Arizona has so many empty pools, it was truly a skateboarders paradise. Growing up in the golden age of skateboarding during the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties in the Phoenix area I skated scores of empty pools. Before cell phones and the internet you had to be resourceful and sneaky to find empty pools. We used to scour the real estate magazines for abandoned houses, drive down alleys, and we had a network of people who we could always call to find out where the pools were. The local skateboard shops were also key to finding the latest pools to skate. Dead Cat Pool, Casa Grande, Ghost Ranch in Tucson, the Concrete Jungle in Paradise Valley, and so many more.
I landed at the ASU photo dept. in 1987, worked at The Cheapskate until Brian, Adrian and I cleared out stock the night before the landlord locked the doors. I skated more pools than I took classes, the first was the Cesspool. Some times, those, skating and falling in love with the desert. I left in the second half of ‘88 and finally returned for a journalism conference in 2025, Tempe was barely recognizable and the old ASU darkrooms were being gutted. Now the Colorado water allotment has been cut and, I’m guessing, metro-Phoenix might see a new pool skating revolution to rival the highway build of the late 1980s.
Thanks for the memories!
Yeah AZ and Photography both have changed a lot since the 70’s & 80’s. We were very lucky to grow up there, and have (limited) access to camera’s. You should check out my book, I also sell a DVD with some old video footage of the EPiC AZ skate spots.