Thrasher Land

[VulgarDisplayCFH]

Thrasher Land
September 19th, 2007 by Kilwag

Skate and Annoy » Archive » Thrasher Land

A comment in yesterday’s post about the Skate-Ball ramps got me thinking about an eBay auction I saw a few years back. The parts for a complete fiberglass skatepark were listed with a $30,000 opening bid, and as I recall, nobody bid the minimum. I saved the images because I thought they were interesting. These were relics of the 70’s rotting away in a desert somewhere, and for some reason I find that stuff fascinating. Someone spent the time and money necessary to make the molds for these giant prefab pieces, and maybe sold a few and then lost a bunch of money. Fiberglass seems like it would be not quite the best surface for a skate park. A little web investigation reveals the park in these pictures was likely Thrasher Land park in Glendale Arizona. At some point in time they tried to incorporate modern street skating elements into the park, and the end result makes Frankenstein look suave. The domain name (thrasherland.com) is parked at a hosting company and the phone number has been reassigned. A web forum reports that the whole facility has recently been razed. It’s amazing that they weren’t demolished in previous decades. So what do you do for the sake of history? Sk8parklist.com appears to be the only skatepark directory with actual pictures of the park, but even then, they barely show the telltale blue ramps. Concrete Disciples has a listing with no pictures. How can you not take pictures of giant prefab blue fiberglass ramps? It’s not like you run across them all the time, or even, ever.


Thrasher Land fiberglass prefab skate park

These are the pics from a failed eBay auction, circa 2004.














OldSchoolSkateboarding.com has a scan from the November 1988 issue of Thrasher that is an article about a contest at Thrasher Land.



Have pieces of Thrasher Land been resurrected? Arizona based AZPX has video on a post called “Thrasherland Lives!” where they appear to be sessioning some sort of blue bowl built in sections, but there are no clues other than the post title.

Anyone else have any Thrasher Land pictures out there? Send them in!




I think it's pretty interesting. Check out that last link, the 'Thrasherland Lives!' one.

[Eugene Pooneil]

fiberglass aside, that park looks way more fun than lots'o modern ones i've seen.

[gspotornado]

its like... a skatepark and a waterpark combined.

brilliant!

[smallhillrider]

Wait, theres an entire skatepark for sale? If I lived in the US, and had that cash with me, I sure would...

[VulgarDisplayCFH]

You'd buy for 30 thousand?

I don't think so..

[Terry Trimble]

I would not buy it for $3000.00 if it been sitting in the desert all this time the resin has been heated up broken down by UV rays over all these years.

[rawls]

Originally Posted by gspotornado

its like... a skatepark and a waterpark combined.

brilliant!

No, it was designed for skateboarding (but that is debateable, and it was debateable then too). Its a fiber-rider park. The company ended up installing 2-3 parks across the country (circa 7. I think I recall (from the 80's) that the one in the pics was actually the remnants of the one that was installed in new jersey.