when they started putting it together, they were doing it wrong, but didnt know any better. my friends and i skated the shit out of bruces and we knew we had to make it fast to blast the bowl area we barely got to hit at its previous location. thats when i got motivated to be involved. basically i wanted something good to skate and there was enough space and wood to make that happen. i rounded up my roundwall friends and we started moving shit around. we had to design the structure in such a way that they could still have punk shows. that was the only design constraint they imposed on us. this meant there needed to be a stage and enough room for people to walk around the warehouse. so we pulled the bowl pocket apart and stuck a door in the middle of it. then we need something big to oppose the 8' pocket, and the big vert wall against the wall was a no brainer. we worked our way around the whole space adding the already ribbed 7.5 templates for flat wall. we put as few connecting hips and pockets in it as we could to keep it simpler. so there you have it, common sense evolution.

the construction was anything but common. help came from all over. i sent out emails almost every week telling people what days we were working and what supplies we needed. joe had been collecting wood for years and we used all that up plus scraps from scavenger hunts. some difficulties included melting 3 layers of the existing bowl with 2 layers of the addition; the rain coming through the leaky roof; working around their show schedule which meant keeping a stage and PA for bands and flow for attendees; keeping the idiots off the ribbed walls; anchoring a huge vert wall into brick; and adding lights and outlets, which meant adding more fuses to an already antiquated electric system.

when it was all said and done, we had blended the bowl in with the existing mini, made a couple rooms under the bowl, created a stage on the deck and left the perfect spot for a 15 foot diameter cradle. it was a great recycling project by any standards. we bought a few 2x4's, but mostly spent the money donations on 100 plus sheets of ply, cement for the coping and ammo for drilling and hammering.