The Tower Of Power is an eight storied parking garage which sits amongst a series of nondescript office buildings and garages in the sleepy LA suburb of El Segundo. By the time I was first introduced to the Tower by Spike, my next door neighbor during the stint I lived in 'The Second', he had been telling me about the place for months, "Come on we gotta go, you're gonna love it!". He described it as almost an amusement park for summer evening catharsis.
Skeptical, I finally investigated one night to witness Spike split his head open on a typically inebriated, beer binged run. Spike's drunken falls became commonplace that summer. (The risk factor is medium to high, coupled with the ever present security guard factor, which is about the same as dodging the principal while cutting math. You may get busted, but you can probably talk your way out of jail.) Spike's gruesome fall on my first run didn't dissuade me; sober, the Tower is an obvious mecca for any surfer looking to carve off duty or any skater looking for that surfing feeling. Equipped with a glass elevator awaiting you at the bottom to shuttle you back to the beginning, a veritable ski lift that provides a city viewing box with a top notch view, you can pick and choose your runs and the amount you are in the mood to do.
Some say the Tower's power is derived from the Indian burial grounds the building is rumored to be built on, others argue that it's the symmetry and geometry of the structure's design. Of course the real juice of the Tower's power are it's eight stories of wide open cement lanes which wind circularly to the bottom on two different opposing levels of two connected garage buildings, lit 24 hours a day, perfect for down-hill skateboarding. Midnight sessions feel akin to discovering empty powder runs in back hill terrain. After the first outing it became something of a pilgrimage to skate the Tower, skate it as fast as possible and find new ways down. New routes are discovered infrequently, but we've found them and undiscovered pathways still await the fluid and the curious. There was the summer of twenty o'six that this obsession with a deviant activity amid an empty, somewhat secret place led to varying inspiration and a regular ...
The Tower Of Power is an eight storied parking garage which sits amongst a series of nondescript office buildings and garages in the sleepy LA suburb of El Segundo. By the time I was first introduced to the Tower by Spike, my next door neighbor during the stint I lived in 'The Second', he had been telling me about the place for months, "Come on we gotta go, you're gonna love it!". He described it as almost an amusement park for summer evening catharsis.
Skeptical, I finally investigated one night to witness Spike split his head open on a typically inebriated, beer binged run. Spike's drunken falls became commonplace that summer. (The risk factor is medium to high, coupled with the ever present security guard factor, which is about the same as dodging the principal while cutting math. You may get busted, but you can probably talk your way out of jail.) Spike's gruesome fall on my first run didn't dissuade me; sober, the Tower is an obvious mecca for any surfer looking to carve off duty or any skater looking for that surfing feeling. Equipped with a glass elevator awaiting you at the bottom to shuttle you back to the beginning, a veritable ski lift that provides a city viewing box with a top notch view, you can pick and choose your runs and the amount you are in the mood to do.
Some say the Tower's power is derived from the Indian burial grounds the building is rumored to be built on, others argue that it's the symmetry and geometry of the structure's design. Of course the real juice of the Tower's power are it's eight stories of wide open cement lanes which wind circularly to the bottom on two different opposing levels of two connected garage buildings, lit 24 hours a day, perfect for down-hill skateboarding. Midnight sessions feel akin to discovering empty powder runs in back hill terrain. After the first outing it became something of a pilgrimage to skate the Tower, skate it as fast as possible and find new ways down. New routes are discovered infrequently, but we've found them and undiscovered pathways still await the fluid and the curious. There was the summer of twenty o'six that this obsession with a deviant activity amid an empty, somewhat secret place led to varying inspiration and a regular ...
