![]() “Last year, we had women coming from Connecticut to come skate. People will drive over an hour to get in a session here,” Hernandez said. Especially on cold, winter, crummy nights when it’s raining. He knows there is a need for spaces like this. Two decades later, he is now a sponsored skater - he gets his gear for free - while working construction jobs to make a living. The skate furniture was built, assembled, and enthusiastically tested by a small crew of volunteers, including Tom “TJ” Hernandez Jr., a lifelong Trentonian who has been skating since he was 9 years old. It teaches kids to see obstacles in front of them as an opportunity to think creatively, develop their own approach, and succeed by pushing through fear, frustration, pain.” “There’s no one right way to ride a skateboard. “It’s one of the only spaces where they can freely explore their creativity,” he said. During the summer, the Roebling Wire Works building hosts events like Trenton’s popular Art All Night festival, but in the winter, skaters will take over the drafty, unheated building. McNichol sold his indoor concept as a way to not just give kids something to do with their idle time, but actually improve their minds. “As cliché as it sounds: the possibilities are endless.” “There are at least 20 ways to skate it, and that’s just me as an average skater off the top of my head,” he said. You can skate the opposite side of the hubba. ![]() So you have the kicker to hubba, you can skate down the hubba down the stairs. If you skate it the other way it’s a wallie,” he said. “We’ve tried to economize the space so you can skate all these things in many ways,” said McNichol, pointing to one object with a Frank Gehry-esque amalgam of competing geometric shapes. It is outfitted with dozens of objects, many of them were professionally built for, and reclaimed from the House of Vans, a major skateboarding pop-up event held last month in Philadelphia. Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora will give the skate park his stamp of approval at its official launch on Saturday. … There is one park in Hillsborough with lights.” “There is a gaping hole in the New Jersey skate community,” McNichol said. When winter weather comes, it’s impossible. There is still sidewalk skating, sometimes quasi- or outright-illegal, but when winter darkness comes early, it’s hard for adults to skate after work. McNichol could once name a handful of indoor skate parks in the area, but they all closed down in the last 10 years. Those skateboarding opportunities are drying up. Before the foundations linked their energies to building Jamaica’s first real skate park, young local artists and athletes combined their efforts to refurbish a gully with murals, graffiti.WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor But Bourke reports that a good number stayed behind, to push through to the end.įreedom Skate Park was built in response to Jamaica’s developing skate culture, primarily localised in Bull Bay, where it exists in tandem with surf culture. Expectedly, the team thinned a bit when the COVID-19 pandemic spread into the region. These guys are a team with integrity, strength, valour, honour and all of those words you use for superhero characters,” Bourke said. “I can’t stress how much gratitude we have for these volunteers who were here before the pandemic hit. It shows that a project that was rooted in love couldn’t be stopped,” Bourke told The Gleaner.įreedom Skate Park was a collaborative effort among multiple entities, including Seprod Foundation, Sandals Foundation, Flippin Youths Foundation, Tmrw.Tday Culture Fest, Jamnesia Foundation, The Skate Room and the Concrete Jungle Foundation, who sent the team of builders. “A lot of energies came together to get this done, countless hours of planning, and hiccups, for a good, long while now. Kevin Bourke, one among the primary conceptualisers, projects that construction of all the ramps, slopes, rails and the like will be complete by this Saturday. ![]() Freedom Skate Park, a massive undertaking that has been years in the making, is finally now very near its own end. At the end of the Bull Bay quarantine comes some more good news for residents, especially the young and spritely. ![]()
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