On board New York resurrects pioneering skate park

The Brooklyn Bridge, a landmark built to connect once separate cities, is 140 years old. Underneath the roads on the Manhattan side was a series of sloping redbrick embankments that, in the 1980s, became the birthplace of a gritty New York street-style of skateboarding – the Brooklyn Banks.

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, took a break last week from dealing with his city’s social and economic headaches to reopen the cambered banks and pay tribute to the skateboarding pioneers who helped turn the kick-flips of teenage outsiders into a global culture industry.

Adams said he had once been a skateboarder. “I’m going to brush up on them, come out here and do a few tricks.” But he also made a larger point about city life. “Everyone needs open space. We witnessed that during Covid on how people needed those spaces to come and sit down and enjoy the recreation that’s attached to it, so this is an exciting moment.”

The banks were closed off more than a decade ago to make space for road repair equipment. Then pressure from community groups, aided by skateboarding aficionados, including pro skateboarder Tony Hawk and his non-profit, The Skatepark Project, convinced the city administration that the historic skate mecca merited attention as part of a $375m revitalisation of public areas close to Chinatown.

“It was a secret place, a place you had freedom to move about and no one bothered you,” said Steve Rodriguez, who first visited at 15 and is a co-owner of 5Boro, a skateboard and apparel company. “No one cared about the space, so the skateboarders adopted it. It was a place to call our own.”

The space wasn’t limited to skateboarding – BMX bikers, graffiti artists, breakdancers and rollerbladers were all part of the banks community. “It was an ideal scenario – a melting pot. There were no rules down here,” Rodriguez said, recalling that artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were also hanging around.

Rodriguez has been fighting for the banks, now called Gotham Park, since the early 2000s. In 2010, the city closed the banks to repaint the underside of the roads. But they were not returned and some were torn up.

The city maintains about 40 skate parks. But few have the appeal of lost spaces with walls, benches and stair rails to perform tricks on. The first section of the Brooklyn Banks to be reopened includes a nine-stair section.

“When we were at the banks, no one knew we were there. We had nothing – the banks, a 25-cent juice, Burger King down the block, a supermarket and ourselves,” said Alex Corporan, who went on to become manager of the Supreme streetwear store in Nolita.

“There were no parents allowed, or better, no parents knew where the hell we were except that we’d come home for dinner at some point. It was so soulful, there was no agenda. We just wanted to be with each other.”

At the opening, Corporan said he had seen that same desire in those who had come along to try out the banks. “They want to emulate that same energy. It was beautiful to see,” he said.

That notion of finding a sanctuary was repeated by many at the ceremony. Jefferson Pang, a former professional skateboarder who learned at the banks and now also works at Supreme, said: “We were on our own deserted island, a place where you were not disturbed by any outside forces – you had the whole place to yourself.”

A decade after the banks were adopted by skateboarders, the Larry Clark film Kids helped put the downtown teen-skateboard scene on the cinematic map. Brooklyn Banks later appeared in Tony Hawk’s Underground, a popular video game.

There are also signs that the skate industry, estimated at $2.54bn in 2021, has shifted in other ways. It was generally seen as a male sport but more women are finding sponsorship at the pro or semi-pro level.

“My generation is the forefront of that,” said Beatrice Domond, at the unveiling. “It’s opening up but it’s still small, especially being a woman of colour.”

Meera Joshi, New York’s deputy mayor for operations, said the 140th anniversary of the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the reopening of the banks, represented the “mini worlds and crossroads and many worlds”. She said there was no place in the world where so much diversity and life congregated in one small spot, none of it planned, all of it “part of New York’s spontaneous and illogical magic.”

Pang said the revival of the banks would be important to the global skate community. “Brooklyn Banks was always the No 1, and definitely one of the biggest and well-known spots in the world,” he said.