Words and Photos by Matthew Kaiser

In the summer of 2013 a video of Ben Hatchell ripping an indoor wood bowl appeared on Thrasher Magazine’s website. The bowl is called the Barn Burner and it’s a thing of beauty. The building in which the bowl is housed isn’t really a barn; it’s a 50 foot by 40 foot addition with 17-foot ceilings attached to owner and builder Dave Mutarelli’s garage.

I sat down before an afternoon session with Dave to talk about his bowl, which he calls the Shop. “It’s a workshop as much as the bowl’s in here, and I can fit my dump truck in it. That was intentional.” The bowl features a seven-foot shallow end crowned with buttery metal coping and a nine-foot deep end topped with pool coping and tile work. With double escalators, multiple speed pockets, and a nearly 90-degree hip, the seamless bowl rides smooth and fast and has more lines than Pacino in Scarface.

“I didn’t skate much when I was building this. I had to stop skating to get this done” he says. “My whole deal was, if you don’t work on it, you’re not fucking coming to skate. I don’t care if you’re Tony Hawk. That was what I told people and I pretty much stuck to it. Now I don’t care because it is what it is.”

Dave worked about two miles from the Hangar Bowl, so it as easy to leave work and skate weeknights. It was at the Hangar that Dave met Aaron Allen, who told him about a shared warehouse in Brooklyn, NY (The Autumn Bowl) where all the guys skated and had their own key. Allen soon bought a warehouse on James Island, Dave and seven or eight friends paid rent there. They built a street course inside, but quickly replaced it with a bowl. “We all did carpentry and worked out of that warehouse space,” Dave says it took about two years to build the addition to the bowl.

“Bryan helped me from day one, we went and bought a chainsaw, probably took 300 trees out. Rented backhoes, pulled stumps out, put foundations in, the whole nine.” Dave drew plans for the building and sketched some ideas for the bowl. Dave’s father, his 67-year-old uncle, and Bryan built the roof in one day.

“As much help as I had, I did the majority by myself. I think my wife probably hated me,” he says. “I had a lot of help toward the end, but when I started the project it was me and Bryan.”

“I have no problem telling people I built it for selfish reasons. I built it for myself, but me to learn to skate. I have sessions in here by myself that are just as fun as with ten people. But I always say there’s nothing like skating with your homies, skating with the people that helped me build it, like Devin McGuire, and Bryan, and Mike P, Jaime Stapula, and those guys.”