Civic Center Skate Park in Palm Desert

The Southern California desert has plenty of sunshine, making it a great place to get outside and skate. If you’re a little southeast of Palm Springs, you’ll find yourself in the city of Palm Desert. The Civic Center Skate Park in Palm Desert is a great place to enjoy sunshine and smooth cement. Most of Palm Desert has pretty good sidewalks and smooth paved streets which are great for longboarding, but sometimes you just need to shred a skate park!

The Civic Center Park in Palm Desert has a great skate park! It is also the largest park in Palm Desert offering tennis courts, sports fields, picnic areas, public art, and much more. The Civic Center Skate Park is a fun place to skate because it has a good variety of obstacles, bowls, and ramps.

Palm Desert Skate Park Rules:

The Civic Center Park in Palm Desert is located at 43900 San Pablo Ave, which is about 6 miles south of the I-10. The official City of Palm Desert website says that all parks in Palm Desert are open from dawn until 11 pm. Unfortunately, those hours do not apply to the skate park. The skate park hours are as follows:

Sunday: ———— 8am – 9pm
Monday: ———- 2pm – 9pm
Tuesday: ——— 2pm – 9pm
Wednesday: —- 2pm – 9pm
Thursday: ——- 2pm – 9pm
Friday: ———— 2pm – 9pm
Satuday: ——— 8am – 9pm

These hours are strictly enforced. The skate park is fully fenced in and the gate is only open during the posted hours. Also, there is an attendant working the gate at all times during the posted hours. Along with these restricted hours, there are a few more rules. Wearing a helmet is required, as well as elbow and knee pads. Without these pads, you will not be allowed to skate in the park.

Use of the Palm Desert Civic Center Skate Park also requires a membership pass. I am not usually a fan of paying to use a skate park, but if you want to use this skate park often you’re going to have to get a membership pass. The good news is that a membership pass costs only $5 for an entire year of unlimited use. If you are just passing through the area and want to check out the skate park, the people working at the gate are usually pretty chill and will let you skate one day as a trial day pass for free. Also, if you go on the weekend after 2:30, when the main civic center is closed, they may give you a free day pass.

Civic Center Skate Park Description:

The Civic Center Skate Park in Palm Desert is a large skate park with many obstacles for riders with different levels of experience. When you first enter the gate into the skate park, you’ll notice that the skate park is split into two different sides with an awning and picnic tables in the middle. Having this awning in the middle is great because the hot desert sun is no joke. It’s good to have a shaded place to sit and cool down.

We’ve been to this skate park a few times, but for some reason there has never been many people here. It was cool to have the entire park to myself, though as a result the park seem to lack the skate park atmosphere. I did go to the skate park in the middle of the day when most kids are still in school, which may be why it was empty when we went. Anyway, this skatepark is a great park to skate in. A lot of skate parks are great for short boards, but not always great for longboards. This park was an exception. The park has a great flow and the obstacles transition very well from one to another.

The park has a bunch of boxes and ramps of various shapes and sizes, all of which are smooth. Ramps in the park vary in size and angle, and many of the ramps are at good angles for a longboard. By this I mean they are long enough to gain a good amount of speed, but not so steep that your board scrapes in the middle. The layout of this park is great for pumping up speed and surfing on the ramps and through the large bowl.

The large bowl in this skate park is one of the highlights for me. The bowl snakes around in the middle and has deeper bowls on either side. The shape of this bowl and the fact that both ends are deeper than the middle gives you a feeling of downhill in both directions.

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Although this bowl did not have any smooth roll in areas, the bowl is not completely lined with coping. The middle section of the bowl is at an angle slight enough to roll in on without really scraping up a longboard. Rolling into this bowl was intimidating at first because of the angle, but carving hard into the turn seemed to work well. An experienced rider could pump and maintain a constant speed for numerous laps in this bowl, as well as on the banked turns throughout the entire park. This is a great workout for cardio, legs, and a strong core.

longboarding civic center skate park in palm desert

If you’re like most people in a skate park and not using a longboard, the Civic Center Skate Park is also set up well for anyone with more of a street style of riding. The park has a ton of rails and boxes to grind on. The park also has some stairs and a diversity of boxes to jump.

The south end of the park also has a great flow, with banked turns and many smaller boxes and rails. This side of the park is great for kids or someone still learning how to ride a skate board. This side of the park can be very quick for someone who knows how to move well on a board, but I found the obstacles to be a bit crowded for riding my longboard.

When to visit the Palm Desert Skate Park :

The desert sun can be harsh at the Skate Park in Palm Desert. So keep that in mind when deciding on a time to skate. The midday sun can scorch skin if you don’t prepare for it. Bring sunscreen or some sort of sun protection. Summer days from June though September average above 100° f so if you are skating here in the summer, you may want to wait until later in the afternoon or evening. If you happen to get lucky with a cloudy day, you can spend all day at the skate park!

The summers are hot, but the desert is a great place to be in the winter. In Palm Desert the months of November through February have an average high temperature in the 70’s during the day. Hard to beat!

Other Things to Do in Southern California:

If you’re traveling through Southern California and searching for adventure, you have a lot of options to choose from. We enjoy exploring the desert and longboarding whenever we get the chance. Below are some of our recommendations for a Southern California adventure.

Desert Exploration

Does hiking through narrow canyons, climbing on rocks, and hiking to a palm oasis in the desert sound like fun to you? If so, check out this article about Anza Borrego Camping, Hiking, and Longboarding. In the article we cover all sorts of information about the Anza Borrego State Park. In this article we also cover longboarding hills in the state park.

Skate Parks

There are a bunch of skate parks in Southern California to choose from. Some skate parks are very elaborate and some are simple. Here are some of the skate parks that we have explored in the area close to Palm Desert:

The Civic Center Skate Park in Palm Desert is a great skate park with a broad level of rideability from beginners to expert riders. The variety of obstacles in this park will encourage any rider to grow their abilities. I really enjoyed the size of this skate park. It is a very large skate park with many different elevations. The changes in elevation allow you to feel like you’re riding the entire park downhill. The ramps and banked turns really help with the flow of this park. They make it easy to build and keep up speed throughout the entire park.

When I was skating in this park I used a 40 inch fishtail longboard from our Lost Coast Longboarding shop. Click the image below to check out our online store to see the latest line up of hand painted longboards built by us! We also have a variety of soft cotton shirts screen printed by us!

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