Northern Virginia’s Cedar Crest Country Club and Its Amazing Skateboard Half-Pipe: Once “The Mecca of the Skate World”, and Perhaps the Unlikeliest Punk Rock Venue of All-Time! By Tom Kipp

I found this circa-1988 Cedar Crest skateboard half-pipe footage on YouTube, the best of several CCCC clips there. Seems just a bit different than I remember, but of course I was never there in daylight!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIudO7G3nQc&feature=related

 

It would be INCREDIBLE if footage of the Cedar Crest Country Club concerts featuring Gwar, Bad Brains and Scream somehow existed as well!

 

Shouldn’t be greedy like that, but of course I AM.

 

And now I’ve hit historical paydirt! Here’s an excellent piece covering the entire amazing story of the Cedar Crest Country Club skate ramp (1986-1991), from the local Centreville, VA paper in February 2011:

 

http://centreville.patch.com/articles/cccc-when-centreville-was-the-place-to-be#photo-4984087

 

It of course mentions the Gwar show, but also confirms that Bad Brains and Scream both “rocked the deck”!

 

By the by, a fine map view is easily found at Google Maps by entering “Fairfax National Golf Club, Sully, VA” and then zooming in or out, depending on how much surrounding context you’d like to see.

 

http://maps.google.com/

 

Anyhow, what a story….or as my partner in crime, Jim Harrison, once put it:

 

“Some people got to see The Beatles at The Cavern, others saw The Rolling Stones at The Richmond Jazz and Blues Festival, and a handful of us once experienced Gwar from the top deck of the Cedar Crest Skate Ramp!

Tom Kipp