HAMMER TORONTO

In the beaches area of Toronto,Canada. There is a small skater owned skate shop that holds a vibe that can't be described and must be experienced... 

If you skate Vanderhoof skate park and you ask any of the locals where you should buy a skateboard or anything skate related, 9 out of 10 will say "Hammer man, its an awesome shop!"

2225 Queen St. E

Where is Hammer?!?!
To 2225 Queen Street East, I drove.
The shop is in the basement of a Tatto shop. When the Tattoo shop is closed the door remains open so you can walk into the skate shop downstairs...

Once you get to the bottom of the stairs, the first thing you see is a shoe wall with plenty of brand selection.
There were two skaters in their early 20's working.  They both greeted me as soon as I walked in. The shop was empty as it had just opened, a dude in a Baker Skateboards T was organizing the cash register area and the other, the Creature T-shirt dude, was holding down the deck wall, pulling boards out of boxes and organizing them.
 I told the Baker t-shirt dude by the cash register that I was there to buy a complete as I headed straight for the deck wall,..

 ...the wider deck(s) wall to be more precise...
 The awesome selection on the wall made me think that maybe I should buy a bunch of decks, since it's going be hard to just pick one.
As I got there, another dude popped out from behind the wall...
"Hey man, how's it goin'?!"
"good dude!.. i'm here for a complete.." I said as excited as the first time i went to Rudy's skate shop in the mid 80's to grab my first pro set up.
"cool! you gonna need some help!"
You could tell this was the shop owner.
 He had a vibe; this is my shop and I'm here to sell you quality skateboard products.
 I had walked into the right skate shop!

 This was the first monday of summer holidays and in a minute the place got relatively busy, with eager kids coming in to get their skate fix. These kids knew what they were there to buy and they wanted to get it faster than it can be assembled. They could barely wait on their new; deck, trucks or wheels, so they can rush out to Ashbridges Bay Skatepark or any other local spot and spend all day, all summer, shreddin' with their homies.

I on the other hand, had to run around the city to do errands, had no chance to go skating and no clue what I was going to buy, so I didn't mind stepping aside and letting them service the eager groms and help the local rippers get what they needed.
This gave me time to go through their huge board selection and narrow down my choice of decks.  It also momentarily postponed me driving around Toronto's crowded streets on a hot and sunny summer day. It also gave me a chance to speak to the owner, Dave.
He, not only owns/manages the coolest hardcore shop in T.O, he has been on a deck forever,  he has seen a lot and is willing to share his stories. If you don't believe me, check out the museum tab on his website : http://www.hammertoronto.com/museum.htm
As I shuffled through decks and checked the different shapes, we talked about the local skate scene and how we had it in the good old days...
Once the shop cleared out, I had narrowed my skate decision to 4 decks :

A beautifully shaped pool deck 8.8" wide, designed by the pool riders at Creature.  A Darren Navarrette 8.0 also made by Creature, Jeff Grosso's brand new Anti Hero vert monster, 9.2' wide with antihero meets black label Grosso graphics and lastly Anti Hero's 8.5 xxl team deck. I stepped on all of them and visualized riding around in them. After going through the whole wall, I had 4 decks I was willing to buy, but I could only get one, so I had to make the final eliminations...
The Navarrette was too skinny, the shape was nice, but i needed something wider. The Grosso, (if i could buy two decks that day, the grosso would have also come home with me), I couldn't buy it, it was too wide and I wanted something to ride, not to hang on my wall. But if the 8.5 version had been there, then this post would have a slightly different ending...
It was beetween the Creature pool deck or the 8.5 Anti Hero, which looked perfect for pool/vert riding.


I turned to the dude that was holding down the deck area and with a smile from ear to ear said..."this is the one!"
"yeah, that's a nice shape!", said the dude by the cash register.
I brought the deck over to the counter and asked to see some Ace & Theeve trucks. Having ridden Indy's for the longest time, I had decided to try something new.
Theeve's are the first all titanium trucks, built for riders like Jake Duncombe &  Tony Hawk.

