Five Nights in Thousand Oaks

Words and Photos by Ryan Clements

I spent the past five nights in Thousand Oaks, CA, just outside LA, taking a little vacation. It was pretty much as close as I get to a legit vacation...very little work and I actually got to sleep in a few of the days. In addition to some relaxation, I made the effort to skate a few spots and visit some friends. Check out my crappy photos.

This little waste of concrete is in Newbury Park. The good thing about it is that it's not monitored, but the bad thing about it is that even though all of the elements are there they really don't seem to come together very well. Either the coping is improperly set, the angles are wrong, or something...but it's still a good warm-up spot. I heard that it's in Mikey Taylor's 'hood

The snails out there trip me out...they're everywhere

This park is in Van Nuys. From the pics on the Internet it looked good, but this is as close as I could get on a Saturday afternoon

Van Nuys. Go figure. Thanks for nothing

That's Ian Hill from The Daily Habit and his son Dorian. They live in Oxnard, which apparently has a bad rap as a city. It used to be the Crips running that place, but now the Hells Angels are taking over. That sounds like something out of a movie, right? By the way, Ian, that 'carne asada' tore up my stomach

This is the public skate park in Oxnard. It's fast, smooth, and has really fun lines, but the only downside is that there's a helmet nanny on patrol at all times. Some cool dad told his son to let me borrow his helmet, so at least I got to skate it for a few moments