The first place I ever stood, realizing American bombs had fallen there, was Geelung Harbour. RIP. Classic spot. The first place I actually ever stood where American bombs fell was at Main Station, but I didn't realize it until RMJ pointed it out, because he is better at history than me.
Visitors to Taiwan are lazy, and tend to use a lot of footage from around mainstation, because it's so easy to find. That being said, it has the makings of a perfect skate spot. The most important factor is that it has a mostly smooth surface. When you fall, it's like falling on ice, you just slide on your ass and buy new jeans after a few days.
Next, it has weird micro-scale architechure. We don't really care much about the difference between Doric columns and regular ones, but if the designer opts to ruin the skate spot by minute errors or spiteful hatred of skaters, we sure as shit notice architechure. (I'm honestly not spelling it wrong on purpose, but I have to wait another 65 minutes until Croatia beats Ronaldo and I'm too nervous to spell it properly).
Mainstation's post-bombing architect envisioned a skateboarding wonderland. Also, bums in Taiwan appreciate skatespots so much that they sleep on them, hoping to absorb their magic. The area around mainstation is littered with magic spots and bums trying to absorb the magic. The most obvious is maybe inside the atrium, which means "200 m wide room with 200 m tall ceiling, perfectly smooth stone floor, and hundreds of ground dwelling teenagers chattering into their internet phones in semi-circles". Just outside are series of pink ass marble banks with pink ass marble flats on top. Around back are two big round ouija board manny pads and the same distance away is a white tile bank to wall to chest high ledge with a filthy sign saying 'no skating' in several languages, and many, many wheel marks on the tiles from it having been skated until it surrendered.
The bums also try to absorb the energy of hte benches, which have weird loopy thick metal tubes on one side of them. They are really possessive of their benches, and don't appretiate when you land tricks anywhere near them, especially between 2 am and 6 am. This is because the transfer of metaphysical energy is highest just before morning, and they are afraid that in a single trick, you are going to steal the energy that they have methodically been sapping out of the spot all night.
The site has been under construction for at least 27 months. This means lots of wall ride barriers. In Taipei, they are painted in thick black and yellow diagonal stripes. They are at a 50 degree angle for 1/3, and then vertical the rest.
There are marble kickers to ledge, and yellow tiles and piss bushes and many more items and memories I can't hope to put up here. Mainstation is a skateboarding hotbed.
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