They don't grind down, but they grind your bank at $150 for a pair. A bit much for a rider of my abilities, Ace was the way to go. I had heard they are made by a cat who worked for Independent, they turn quicker and are lighter than indy's. I decided to grab a set of 44's. For wheels I had wanted to try Bones SPF, so when I saw a set of Chris Miller's 60mm, I had no choice, the size was bigger than I wanted, but I could not resist getting the same wheels the stylish legend Miller rides. Inside them some Bones reds bearings and hardware, the selections were made.
"Am I putting this together for you?" he asked... "No don't, I have errands to run today, and if you put it together for me now, I will end up at the skatepark instead of running errands!"  I replied...,.."I'm putting it together then!" he said as we all laughed.  While I waited for him to assemble the deck,  I picked out a ATM 8.0" deck for a friend, and continued my conversation with Dave. "here, this is going to ride nice at the hoof, enjoy it dude!" He said and handed me my new skateboard. I was good to go. I had the perfect set up!
Just then another busload of eager rippers rushed in, so I stepped aside and headed for the door, as I walked past the owner, he handed me a shop t-shirt and said, "here man, see you around!" I thanked him for the quality service I had received and headed out to do my errands. As soon as I stepped out of the door of the shop, I could not resist, I skated to my car, got in it, and drove straight to the skatepark, I could not give up the chance of  hitting the hoof with this brand new gnar stick in my possession!

T.O's last indoor skatepark?

