July 21 2022.

A jewel in skateboarding history - a "secret pool" built by a gangster, maintained by naturists and decades of cat-and-mouse play between cops and skaters. Is this all an urban myth or true? Time to find out.

The story goes that the grounds were initially built as a secret getaway for the infamous Al Capone, but unfortunately that seems to be an urban myth, because Al Capone was way dead when this property was developed. In February 1963 a pair of nudists bought the place and transformed a cactus garden into the Desert Gardens Ranch. Secreted away in the San Jacinto Mountains, just outside Desert Hot Springs, it offered people a secluded and year-round sunny haven to run around naked. The ranch was active until the late 70s and was shuttered down around 1980.

Image Nudist Newsfront Magazine archives Jeff Bowman - former President of the Desert Hot Springs Historical Society, nudist and pre-Dogtown skater

In 1984 a group of skaters discovered the spot that consisted of an abandoned kidney-shaped pool, thanks to a local who had found the bowl and talked to a neighbor who skated and told him to go check it out. Back in those days skaters had to jump fences to skate abandoned and dry pools. So it didn't take long before the word spread there was a bowl you could skate and party without being afraid of getting chased away. Visitors had to travel through the desert to reach the spot and it was a bit of mission to get there. Basically it was a place where you could skate, camp, party, shoot beer cans, get drunk and do whatever you want. The only thing you had to worry about were snakes, scorpions and tarantulas .

"Wheels of Fire" with Tony Alva and Rick Spidey turned the Nude Bowl into a pilgrimage of skate.

The Nude bowl was a "secret" spot until Santa Cruz released "Wheels of Fire" with Tony Alva and Rick Spidey in 1987 ripping up the bowl. That's when the scene blew up and the nude bowl turned into a Mecca for skaters. Throughout the next years the nude bowl started appearing in magazines and videos, and unfortunately by the 90s, large parties and violence became pretty "normal" here. The nude bowl had turned into the perfect setting for out of control parties, drugs, nude skating, fighting, biker hangouts, you name it. Basically it was one massive fight club in the desert. After numerous complaints about guns, fires and fights, the police filled the bowl with dirt to avoid further problems. A couple of years later two skaters Jeremiah Risk and Rodney Rodrigues spent nights digging up the dirt with bulldozers and repaired the bowl. After a few months, the police broke up the concrete and buried the remains of the bowl again.

Photo Courtesy of Josh Baish (2022)

Then around 2014 Nude bowl images started surfacing again on the internet. The pool has been dug up again, repaired and is now intact. You are all going to have to look for the location of this pool yourselves, because we decided to keep this one "secret". So happy hunting, shred it whilst you can and behave.