Unless you’ve been living under a rock it’s highly unlikely you have missed some sort of riding coming out of The Asylum skatepark. Whether it’s a world first triple flair going down, the Backyard Jams or one of the very capable locals, this park really does it and does it proper. And not long ago it became clear it was only going to get better. We touched base with Monoliths head guy, George Eccleston, to find out a bit more about one of their latest builds.
“Being able to get some larger ramps built for BMXerswho want to go high and fast is the main draw for me!”
Photos: Adam Lievesley
For people that don’t know, can you just explain what is ‘Monolith’, who are the crew you work with?
George: Monolith is a UK based ramp building company which is run by yours truly. I mainly work with the main man Jake Walters plus anyone else that can take our terrible banter. We like to think we mainly do skatepark builds but these days we seem to end up building setups for riders to film on. Some of my favourites are probably Kriss Kyle Out of Season and the the famous balloon project Don’t Look Down.
And that’s two jobs that have had a lot of eyes on them! Now let’s get into Asylum, you and your crew have just finished a very well received refresh to Asylum… did you guys build the first incarnation of the asylum? If so, after seeing people ride it did you notice there was ways you might want to improve/add to the set up?
G: We have built and been involved from the very beginning of Asylum, right back in the old location. When we built the new location there was the usual arguments about the set up and design where Jake thought he was best so I let it lie and now 5 years later I’ve finally been listened to and it’s going to be good now haha!
Haha, how long has this revamp been in the works before you started the physical work? Was this something you pitched to Jack (The Asylums owner) or did this come from Jack wanting to update the park?
G: Between Jake and myself we’ve been talking about this change for a couple of years now and recently Jack approached us saying he wanted a change for this year and he had some funding to do so. That’s where our brains really kicked in and figured out what we could do with the time and budget we had.
Share