The city’s last indoor skate park to close

CHRISTOPHER SHULGAN

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Gymbo Jak takes a pull from a tall boy of Milwaukee’s Best, then grabs his skateboard and heads into a graffitied, ramp-filled cavern set in a warehouse several storefronts north of Wellesley on St. Nicholas Street, an alley a half-block west of Yonge. Seconds later, Jak performs a neat kick-turn, a simple trick, except he’s poised eight feet up a wall, and unprotected by pads or a helmet. The combination of beer-drinking and padless skateboarding goes against the recommended practices in the skatepark’s waiver form – although that doesn’t mean much to Jak. He owns the place.
Not for much longer, however. Jak has been told he’ll have to close at the end of January, 2011, three months into the skate park’s thirteenth year, to allow the site to be prepared for construction. Like seemingly every other warehouse space in downtown Toronto, Shred Central is slated to be developed as a condominium.
Once it closes, downtown Toronto will be without a permanent indoor skatepark.
“It’s sad,” says Brian Peech, the publisher of SBC Skateboard Magazine. “Every skater in Canada knows about Shred Central. It’s a legendary institution.”
For years, Jak’s indoor skatepark has been integral to the city’s skateboarding scene. The sport requires dry, flat surfaces – a rare commodity on Toronto streets from late November to mid-March, when snow and ice cover the ground and salt corrodes bearings and other metal parts. For most of its nearly 13 years in existence, Shred Central was the only place downtown where kids could go when the weather turned cold.
“It was a winter haven,” says Justin Bokma, 36, a Parkdale native who says he grew up at Shred Central, and who credits his frequent trips to the park with helping him to become a skateboard pro.
But the park’s value to Toronto skate culture exceeded its usefulness as one of the few snow-free places to skate in February. The skate park and its locals were the area standard-bearers for the sport’s alternative ethos, and its anarchic, anti-authoritarian sensibility.
“I visited it for the first time in 1999, just after I moved to Toronto,” says Mr. Peech, who grew up in Winnipeg and Calgary. “It was everything I imagined the city to be – kind of gritty and raw. It wasn’t vanilla or whitewashed. It wasn’t the sort of place parents would drop off their kids after school, you know, to let Gymbo babysit.”
Locals at Shred Central had a reputation as being a little older than at other parks. They swore. They drank beer, they skated without pads, and they barred BMX-style bikes and inline skates from the facility. As the years went by the downtown venue became known as the antithesis of the hyper-regulated suburban venues, with their brand-sponsored seating areas, and the parents monitoring their children’s every move.
“Jak and everyone else at Shred were actually really nice guys,” says Mr. Peech. “But the vibe there was always a little intimidating to newcomers, to the sort of young skaters who are just starting out. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’re not supposed to feel comfortable when you’re a kid and you first go to a skate park. And then once you learn how to skate the ramps, once you’ve earned the respect of the people who hang out there – when you’ve gone from outsider to local – then it feels like it means something. It’s a rite of passage.”
The park’s culture flowed from the personality of Shred Central’s owner. Gymbo Jak, now 37, was from 1994 to 2007 the lead singer for the Canadian punk institution, the Dayglo Abortions. (“Gymbo Jak” is a band name he’s gone by for so long, he says, that he doesn’t disclose his real name.) Jak also had a background as an expert skateboarder thanks in large part to a pair of halfpipes he built at his parents’ farm in Nanaimo, B.C. Underneath one of the ramps, protected from West Coast precipitation only by a sheet of Astroturf, was a clubhouse where Jak hung out with his friends.
The atmosphere at Shred Central grew out of that same clubhouse culture. The park opened on Oct. 1, 1998, shortly after Jak first moved to Toronto. He opened the shop almost by accident. The venue originally was another skate park, called Rampsterdam, which the landlord had shut down because the rent was in arrears. When Jak came for a visit and happened upon the venue’s locked door, he called the landlord and sold the owner on letting Jak have the space for rent that was originally $2,000 a month. The name was a cinch – Shred Central is a Dayglo Abortions song, about a long-defunct Vancouver shop.
A realist about urban development, Jak always knew Shred Central’s site could be developed as a condo. And now it will be – specifically, Five Condos at 5 St. Joseph, a monster project that will see the five-storey warehouse demolished except for its street-facing facades, and replaced with a 45-storey tower that houses 493 units.
The nearest thing to Shred Central in the Greater Toronto Area is C.J. Skateboard Park and School in Etobicoke – a more youth-friendly establishment that operates clinics for beginners, and also allows BMX bikes and inline skaters. Meanwhile, park denizens portray the skate park’s passing as emblematic of a transition in skateboarding – the sport’s so-called “mall-ification.”
“The older generation grew up in a different environment,” Mr. Peech says. “Very few skaters today have been beat up purely because of the fact that they skateboard. That used to be pretty common. Nowadays, [skateboarding’s] just so normal. It’s popular, it’s safe, it’s on TV.”
Jak agrees. “We used to be considered vagrants, and now pro skaters are athletes who have personal trainers, who get paid millions.”
But if Shred Central’s passing is emblematic of skateboarding’s transition to the mainstream, it is equally emblematic of the passing of a grittier, less-regulated Toronto. Like Sam the Record Man, or 5ive, the gay nightclub, Shred Central harkens back to an era when Canada’s biggest city was a little rougher around the edges.
“It sucks, obviously,” says Jak, whose dedication to the sport of skateboarding as well as his skatepark is reflected in the fact that he sometimes did odd jobs to make rent. (In fact, once, he participated in medical trials at the pharmaceutical company, Biovail for the cash.) “At first when I opened this place, I thought I’d be happy if we made it to 13 months. I’ve seen lots of kids grow up here.”
“Probably, we’ll have a party,” he says, sitting behind the counter in the shop’s ante room, and taking a pull from his can of Milwaukee’s Best. “Then I have to go out and get a real job. It’ll be nice to not have to work weekends. But I’ll miss it.”
Many others will, too.
Special to The Globe and Mail

WHO IS COLD JUICE

Vanderhoof Skatepark but the locals call it, Da Hoof!

Built in 2004, Da Hoof is the absolute best transition found anywhere in Ontario. This bowl is perfect. The City of Toronto assembled a skatepark building dream team to build this bowl. Who was called to build this perfect skatepark?
Eric Munier - undisputed master of concrete.
Jim Barnum - design god.
These two are the best of the best, Toronto wanted one thing from these guys – simple – a “world class” skatepark. A park that would stand out on the world stage, that would be the envy of skaters everywhere else. It is pretty much all transition at the hoof, there is a small street setup - ledge, hubba, gap, funbox thingy….. nothing crazy, a good practice area for those working up to the bowl, or an area for the tech dogs to do their thing. For most, it’s all about the bowl.
One of the most inspiring things about this place is the community that has come together around it. There are four distinct generations that rip this park to shreds. There are not many things better than hanging out at the hoof on a summer day. - Hugh Newman, Skaters Inc.
Its something you gotta see for yourself!

WHO IS COLD JUICE?

-----> We are not kids anymore, but we still skate with the same spirit ! Cold Juice a.k.a OLD JUICE is a collective of riders who enjoy life by riding a  skate/snow/surfboard, its all about juice you get from riding!