{"id":43,"date":"2018-09-14T17:42:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T17:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.djcorprod.wpengine.com\/skilledmag\/?p=43"},"modified":"2018-10-03T19:50:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T19:50:40","slug":"professional-skateboarders-challenge-course-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/2018\/09\/14\/professional-skateboarders-challenge-course-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"Professional skateboarders challenge course designer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

California Skateparks employee John Wilinski builds a quarter pipe on the Street League Skateboarding course at the Rose Garden. The 10,000-square-foot concrete and wood course was built in three days. (Sam Tenney\/91ÊÓƵ)<\/p><\/div>\nJoe Ciaglia draws inspiration for his competitive skateboarding courses from what he sees at public skate parks. Then he adds a twist.
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The CEO of the Upland, Calif.-based California Skateparks pointed out a metal railing with a kink on a temporary course his company built inside Portland’s Rose Garden arena for a recent Street League Skateboarding competition.
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“That rail is not just a straight, level curve. It’s up and down,” he said. “You look at how you can make it more challenging.”
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When Ciaglia designs courses for SLS, a professional skateboarding tour that made a stop in Portland on July 14, he seeks a variety of obstacles that will test the top skaters.
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“We’re trying to change it up so we don’t get guys too comfortable,” he said. “We always try to create something so they can emphasize their best talents.”
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Ciaglia spent about three weeks designing the 10,000-square-foot course in Portland, but California Skateparks had only three days to build it. The fast pace requires that portions of the course be prefabricated, he said. The company also has to have a tight-knit, organized crew, he said.
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“It’s super rewarding because there’s not a lot of guys that can pull it off,” Ciaglia said.
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Even though the course is temporary, it meets all standards expected by professional skateboarders.
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“We give them better than what you’d find on the street,” he said. “If you give them a quality course (with) quality features, they’re going to perform better.”
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Ciaglia, who has a background in landscaping, said he’s been building skate parks since 1998. He said he helped pioneer temporary concrete skate courses over wooden ones, introducing the technique to the X Games, where skateboarding and other extreme sports are contested.
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“There was never concrete (courses) at competitions,” Ciaglia said. “It’s just as cost-effective as wood.”
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Like a permanent skate park, the course is mostly concrete, although it’s poured thinner so it can be torn down easier following the event, he said.
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It also has to be super smooth to provide optimum skating conditions, Ciaglia said.
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“Any bumps and these guys are going to feel it,” he said.
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Randy Kilwag, editor of Portland-based publication Skate and Annoy, said that over the past five years it’s become the norm for skate<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cary Jackson, left, receives direction from California Skateparks CEO Joe Ciaglia while building a 10,000-square-foot skateboard park for a competion at the Rose Garden. (Sam Tenney\/91ÊÓƵ)<\/p><\/div>\n

competitions to feature concrete courses rather than wooden ones.
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“Concrete skates better because it’s more stable and faster because there are fewer joints,” he wrote in an email.
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However, critics believe temporary concrete courses are wasteful, Kilwag said.
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“There has been push-back by the skateboarding community for promoters to spend that money building a park locally for the event, and then leaving it for the public afterwards,” he said. “There are a few instances of this happening, but it’s by far the minority of cases.”
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After each SLS competition, concrete used for the course is crushed and recycled for use on highways, Ciaglia said. Scaffolding and other materials are reused at other courses, he said, and used obstacles are donated to city skate parks throughout the country.
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“We want to promote skateboarding and give back,” he said.
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Along with Portland, SLS world tour has stopped in Brazil, Spain, Germany and Kansas City, Mo. Next month, competitions will take place in Los Angeles and Newark, N.J.
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Ciaglia said his course designs often are inspired by the host city. For the Portland course, he said he tried to invoke the feel of the city’s wealth of public skate parks.
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“There’s a lot of skateboarding parks in Portland,” he said.
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In Munich, Ciaglia crafted a Bavarian themed course. He added a rainforest motif to a course in Brazil and mosaics inspired by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi to the one built in Barcelona.
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“We just try to create an environment,” Ciaglia said. “All the parks we do have a theme. We try to get creative with a look.”
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Although it’s fun to add a theme to each skate course, he said, his biggest concern is how it will be used by the 20 professional skateboarders.
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“You’re kind of skating in your own head, how you would skate,” he said. “I’m also thinking about what those 20 guys would do.”
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This adds pressure to design a formidable course, Ciaglia said.
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“It’s not easy though, because you’re got the best guys in the world that are going to critique it,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Ciaglia draws inspiration for his competitive skateboarding courses from what he sees at public skate parks. Then he adds a twist. The CEO of the Upland, Calif.-based California Skateparks pointed out a metal railing with a kink on a temporary course his company built inside Portland’s Rose Garden arena for a recent Street League …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2643,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18615],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/djcoregon.com\/skilledmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}