The world’s first longboard specific skate park has been built in Kamloops, Canada.

As you’d probably imagine, it looks quite different to a conventional skate park. There are no bowls, trannies, rails and ledges. Instead, there are two long, winding runs of billiard-table-smooth tarmac for skaters to drift down.

Using a similar difficulty rating as slopes in ski resorts, there’s a mellow ‘blue’ run aimed at new and intermediate boarders, and a gnarlier ‘double black’ run that’s steeper, and throws riders hard into corners.

“are there too many skate parks now?”

One of the main motivations for building the park was to “keep longboarders safe,” says William Chung, the president of the Kamloops Longboard Club. He added that the park will help to “keep [skaters] off the street for as long as possible, and give longboarding a good name.”

The opening of a purpose-built facility like this will no doubt spark the old park debate among some in the skate community. Some people strongly believe that there are too many skateparks now, and many forms of street skating are suffering as a result.

This hasn’t been applicable to skating longboards until now, the opening of this Canadian park may infuriate the anti-park skaters out there. However, it’s worth remembering, that the building of one park will not affect how people worldwide will skate.

The park, possibly the first of many, will exist, but so will the streets. If people can use the park to hone their skills before skating in more public places, that has to be a good thing, right? This dude certainly could have one with a few laps at Kamloops.