Dew Tour Bowl 2011

The 2011 season of the Dew Tour action sports event series gave rise to the most complex engineering challenge to ever face the competitive skateboarding landscape – a fully portable, competition-level concrete bowl.  No stranger to daunting action sports challenges, Spohn Ranch was hired by Alli Sports – producers of the Dew Tour, to design and build a concrete masterpiece that would travel across the country, to be skated by the world’s top professional skateboarders at each stop.

Collaborating with professional skateboarding legend Chris Miller, our design department spent months wrapping their minds around the complex challenge and emerged with a groundbreaking and innovative solution.  Encompassing nearly 4,000 square feet, this monster bowl combines various elements of Miller’s favorite pools and ramps he has skated over his legendary career.  It features a 7’ 6” shallow end with hips and pockets and flows, via blend walls and a waterfall section, into an 11’ 3” deep end with 18” of vert and a unique half-pipe feel.  With traditional ceramic pool coping wrapping around the entire perimeter, the bowl speaks to multiple genres of transition skating – from the new school, street-inspired technicians to the classic flowing styles of the old-school.

With extremely tight timelines before the debut event in Ocean City, Maryland, our CAD draftsmen, metal fabricators and concrete crews worked around the clock for weeks on end.  Installed on the beautiful beach of Ocean City, the inaugural event proved to be an overwhelming success.  Perhaps the best quote to sum up this project comes from skateboarding icon, Steve Caballero – “This bowl is insane and I can’t believe it’s portable too and going to Portland next.  Amazing time we live in these days.”