Berkeley Skatepark

it was big and spaciou and even though my 5 year old nephew was a major pain and in everyones way they were still nice.

Very nice cement skatepark. Came here on a saturday and it was suprisiling empty… I had the park to myself at one point. There’s a street course and a bowl. It’s also adjecent to a soccer field, a food shack and restrooms. The park is free to skate and there’s a sign with rules… helmets and pads requirement, but all the kids rode without it. The park is gated and seating area is outside the gates. There’s bike parking too. If you have stuff with you (backpacks, sweaters) you have to place em in a corner or hang them on the fence out of peoples way. Plus unlike other parks in the bay… they close at 930pm instead of sunset/​dusk. Overall a great, clean park to skate. check it out if you have a chance.

I freaking love this park. My review is based off the bowl section because that’s all I skate ***(BOWLRIDAZ)***
The bowl section is a nice 4 (maybe 5) footer with a nicely built 7 (maybe 8) foot section to roll into. No vert or over-​vert at all. Whoever left that review is probably to scared to recline on the incline and it got a little to steep for him/​her. Super easy to carve with numerous different lines to find. Before you run out of tricks your legs will run out of juice. Definitely a skaters park ran by skaters. If you snake someones run you WILL be yelled at. If your in the way and not doing anything– you will be called out. If you fall and its not that serious, you might get laughed at. Basically– Its like every other skate-​park with the same list of un-​written rules to skate by.
It got 4 out of 5 because as great as it is I wish the bowl section was bigger! Unfortunately that would mean a larger cost to the city, more injures, and people just dont seem to want to ride bowl sections anymore. Everyone’s all about the street and long-​boarding these day –_​_​_​_​_​_​–

Probably one of better parks in the Bay Area. Helmets are optional, and are not enforced. I have skated this park a couple of times and I see many pros and notable people.
It’s a great size park and definitely worth skating, it’s free of cost and not too far.
I plan on returning and give the park another shred.

LOL I feel bad I got a badge for being a «daredevil»… I don’t skate here… I eat my lunch here! LOL It’s so great for people watching. My 60 minute break goes by very quickly! I drive by this park about twice a day because I’m in the neighborhood so I think I can give you a lot of pointers aside from being a cool lunch spot. (They have benches outside of the caged park where you can sit… I’ll save you a seat).
Saturdays are crazy busy all year long unless of course it’s raining. On any given weekday at any time of daylight you will see 8 – 12 people at the park. During the summertime they have a skate camp for kids in the morning so keep that in mind.
The skatepark is right next to a homeless shelter so please be aware of your surroundings and of the sketchy people that sometimes frequent these places.
Saturdays are also busy because the field next to the skatepark hosts soccer league games. The best times to avoid the crowd if you want to enjoy some serious skate sessions would be in the summer evenings before sundown.
REMEMBER: All of this is information is coming to you from me, a chronic people watcher in the area. #NoStalker

Too many weird locals gettin all aggressive on people that are not from around there.
Not enough lines to avoid smackin into other skaters.
The pyramid and stuff is cool, but only if there are a few people there who are nice enough to wait patiently for their turn. Not here.
So then i tried to ride the bowl and practice that stuff. The low end is pretty good, with decent coping and tranny, but the deep end is poured all wrong so that the higher sides of the walls stick out a bit and really make it tough to ride. like there is a bump in the wall going up, not a very smooth transition at all.
I’ve been here many times, but now that I don’t work in Berkeley anymore, I will not be going back.
Too many other good parks to skate with better transitions and less attitude.
I would not recommend this place for little kids or people learning to skate.

Fun park. watch for sketchy people though. real plus is having lights– night sesh!

the berkeley orkin/​hsiang skate park rocks. one day, my friend and i did a bay area skate park tour; and, while we were planning the itinerary, i put this one at the top of my list. much of it was because i’m a cal grad, and i really wanted to return from the south bay up to my alma mater for a bit. i didn’t skate much while i was at berkeley, and i wasn’t skating when this park was first built. now, i live in the south bay, and my usual skate spot is the sunnyvale skate park. however, i like to get out and try new stuff. i’m really glad i found the berkeley orkin/​hsiang skate park.
i’m not usually big into skating bowls, but my friend is; and we ended up skating the bowl most of the time. even though i say «i’m not usually big into skating bowls,» this bowl actually started getting me more into bowl skating. it’s a lot of fun. i ilke the design. i think one thing that was cool for me, since i hadn’t skated so many bowls yet, was how the deep end doesn’t roll down so deep but instead rolls down a little and then has extended walls upward.
the vast streetish plaza area is cool. i also snowboard a lot, and this layout reminded me of some snowboard runs. it has wide variety of features including a lot of fun banks and quarterpipes and the famous turtle bump.
of course, one of the best parts of the berkeley orkin/​hsiang skate park is that it’s in berkeley! the vibe is cool; people are chill and sometimes even friendly; and you can easily find great food nearby. i like that. i hope to session up this park more in the future.

