel Elementary School, is the largest in the city.
And although the 8,600 square feet of well-placed rails, flowing “speed lines” and high “air hits” make it a favorite among Eugene’s five parks, most “big kids” only truly enjoy the park before elementary students get out of school. After two months of vigorous planning and conflicts about its size, the Bethel park was completed Oct. 1 after a quick 10 weeks of construction, skate park designer Geth Noble said.
“The city only provides a meager, little chocolate of land next to all this open space,” Noble said, referring to the dust-covered area surrounding the park.
Noble, 37, of Florence, known to many locals as “Death,” said he’s not sure where his sinister nickname originated.
“I mean, (my name) sounds like ‘death,’ but with a ‘g,’ so it’s all just a misunderstanding I guess,” he said, chuckling.
As co-owner of Airspeed L.L.C., a skate park design and construction company he started with his girlfriend less than three years ago, Noble said he comes to Eugene once or twice a week to skate with the locals.
Noble said the city of Eugene contacted Airspeed about five months ago, armed with less than $140,000 to build a park. In designing it, he said he included an additional area for younger skaters, creating a park that “doesn’t stifle, but allows skills to grow.”
He said he also connected all the “speed lines,” the paths bikers and skaters can take to gain speed, to the “air hits,” jump off points where more determined individuals can “blast an air” so skaters and bikers can roll along what he calls “lines of maximum velocity.”
The park is surrounded by construction in progress, but the dust and debris are only minor setbacks for those who use it most often. The truest of skate park lovers grin and bear it while forced to do tricks and flips to a background of bellowing dust clouds.
Sophomore Jon Gagnon has been BMX biking for 12 years and said he sees more than 50 people at the park at any given time, with a large majority being skateboarders and about 75 percent being elementary school children.
“It’s pretty good around here ’til about 2:30 when the younger kids get out,” Gagnon said. “Death did a good job in making it very different.”
Senior Chris Bredeson, who has been skateboarding for 16 years, said he likes Bethel because the design is functional.
“Everything works together,” he said as he watched Noble perform a trick to the hoots and cheers of other skateboarders.
Noble said he thinks it’s a “bag” how the rainy season keeps skaters and bikers from enjoying local parks, pointing out that youth activism could inspire the outdoor skatepark covers needed to prevent acidic rain from tearing away at the concrete surfaces.
“The city listens to what kids say,” he said.