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Check out this wild house, what do you think, is it too creative, or cool? Specifically the interior I kind of dig it...was Purchased for $1.3 million in 2005 and remodeled (for $500K)
THE last time Claire Bigbie, now 30, skateboarded in an empty pool, she was 24. But she can easily conjure the stomach-dropping sensation, the sound of the board rasping on the pool coping, the happy effort it took to carve up to that edge.
It was a “permission pool” in San Francisco, meaning its owners had given the neighborhood skaters permission to skate there.
Pool skating, for those of you who missed “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” the 2001 documentary about the sport’s early days in the 1970s, emerged in drought-wracked Southern California, when filling a pool was against the law for a time. Early skateboarders found these steep caverns irresistible, irritating the pools’ owners, who saw them as vandals and trespassers.
Later generations of skateboarders, like Ms. Bigbie, consider them legendary. “They were the first wave, and we were the third wave,” she said. “Now skateboarding has gone mainstream, and it doesn’t mean too much.”
Still, for Ms. Bigbie, an interior designer and aesthetic omnivore, and her boyfriend, Jay Shapiro, 33, a skateboarder who is the bass player for Space Vacation, a heavy metal band in San Francisco, skateboarding — its renegade, Zen essence — is a way of life. And pool skating is the apogee.
This is how the empty pool as metaphor and touchstone became a focal point for the tiny Victorian house Ms. Bigbie and Mr. Shapiro bought in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco four years ago. In the backyard, they planned to sink a swimming pool, and never fill it. As a placeholder, they erected a skate ramp that had belonged to a friend and was made, in part, from reclaimed barn siding.
“It was beautiful,” Ms. Bigbie said mistily. “We called it ‘Living the Dream.’ ”
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ahh yes...close to Twin Peaks and easy access to all the neat stuff on Castro - good place to live. I'm in the Marina - also a nice place...but the apartment sure doesn't look like that!
Speaking of which, I should change my location. Columbus hasn't been my location for over a year now.
I thought the last paragraph really provides the reader with a sense of what living in that neighborhood is like:
As for the backyard plans, they didn’t materialize as intended. It became clear early on that an empty pool — the skater’s nirvana — would not endear Ms. Bigbie and Mr. Shapiro to the neighborhood. (Though in the brief period when the ramp was in place, there was one family, Ms. Bigbie said, “who used to stand on their balcony with their four or five kids and watch us skate.”) After scrapping the pool idea they hired their friend Flora Grubb, a landscape designer, to make a kind of Palm Springs/Mojave desert installation of corrugated iron, succulents and cactuses in pots, and three huge date palms.
The day the palms arrived and were craned cinematically into the yard, Ms. Bigbie began to worry about the neighbors again. At a crucial moment, when the first palm was aloft, one neighbor pulled up in his car and yelled out to her.
She flinched until she heard him clearly: “I wish you had told me you were doing this,” she remembered him calling out. “I would have taken my kids out of school!”
Recently created by Archivirus Architecture and Design, the Ramp House is a response to the client’s request for a “skateable habitat”.
According to architect Athanasia Psaraki, the Ramp House is a project which tries to reconsider and redefine the living space. The result of the client’s request is a curved form interior, which “set the whole house as well as the inhabitant’s life, into motion”.
In the space, which is a roof addition to an existing three-storey building, she tries to achieve a balance between old and new. The dominant material was wood, so a wooden pergola and wooden horizontal louvers surround the new structure, connecting the old and new.
The architect wanted the ‘skateboarding’ element to be more than simply putting a mini ramp in the living room. Rather, the ramp, the bowl and all the interpretations of those terms would actually become the building elements for this space. It is intended to be a ‘ramp house’ and not a ‘house with a ramp’. Straight lines are curved and the flat surface becomes a ramp or a bowl. Basic house elements such as the fireplace and storage units are hidden inside the ramp forms.
The street aesthetics of the skate scene are combined with a home atmosphere by combining concrete and wood. Concrete walls mould into the floor and concrete turns into wood to create a ramp partition with the kitchen. In that way, says the architect, somebody can flow from one space to the other, skating or walking. Click on images to enlarge
i_want_to_have_sex_with_electronic_music
Originally posted by Hoff
a powerful and insane mothership that occasionally comes commanded by the real ones .. then suck us and makes us appear in the most magical of all lands
Originally posted by m1sT3rL
Oh. My. God. James absolutely obliterated the island tonight. The last time there was so much destruction, Obi Wan Kenobi had to take a seat on the Falcon after the Death Star said "hi and bye" to Leia's homeworld.
I got pics and video. But I will upload them in the morning. I need to smoke this nice phat joint and just close my eyes and replay the amazingness in my head.
I didn't read the article but the house is awesome, I sent the link on to my ex who's into these things. So much character, can tell its residents have a good and quirky sense of aesthetics.
i_want_to_have_sex_with_electronic_music
Originally posted by Hoff
a powerful and insane mothership that occasionally comes commanded by the real ones .. then suck us and makes us appear in the most magical of all lands
Originally posted by m1sT3rL
Oh. My. God. James absolutely obliterated the island tonight. The last time there was so much destruction, Obi Wan Kenobi had to take a seat on the Falcon after the Death Star said "hi and bye" to Leia's homeworld.
I got pics and video. But I will upload them in the morning. I need to smoke this nice phat joint and just close my eyes and replay the amazingness in my head.
I sent the link on to my ex who's into these things.
My first thought was that it was some kind of West Elm model home, lol,... There are def details I would have in my house...functional, practical and stylish.
Haziel, my fiance is from Santa Cruz,so we'll be heading to SF, LA or SD in the coming yrs (foreseeably).
remember most skaters in their 40s still look like they are in their 20s so i'm sure it's some famous skaters place.
as for the first place. It's nice and all but the outside looks sweet, but when I go inside, it doesn't look like a million $ place to me. And for a Million $$ I want a fucking garage that is a garage.
^In most cases I would agree, but this is SF, cars are pretty unnecessary there I would imagine 1 in the driveway is enough...plus they just skate to the trolley, but this is about your preferences and that makes sense.
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