Last weekend saw the 2018 Urbside Jam take place at one of Essex’s longest serving DIY builds, with the 01206 Tapes on hand to film what went down. The under the bridge spot has seen a recent renovation on the smaller side of the build, with the row of varying whippy quarters replaced with one long quarterpipe which I haven’t skated yet, but which looks as if it offers much more potential. The bigger mellow quarter is still as it ever was, offering the siren call of tricks bashed off the rubble above it to those willing to risk shipwrecking themselves in the process.

Essex has long been one of the United Kingdom’s most productive scenes and that comes through in the level of DIY builds in the county, with Urbside, nearby Delside and the undercover Kobwebs the current options available whilst passed builds have included the incredible concrete dreamscape that lay behind Empire Skatepark before that skatepark fell victim to unscrupulous land owners. Add in a number of concrete parks including the UK’s only Dreamland Skatepark, a scattering of miniramps including the highly recommended Thaxted, the heritage listed iconic 1970s Romford Skatepark and a wealth of street spots sprinkled throughout various towns – and, as far as we’re concerned, you could probably book a week long skate mission and never leave the county line.

This labour of DIY love chimes in perfectly with the episode of Jeff Grosso’s Loveletters to Skateboarding which went online today, as it is dedicated to the memory of Mark ‘Monk’ Hubbard, one of the forefather of guerrilla concreting and someone to whom anyone pouring their own concrete without the proper permission should be raising a glass to. Have a watch of that, have a watch of this, and to paraphrase the Big Boys “Now go out and build your own spot.”