Gnarlytown

San Pedro, California

After receiving an interesting call from professional skateboarder Chris Cole's Manager in early June about an event he was hosting in San Pedro, California called Gnarlytown. The festival is a perfect blend of action sports and punk rock with tons of vendors all located at the scenic LA Waterfront - Port of Los Angeles. The idea is extreme sports with a punk rock music fest where motorsports champion, Travis Pastrana with Nitro Circus performs heart pumping & death defying show that is insanely wild beyond your dreams! If that isn't enough adrenaline, Chris Cole’s Rail Jam Invitational with an OC Ramps custom skate course!! The packed event features FMX, BMX, and skate stars putting on four separate shows during Gnarly town and Nitro Circus’ giant ramp.

With only having a few short weeks to prepare the custom course; we quickly went into action. Prior to prefabricating all parts and materials we designed a course that Chris Cole would approve. We made handfuls of changes that went back & fourth for days as the budget changed & evolved. Like we can do for all of our customers, OC Ramps can build any size park that will match any budget. Pictured below is the original concept for the project that contains a skate-able guitar as the center piece on a half pipe course.

Once the budget for the project was narrowed down we were able to come up with a design that would be appropriate for their finances and fun to skate as well. One key element, the course had to include a life size guitar.

Chris is an avid fan of music & metal rock so it seems fitting to do a guitar as we are heavily geared towards Pantera, Slayer & Metallica. Afterall, we have a giant mural of Iron Maiden in our office.

The company that sponsored the guitar is one of the biggest brands of the world, ESP. They've been around since 1975 making iconic instruments for legendary players and setting the bar for the best quality on the planet. Chris wanted us to simulate a specific guitar model, the Eclipse II Vintage Black.

The project posed a new and different avenue which was exciting! We dialed up our CNC designer with the great news of the guitar project and he was thrilled to help in design as it's not everyday you build a 20 foot long guitar with a 10 foot skate-able neck! Once the auto cad file was created, we then programmed our two CNC machines at our HQ to begin the precise cutting of the guitar & neck.

The task of getting plywood to bend onto the side of the guitar for the perfect curve was definitely a head scratcher! We searched at a few local specialty lumber yards to find the right type of plywood to bend.

As we installed, it required 2 to 3 guys to bend the plywood over the curves & secure with screws. Little by little we assembled the pieces and the guitar started to really form into life size. Once we had the exact match on paints as the Eclipse II we started to delicately paint in sections. Meanwhile, another group of the crew was building our smaller obstacles and working with engineers on getting 3D renderings of the park to be approved by the city. Needless to say, two weeks was not enough time for this giant project.