Valley concrete.

WINTER DESCENDS on the San Joaquin Valley with a blanket of fog. If you're heading down Highway 99 after 7:00pm, the visibility can literally leave you driving blind. The fog creeps in and settles all around you like the ghost from everybody's Christmas' past. The sun eventually burns a hole in the afternoons just long enough to shed some light on your life, but then it disappears before you knew what you were doing there. This is how it's been forever. But for some weird reason, when the fog cleared this holiday season, two new parks had been built within an hour of each other.

The Site Design Group went to work in a couple small towns and did a pretty damn good job, thanks to Colby Carter's inspection work. I hear he goes to the locations while they're being built and skates the parks to see how things are coming along. It's pretty much the closest thing to having people who actually skate involved with making the parks. There were a couple skaters working on one of the parks, but this is California, where every skatepark has to be bid out under the law. So if you're wondering about the kinks or why the coping sits flush with the deck at your local park, it's probably because "Joe's Concrete service" was the lowest bidder.

Delano, California is where the first park is located. It's right between Bakersfield and Visalia on the 99. If you take the Cecil Street exit, you'll find it up on the left hand side after a block or two. It's pretty good, with a four-foot hip in the street area, a good snake run starting at about five-feet and getting up to about eight-feet, and then a nine-foot bowl. There's a few kinks, but there never seem to be many kids so you can get around easily.

Heading north up the 99 past Visalia is the second of the two parks, in a town called Orange Cove. I have no idea how a town this small got a park this big--36,000 square feet. It's definitely the better of the two; a big-ass stair and rail section leads down into a pit of transition with some sick pool coping areas. Then there is a 10-foot clover bowl complete with vert, tile, and pool coping. It's a ways off the 99--take the Manning Street exit (between Visalia and Fresno) and head east for 15 or 20 miles; look for a small sign that says "Orange Cove" and take a left on Anchor Street. You have to look for it fast or else you'll just drive through town.