California vert and mega ramp hub, Vista, cracking down on home ramps
Apparently, not everyone likes to be serenaded by the sound of skaters going back and forth on a halfpipe. Officials of the vert and mega-ramp hotspot of Vista have implemented a new ordinance requiring residents to obtain a permit, costing $3,400, to have backyard skateboard ramps over 6 feet tall.
More draconian from a skater’s perspective is the time limits on skating: 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Bye-bye summer night sessions. The ordinance was passed after some residents complained of loud noise. What? Skaters make noise? Couldn’t be.
San Diego has numerous public skateparks, but a number of pro skaters have ramps in Vista, including Danny Way, Elliot Sloan, and pro-skater Evandro Mancha Menezes. Sloan hosted the vert, vert best trrick, and megapark competitions of X Games at his backyard ramp complex last year. Here’s a video tour of Sloan’s place:
Sloan is okay with the new ordinance, according to a local politician, Joe Green, who was quoted in the San Diego Union Tribune. “He is in support of the ordinance and thinks there should be some governance to maintain the presence of ramps in our city as skating is a piece of the fabric of our town,” Green told the UT. “There are other ramps that have been used inappropriately without consideration of their surrounding neighbors. We are hopeful this will be a quality of life improvement once the ordinance is effective.”
As you can imagine, not all ramp owners are stoked. “That’s why I moved to Vista before because there were no codes or any regulations to have a vert ramp,” Mancha Menezes, a pro-skater with a vert ramp in his backyard, told a local news outlet. “Now because of the neighbors complaining they are coming up with a new code. I will have to apply for a permit and after that, we’re good to go.”
Other Vert and Mega-Ramps in San Diego
San Diego County, with its long skateboarding history, has long been the site of some ambitious ramp builds.
Back in 2006, Bob Burnquist built what was then the world’s largest skateboard ramp on his 12-acre farm in San Marcos in northern San Diego County.
The ramp was longer than a football field and as tall as an eight-story building, with a creek bed running through a 70ft breach. It cost $280,000 and was the world’s only permanent mega ramp at the time, although the X Games build one each year.
In 2015, Danny Way set a new Guinness World Record for the highest air in a halfpipe, soaring 25.5 feet from the tallest ramp ever built.
The ramp, which was 85 feet 3 inches tall, was built on a private ranch in the Cuyamaca Mountains near San Diego. The jump beat Way’s previous world record of 23.5 feet set in June 2003. The ramp was taken down soon as the site was chosen for privacy.