I freakin’ love this place! Especially when school’s in and they don’t have any «learn how to skate» classes during the day that don’t allow for average citizens to skate the park from 9am to 3pm. The concrete is smooth and (mostly) clean. When there are puddles they have a crew come out and wipe ‘em into the drains. When it’s locked, everyone just jumps over the fence and has a good time. Skaters will even help the large lads get over the fence on occasion so they can also enjoy this awesome park.
Best time to go is during week in the morning (if you’re an adult). You don’t have to worry about little kids with Razor scooters, bikes and flying turtles (that aren’t supposed to be in there) silently zooming up on you or cutting you off when you’re about to land that big frontside kickflip off the bank. Weekends can be fun too, though. The crowd ebbs and flows, so sometimes you’ll find it roomy even on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Friday nights are like a party here. Somewhat «cliquey» at times, but for the most part dudes are cool (and so are the chicks!). Always better to have folks to skate with, but too many can really start to piss you off quite easily at this place.

Maybe this was a decent park when it was built over ten years ago, but it’s aged like a jar of mayonnaise in the sun. The bowl has NO vert, the coping is this crappy pipe coping and the park was built on toxic chromium six! This poisonous chemical seeps up through the drain when it rains, crystallizes on the concrete and then flakes into the air and into your lungs when skating this park. Ask any local and nine times out of 10 they’ll tell you about the headaches and nosebleeds that come from skating here regularly. The East Bay needs a real skate park — that’s why there has been so many illegal DIY parks built on CalTrans property! Give us something built by Grindline or Dreamland with vert, tiles and real pool coping!

Sadly, this is the best «legal» thing the East Bay can offer for concrete skate parks. It’s pretty fun, but everything is fairly mellow and not a whole bunch of flow. The pyramids remind me of riding up the handicap ramps on any given sidewalk, maybe a little more steep.
Coming here and then going to Portrero Del Sol skate park in the Mission is like night and day, and sadly, having ridden tons of Dreamland and Grindline skate parks, which Portrero is one of, will spoil you. I can just imagine the city developers making skate park plans or copying previous, tired designs.
The major thing I don’t like about it is the big wide open space at the front of the park. They wasted all that crete to make a giant flat bottom that literally spans forty feet long with very sparse obstacles! Why? It’s just too much wasted space.
And thus, the three star rating. It’s got it’s crew of stupid 16 year old clowns, and a buncha rippers as well, but make no mistake; it’s the little shithead brother across the bay from Portrero. One great thing about it is that it’s not as edgy to take your kids to as Portrero. There are no giant gaggles of junkies, and no one’s gonna steal your backpack. You won’t even get a contact high from weed smoke here. Even when it’s packed, if you can hold your own and flow around the place the kook’s, which there are usually a ton of, will get the fuck out of your way.
If you can drop in on a ramp over 4 feet tall and you take the bart all the way out here from anywhere but N Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, or Richmond you need to get your head examined.
I have a better time riding the spot in Emeryville.
If you have a razor scooter, this place is perfect for it.

I haven’t noticed this skate park until Christmas 2009. I came here with my parents and sister to get a North Face jacket at The North Face outlet store. The nearby parking spots were either taken or someone else is waiting for it. This was the one time when I noticed that this skatepark is just one block from The North Face Retail Outlet on 5^th and Gilman Streets. It is indeed a very nice Skatepark in Berkeley.

This is a great park but if you go here often and you aren’t sitting watching the guys or dating a guy who is skating there things can get gnarly. After a guy flipped out on me and his girlfriend screamed that i should never skate there again, I haven’t been back that often.
I am not trying to hurt skateboarding but this is something that needs to be addressed, and every time a guy gets pissed off when some chick isn’t sitting there watching him, well, it’s his problem.
Getting ganged up on by a bunch of guys who say you’re crazy when you just want to skate is pretty lame, and I’m not being malicious by stating this.
Maybe if people worked on their attitudes and lived and let live instead of getting pissed off whenever women had private opinions things could get better but in the meantime, I don’t really care, I’m just here to skateboard and do start-​ups. I’ll keep on doing it no matter what. :) I can’t change people, they have to change themselves, and I’m going to do my thing and kick ass no matter what.

