Clearwater Skateboard Park was in Clearwater, Florida (of course) on the south side of Drew Street between US 19 and Old Coachman Road. I don't remember when it closed down but there's a strip mall there now. My friends and I used to spend quite a bit of time here in the late 1970s. The proshop sold all the cool stuff--Alva, Sims, Tracker, Kryptonics, Vans--and my parents should have had a wing named after them for what they spent here. They also had a snack bar and a game room with pinball machines and a foosball table.

The following photos were taken by my uncle Bill Cardinal in the spring of 1979. The developer stamps say April 1979 but they could have been taken a little earlier. The following is a panorama made from two photos taken from the observation area on top of the proshop. Each was at a slightly different angle so the perspective isn't perfect but it gives a pretty good idea of how the park looked.

To the left is the half-pipe. When the park first opened, there was no vertical in the half-pipe. About two feet of vertical was added to the back portion and the 3-foot plexiglass extensions were added after that. The hot skaters would "elevator drop" in from the vertical extensions. The rest of us mere mortals entered the pipe from the raised bank behind the half-pipe to the far left of the photo, just in front of the left-most figure in the photo.

To the middle right is the bowl run. This was a winding series of bowls increasing in size until you reached the "Big Bowl." You can just see the top of the Big Bowl in the photo with a chainlink fence around the upper lip. The Big Bowl was scarier than the half-pipe because it was steep and narrow. Very hard to ride.

To the extreme right is the downhill course. You could get up quite a head of steam going all the way down. Sometimes they setup slaloms here. Unfortunately, the freestyle area is not visible in the photo. It was to the right of the photographer and it was banked around the edges like the downhill course but was level.

Below is a view of the half-pipe from ground level. My mom and I are standing behind the plexiglass and my dad is behind us looking the other direction.