Cesar Solis Skatepark (aka San Ysidro Skatepark)
Details
Cesar Solis Skatepark is an outdoor concrete skatepark located in the Ocean View Hills community of San Diego, California. The skatepark is a street plaza-style skatepark with some transition elements blended in. There are no bowls.
| Location | Ocean View Hills, San Diego California |
| Address | 6450406700 San Diego, CA 92154 |
| Coordinates | 32.570334, -117.025087 |
| Features | Street plaza |
| Size | Unknown |
| Riding Allowed | Skateboards, scooters, skates |
| Construction | Concrete |
| Hours | Dawn to dusk |
| Lights | Yes |
| Fence | No |
| Fee | No |
| Phone | Unknown |
| Opened | 2018 |
| Design/Build | Unknown |
Cesar Solis Skatepark Overview
Cesar Solis Skatepark is a terrific street-plaza-style skatepark perched on a mesa in the Southern San Diego neighborhood of Ocean View Hills, which is between the communities of Otay Mesa and San Ysidro. The San Diego skatepark is named after a retired Philipino-American assistant San Diego police chief, Cesar Solis.
The skatepark is located about 6 miles from the ocean and I assumed it would be hot during the warmer months, similar to San Diego’s other inland skateparks. But Cesar Solis Skatepark benefits from being located at a higher elevation and gets cool ocean breezes when an onshore wind is blowing (a common occurrence).
I visited for the first time on a hot July day, but between the breeze and shade pavilion, was able to stay relatively cool. The park has ample parking along the street and it a couple of parking lots right next to the skatepark.
Cesar Solis Skatepark is laid out as a large square and offers a range of features, from tall stairs, rails, and ledges to smaller features such as manny pads, mellow banks, and rails. There aren’t any bowls, but there are plenty of banks and a long quarterpipe to scratch the transition itch.
One side has an elevated deck with a long shade structure and benches for resting – nice touch. From this deck, you can drop down tall banks into a long channel and then ride up banks on the other side that bring you to a wide-open plaza with tons of features to skate.
Along the sides of the lower channel are a set of long ledges that can be skated or used as stadium-style seating for events (presumably). Other notable features in this area include a small flat rail down a mellow bank and a bank with a short and thick round rail at the top of it. This bank rail combo offers tons of possibilities for grinds and slides.
The drop from the two decks into the channel forms the basic topography for some of the skatepark’s larger features, including stairs sets and tall banks with bug hubbas and handrails. The designers didn’t pull punches, offerings some big street features for skaters ready to tackle pro-sized elements.
One of my favorite features in the park are large banks on either side that come up out of the channel to the large plaza and form a small hip at the top. These are super fun to hit with speed and then pop trick over the hip. You get the sensation of going fast over a hip with relatively little consequences and the banks are super smooth and well built. There is also a fun Euro gap up one of the banks.
The raised portion of Ceasar Solis across from the shaded area is a large flat area with lots of features to skate. In the center is a blue railside with a transition up to it that’s shaped like a whale’s tail. This feature is super fun, a little puzzle to be figured out, as there are so many different ways it can be skated. I road it like a rail, but also as a little jump ramp.
Forming a circle around the whale tale are several other features, including manual pads, a flat rail and a couple of small skateable boulders fix into the concrete. The manual pads vary in height, curve in places and have steel edging, which makes for all sorts of possibilities. I could skate these all day and be perfectly happy.
On the edge of Cesar Solis Skatepark opposite the shaded area is a long quarterpipe that runs the length of the park. The park has some ledge extensions along the top in places and changes height along its length.
If I have one complaint about this park, is that it would be nice to have some kind of transition feature facing this quarterpipe so that you could do some back-and-forth transition skating. But that’s nitpicking. It’s a short quarterpipe so you don’t need a lot of speed to hit the lip.
All told, Cesar Solis Skatepark is one of my favorite parks in San Diego. While it doesn’t have a bowl, which is always a nice addition, the park offers enough variety and options to keep most skaters happy. You can mess around on a small ledge or manual pad or blaze speed lines on the big banks. And for street skaters looking for beefy rails, stairs, and hubbas, there’s plenty here to keep you busy.