I really like this place a lot. My 11-​year-​old son got his first board at Christmas and we’ve been lucky enough to come here 4 times already this winter — I thought for sure we’d be rained out until spring!
Anyway, we’ve run the gamut on times we’ve come — Friday night, Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning (faculty meeting day so no school for my kid but everyone else was in school). Obviously very different crowds each time. But the constant was the fact that everyone seems to be gracious in watching out for the new kids. There’s never been any close calls with experienced boarders and a less-​experienced boarder… even with the Friday night «older crowd» or the Sunday afternoon crazy # of people. Even though the signs post that helmets and gear is required, pretty much only my kids do so. And even though it says no bikes, the BMXers are definitely there. But you know what? One of them (and he was early 20’s — not really a kid) had on this cool personal sound system that we HAD to have (SkullyBoom — look it up — it’s awesome), and he was super-​nice when I stopped him on his bike (don’t worry — I waited til he was out of the bowl) so in the end even the BMXers had something to offer!
I agree 100% with Romy I.‘s review… so go read it for my further observances.

This park has something for all skill levels. You don’t need to push much because the roll-​ins are in a great spot to carve lines. One side starts with some short mellow banks that get progressively steeper until head high transitions. A spine with a roll-​over spot joins the bowl to the street course. The bowl also has a 9ft vert. If all of that is too much for you then skate around the track.
This place does get crowded though. Usually the dads skate together with their kids. However, there are a lot of older guys that have been skating this place for years. They have no problem snaking little kids riding scooters that are in the way.
I do remember the park being closed for weeks at a time a few years ago. It was because the hippy Bezerkeley city counsel thought the skatepark was violating their nuclear free zone ordinance. Then they closed Bordertown park because the skating was disturbing the homeless under the bridge.

i love it here. i like to take the bart out to downtown berkeley, skate some street spots and then finish it off with a 2 hour session at the park until the lights go out at 930. i feel so peaceful as i float around on the smooth transitions with wu tang in my headphones. the park has nice flow, you can go fast without putting much effort in. the sides are the best i think, the little roll things with the ledges on the side and the flat bar on the small pyramid, and the step up gap, but the main section is really fun too. i dont skate the bowls there that much but this park is a lot of fun. sometimes its closed for poision seeping out of the ground and other times it seems to be closed for no reason at all. also the cops are weird sometimes they care and other times they just drive by. and it’s true that sometimes this place is so crowded you can barely breathe and people kick soccer balls in and stuff but all in all it’s a really fun place to skate. i wish there were some better places to eat around here though because when im starving late at night i end up giving in to the pressure and getting fries and an apple pie (the only 2 things i will eat at macdonalds, oh and hot fudge sundaes) because there is nothing else around (that i know of… there probably are some hidden spots). To get back to bart you have to skate through some long dark streets so i just skate fast and hope i dont get murdered. oh, there is also an awesome ghetto bowling alley nearby its fun to go to once the park closes.

actually a pretty good park for the area. i mean, sucks in that it is a Site Design park and typically Arizona for me when i am wanting something California, but still not too bad.
you know that i am against pushing in a park and this place can be pretty much completely ridden without anymore than your initial pushes… and that is, in my eyes, the mark of a decent park.
the bowl could mos def be bigger and better… and seriously, what is the point of steel coping? i mean, it’s called «grind» not «slide» or «rub». steel coping is fine in small amounts for variety, but spice that bowl up dude. bullnose.
i have been seriously bitten by the cement here. mostly in the street section. but at least the cement is slippery smooth so you slide out a bit on your swelbow or mush knee.
i’ve taken away stars for three reasons:
1) kooks. lots of em. skooters and fruit booterz.
2) pigs. tickets are commonplace here from the fuzz. although, one day i was riding there padless and this bike pig comes riding in and over to me and while i’m thinking it’s bust time, the dude drops into the bowl and takes a few timid carves on his pig mountain bike and says, «be safe» and rides out. still, i hate the cops.
3) poison air. we risk our fucking lives skating this place cuz they decided to build the only park in berkeley on horribly unsafe, toxic waste, seeping earth. the air has been deemed unsafe and the park closes after rains when POISON FUCKING WATER SEEPS UP THROUGH THE CONCRETE. i think this place needs to be shut the fuck down (as soon as a replacement park can be built.)
pray for Bordertown.

This is one of my favorite parks, especially since it’s close to me and open at night. Tons of super fast lines to be found in and outside the bowl. Lights out at 9:30pm or so if I remember correctly. Seems that lately they are also cracking down on wearing pads so you best bring your helmut if you don’t want a ticket.
Park Designer: