Skateboarding on a Frank Lloyd Wright House

Anyone who has ever tried to film or shoot a trick at a high-profile piece of architecture can tell you that you're more likely to get struck by lightning twice than you are to get more than five minutes of skate time. The types of people who frequent architectural masterpieces are not usually pleased to see skateboarders and the people who guard these places are usually downright livid to see you pop up on an immaculate piece of marble or a steel piece of art. The hardest part about being the skateboarder or photographer in this situation is that you usually aren't there to blatantly destroy anything as much as you are there to collaborate. It's hard to explain that though, when paint is falling off in chunks and your board is accidentally flying through a window. In some rare cases though, the people in charge of these beautiful places can manage to see the merit in what we do, and when that happens, it's really a dream come true.

A few months ago I was contacted by The Skateboard Mag's Atiba Jefferson who was tipped off about the possibility of shooting skate photos at a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece in Phoenix, Arizona. The tip came from Damon Way (brother of Danny Way) who was friends with Wallace Cunningham and Zach Rawlings of the David and Gladys Wright House Foundation.

The area of the house to be skated was the spiral walkway leading up to the front door. As part of the restoration process it's scheduled to be replaced in the coming months, so the idea of skateboarding on it didn't really seem to faze the foundation. We still took the necessary precautions to not destroy any part of the property whether it was coming down or not. We built a nice little edge to sit on the tall, curved wall and Ryan set up brand new wheels that had never touched anything, but the Cherokee Red concrete that Mr. Wright loved so much. Naturally, once the skating started the ideas were flowing back and forth between Ryan and me about what we were going to shoot. After some deliberation and realization that the wall was a bit higher than it looked at the runway wasn't quite as friendly as we had thought, Ryan settled on a crooked grind and a backside 5050. We thought it better to keep the skating simple and let the house steal the show when it came to complexity, because let's face it, even a switch backside 180 nose grind doesn't hold a candle to a cantilevered master bedroom.