{"id":54659,"date":"2014-05-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=54659"},"modified":"2022-06-07T19:01:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T02:01:22","slug":"duty-now-for-the-future-retrospective-chris-mearkle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/duty-now-for-the-future-retrospective-chris-mearkle\/","title":{"rendered":"Duty Now For the Future Retrospective – Chris Mearkle"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE RETROSPECTIVE <\/strong><\/p>\n

CHRIS MEARKLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

INTERVIEW BY JIM MURPHY<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHOTO BY BRYAN LATHROP<\/strong><\/p>\n

We started the Duty Now for the Future articles to honor those skateboarders building concrete for other skateboarders. These skaters are dedicated to building skate structures, day in and day out, where quality is job one and money doesn’t matter as much as the finished product. They are the ones carving the future for generations to come and we want to bring their stories to you in order to understand what goes into building those killer parks that you get to ride! We want to thank these skaters for all their sweat, hard work and dedication to skateboarding! They’re not afraid to lay yards of pool coping down, so get out there and grind it up!!! That is our Duty Now For The Future! D-E-V-O. We dedicate our Duty Now For the Future Retrospective to Bob 2 aka Bob Casale. R.I.P.<\/em><\/p>\n

Best skatepark that you built or someone else built?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think best equates to what was the most fun. Events are always fun. Round wall is always fun.\u00a0The Red Bull race we did was a lot of fun because it was something new and different. A tranny\/slalom event was never done before, so it was rad to make it happen. The Viva La Bam episode where Tim Glomb invited us to come in and tear Bam\u2019s parents house apart and build ramps in there was a blast. The Blue Bell, PA, bowl came out epic. It is a million dollar refurbished barn with a perfect birch layered, brown organic tile, Fed Stone, diamond top pool block. I think the best parks are like tattoos. The client has to give the builder the\u00a0freedom to work his magic, the fewer restrictions the better.\u00a0As for what someone else built, Team Pain\u2019s \u2018crete crew did an epic park in Arvada, CO. 13\u2019 deep snake run? Need I say more?<\/p>\n

Favorite DIY spot to skate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 5.9 death crew compound in Attleboro, MA. The place is epic. It started out as a 16\u2019 wide mini ramp and has morphed into a giant bowl. It\u2019s been around for 13+ years, maybe? Big Tim and the boys are pulling out the old rotten framing and replacing everything with pt lumber, as we speak. The thing is constantly being maintained, gonna last forever. Great vibe there, everyone is welcome. Just be chill and bring beer and your family. Jerry Hahn\u2019s place here in Colorado is pretty rad. Let\u2019s not forget the boys and ladies in the Carolinas as well. They\u2019re making it happen. Then you\u2019ve got spots like FDR and Burnside. People are doing key share places in warehouses.\u00a0So many people are building their own backyard pools too. As this generation of skaters is getting older,\u00a0along with starting a\u00a0family, a lot of people buy houses and become property owners. If you\u2019re a lifer, and you own a house,\u00a0a backyard pool\/bowl is the next logical step.<\/p>\n

Favorite pool coping?\u2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite pool coping is Fed Stone. Been using \u2018em for years. I\u2019ve been playing with making my own molds too. They come out ok. Tim Mott has the whole mold thing dialed. They come out nice. We used them on a small bowl we built in Denver. As far as store bought goes, Federal Stone all day! Rock, flint, stone,\u00a0etc. I like anything that was not meant to be coping. I\u2019m a huge fan of \u201cthe gnarlier the better.\u201d The kind of stuff where all the Salba Sauce in the world wouldn\u2019t help. I\u2019m really only able to put that kind of stuff on my own private ramps. Seems not too many people share my vision.<\/p>\n

What is the one thing that hasn\u2019t been built to skate yet that you\u2019d like to see built in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aside from all the DIY stuff, I\u2019d have to say seeing more organic type parks, some small, some big. Parks that work with the existing landscape flowing around trees and things like that. Not necessarily scraping the land and putting in a big concrete rectangle, but being able to fit a lot of stuff in a small area. It\u2019s\u00a0awesome to see people using a giant boulder that was dug up\u00a0and incorporate that in the obstacles. Skateable sculptures are a fun idea as well. I want to build a double barrel shotgun full pipe. Two full pipes together and at one end they are connected a full 180 degrees. Then I would either have them on a slight angle downward or waterfall it down just before the elbow. It would be fully loopable and everything. Something big and stupid rad.<\/p>\n

Who is on your crew right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a short list of go-to people depending on the size and scope of the project. Mike \u201cIron Man\u201d Bato is my right hand man and is usually with me on most jobs. People say we act like an old married couple when we\u2019re together. I used to work a lot with Andy Kessler. I miss him a lot. Rip in peace Kess-Dog. Other cats include Jason Case, Brian Sizer, Steve Hughes, NJP, Tim Mott\u00a0and you too, Murf. You\u2019ve helped us out on a few gigs as well.<\/p>\n

\n

“I think the best parks are like tattoos. the client has to give the builder the freedom to work his magic.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who taught you the most about skatepark building?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d have to say Twister and Johnny Kardash. They were the masters.\u00a0I had the fortune of\u00a0working with them at Skater Island. I\u2019ve built a ton of stuff before that, but I really\u00a0tried to absorb what they were doing with round wall. Over time, I was able to put my own twist to make things my own style. Little Eddie taught me a bunch too working \u2018crete. I worked some Grindline jobs with him and he\u2019s a fucking pit bull. When I really think about it, it was the OG\u2019s that lit a fire in me and showed me what was possible with wood and steel. It was dudes like Tim Payne, Paul Schmitt, Dave Duncan and Micro. They laid the roadwork for everyone else. We just hit the gas and flew down that road.<\/p>\n

What is your Duty Now For The Future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a few irons in the fire right now, but, honestly, I had twin girls a year ago and my Duty Now is to be there for my family and be the best dad I can be. Having said that, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be ready to get back on the road\u00a0when the right project comes along. www.eastcoastrampdesign.com<\/p>\n

\"DUTYNOWRETROSPECTIVE-5-6-MERK\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE RETROSPECTIVE CHRIS MEARKLE INTERVIEW BY JIM MURPHY PHOTO BY BRYAN LATHROP We started the Duty Now for the Future articles to honor those skateboarders building concrete for other skateboarders. These skaters are dedicated to building skate structures, day in and day out, where quality is job one and money doesn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4032,4027,4028,4041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duty-now","category-featured","category-interviews","category-skate-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/DUTYNOWRETROSPECTIVE-5-6-MERK.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54659"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89521,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54659\/revisions\/89521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}