Denver: Denver Skatepark

While many city-sponsored skate parks are stuffed next to the dump, police station or sewage treatment plant, the Denver Skatepark sits proudly in the heart of Denver's tourist-friendly "Lodo" district, a few blocks from Coor's Field. The first thing that strikes you about this mile-high Mecca of stoke is its size —50,000 skateable square feet, which seems even larger because there are no fences or walls to cage you in. Unique designs are abundant at Denver, including the surprisingly fun tear drops (small dish-like indentions that run in a row), a washboard to quarter pipe, a kinked, pyramid ledge and the Ditch of Death —a downhill, banked snake run that includes wallrides, hips, a channel and ledges. For the vertically minded, there is a bowel-loosening 11-foot-deep kidney pool and a smaller bowl with weird double-sided-curb coping that spines into a mini. One of the additional blessings of the Denver park is ample room to just roll around and skate flat ground —an important-but-often-overlooked design element. Though the park is not without its problems —namely, its extra-slick surface and a few sub-par obstacles (we're looking at you, stupidly small clover bowl!) —its mellow atmosphere, lights until 11 and wide-open spaces make it an excellent model for any city looking to build somewhere to stick all those four-wheeled hooligans.

In short: Centrally located, sorta slick