Dave Nelson | SecretPenguin Blog

It’s been too busy lately, but super fun and exciting. Here’s a quick recap of everything…

A Day With Steve

I finally made it back down to Lincoln to skateboard with my good friend Steve Andel. Most people know him as Venom. We skated ditches, curbs, wallrides and just cruised around. Definitely one of my favorite guys to skateboard with. He always has fun and enjoys skating everything.

Go Skateboarding Day

National Go Skateboarding Day was June 21. I helped plan with BBB LTD and we teamed up with Red Bull and had 5 best trick contests throughout the city at actual skatespots. We got kicked out by a lot of security guards and police. It was super fun skating through the streets with over 80 people. You can see more at BBB-LTD.com and at Dave Giesbrecht’s gallery.

New Omaha Skatepark Design

We decided on a skatepark company to go with this past week. As I mentioned before, I was asked to be on the Metro Skatepark Committee to help plan and design the new Omaha skatepark. A couple weeks back we interviewed 3 companies. The best one in my opinion was Pillar. These are the guys that helped design the very first Skate Plaza with Rob Dyrdek. Brad, the owner of Pillar is a super cool guy, and seems really passionate about making this park great. I’m happy to say we’ll be going with him and his company for the new Omaha Skatepark!

I don’t think I can show the full design yet, but up above is a little preview. It’s going to be gooooood.

Omaha TweetUp

This past Saturday, we had the first Omaha TweetUp. It was a fun event at Aroma’s Coffee. You can read a full review of it on Joe Schmidt’s blog. It was good to put a face to a tweet.

Storm Damage

The storm hit us pretty hard. Fortunately, it missed our house and nobody was hurt. I hope the same for everyone else. Our new fence, deck, skateboard ramp and landscaping all got destroyed. Huge thanks to everyone that came out and helped us!
You can see all the damage and progress on our Flickr account.

It’s been a fun and interesting week…

The other day, we were buying domain names and I told Cody he should buy CodyPeterson.com before someone else does.

But he didn’t. So I bought it without him knowing, and set up a website with a live webcam pointed at him. After 3 hours of live feed, he ended up finding out after a bunch of people kept messaging Cody saying they’re watching him!

CodyPeterson.com

Omaha native skateboarder Joe Hammeke - staff photographer at Thrasher Magazine and skateboarder Robbie Brockel were on their way to the Damn Am Contest up in Minnesota at 3rd Lair, and stopped by the SecretPenguin studio.

Joe Hammeke may be able to take great skateboard photos for one of the best magazines around…

And Robbie Brockel may be able to win Best Trick contests and get a trick named after him(video from 411VM)…

But are these guys capable of beating Cody and I at Paddle Ball?
Check out PaddleBattle.com next Wednesday to find out!

I posted a while back about the meeting for a new skatepark in the La Vista area.

I’m happy to say I was asked to be on the Metro Skatepark Committee. We met this past week and went over some designs and proposals sent in by a few companies. The top 2 were from Pillar and Site Design.

I was very impressed with Pillar’s designs. These are the guys that worked with Rob Dyrdek on his Skate Plaza in Kettering, OH.

Red Bull flew my friend Jeff Chase and me up for the opening a few years back.

We’re meeting with the 2 companies on June 10th and will interview each one. I know I need to keep an open mind, but after seeing the submitted designs from Pillar and skating their past work, it’s hard not to be biased.