The original Chenga World Skatepark in North Ridgeville, Ohio was one of the most important indoor skateparks of all time. If you were a rider, or BMX photographer in the early 2000s, there’s no doubt you made your way there, no matter where you were from. It was that good. Designed with bikes in mind, the flowing style created by Nate Wessel essentially changed the way we thought about indoor ramp set ups. Owned by two flatland riders, Scott Powell and Dave Schaffer, Chenga also boasted a huge area dedicated to flatland. The original Chenga World closed its doors a few years back when they lost their building due to real estate development, but they still have two other parks in the Cleveland area: Chenga 2, and Chenga 57. That’s Adam Banton above (click to enlarge) on a rigged curved wallride setup. Check out a photo of Chenga founder Scott Powell after the jump.

The shots above are from an old concrete public skatepark in the middle of a playground outside Cleveland, Ohio in Lorain, Ohio. The park has a concrete half pipe, about 8 feet tall, with two six foot quarterpipes on the back of each of the decks. It’s a really obscure place, and it’s tough to get people to go there as the neighborhood is a bit shady. I had been there on a previous trip to Cleveland, but it rained just as we got there… I managed to get a shot of Chris Hallman riding it in the drizzle which ran as a contents spread in Dig Magazine, but I kept wanting to go back. I went out to Cleveland to shoot with Banton in 2005, and we finally got to hit it up again. This time it had an amazing American flag mural on one of the quarterpipes, and with the sunset it looked awesome.

The shot on the left is a lighting test (shot with a Nikon d2h) for the film shot on the right, shot with a Bronica Sq-B on Velvia. The shot on the right ran small in an Odyssey ad that had a montage of photos in it, and I used it on some promo postcards over the years. The tester shot should have been used for something. Those kids are awesome. I didn’t even ask them to do that.