The Answer is Never, a Skateboarder's History of the World

Jocko Weyland -- 2002 (ISBN 0-8021-3945-0)

"Burnside's rise from junkie lair to its current glory was due to ten years of sweat, toil, and piecemeal ingenuity by local diehards whom (Mark) Scott led to expand upon Bret Taylor's original impetus.

Entirely unsubsidized, they laid down concrete and tested it as they went along until they achieved the desired result. It is a grass roots reclamation project that so positively changed the surrounding neighborhood that the city bestowed on (Mark Scott) and the rest a citation for civic improvement...

Burnside is an awe-inspiring pilgrimage site because the right fanatics built it for all the right reasons - the opposite of the deplorable travesties that occur when architects completely ignore their constituency to design flawed skateparks..."

...some of the most amazing manifestations of this flowering are in Oregon, where (the) Dreamland team have taken their Burnside experience and applied it to building city-funded parks that are better than anything else in the world. They are built by real skaters who ride what they sculpt with authority. My jaw dropped the first time I saw Newberg's lovingly rendered undulating forms, and to say that Oregon's Newberg and Lincoln City skateparks are masterpieces is not an exaggeration. These works put their builders in league with artists like Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, and James Turrell: the parks are beautiful environments, awesome to look at and, on some level, superior to sculpture because they combine aestheticism with athletic functionality. Their specific purpose is fulfilled beyond even the highest expectations.

Within Newberg's deep cement swells, speed, and weightlessness make for a ride more thrilling than any roller coaster. It expands the backyard pool's horizon's so a skater can ricochet without pushing from bump to coping to corner until he or she falls off or succumbs to exhaustion. As you gyrate back and forth and go from one elevation to another, you achieve a oneness with athletic action on the threshold between thinking and primal instinct: you link tricks together in an improvisation that relies upon thousands of hours of day dreaming and mental practice. Speed and Flight take you through multiple dimensions as form and function become one. The philosophy is the action.