Welcome to Auckland’s original ‘Municipal Destructor’. Everyone, like me, know it as Victoria Park Market – a super popular open air market through the 80's to 2000's – a great place to buy your crystals and tie-dies etc! I've always known that it was originally the city rubbish dump – when the city was waaaay smaller). There is more to the story, of course. It was originally created in reaction to a bubonic plague scare in Sydney. For sanitary reasons it was built to burn Auckland’s rubbish and waste while using the heat generated to provide electricity to power the city. Sounds pretty clever eh, and I guess we were plague free. However, we must have been breathing some seriously toxic smoke fumes! That 38 metre tall chimney must have helped a little but don't forget all the horse manure and night carts, they were definitely smellier times. The municipal destructor is now a gentrified place that's home to restaurants and businesses, like the superb Milenta restau...
I was asked a good question about how I drew the skater - in one go or from a photograph? My answer; definitely drawn on site and the skateboarder is actually an amalgamation of 2 or 3 skaters.
I knew I wouldn't be able to capture the stunt in one go, so I looked for a repetitive action that I could sketch from over a number of passes. These guys were practising the same stunt (grinding?) on that edge again and again, and I thought the backdrop of the Sky Tower and motorway viaduct behind would make an interesting composition. Each time one of them went past I focussed on just one element of their form or posture, it took quite a few goes over about 10 minutes lightly in pencil first, then inked over once I was reasonably happy.
The clothes are a mix and match too, one guy had the orange hat, another the green cargo shorts, and another the 'support your homies' t-shirt, which was actually on his front, for some reason it appealed so I put it on the t-shirt back so it could be included in the sketch (I have no idea why we need to support our homies, but you can buy one from SOUF Skateboards here)
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