GLoucester News

Gloucester's Skateboarding Community Is Alive

Editor Daniel Walsh

For years, skateboarding has been a stable of countless cultures. Millions of people all around the world have found a sense of community through skateboarding. However, Gloucester County has always had a painfully small skateboarding community. There is only one extremely small, typically empty skatepark which has been practically useless for years. Recently, however, Gloucester Parks and Recreation made a few minor modifications to the park making it exponentially better.

For people in Gloucester County, it can be extremely difficult to start skateboarding, even if it interests you. There’s not really any fantastic street spots and most of the roads in Gloucester are difficult to ride on because of how rough they are. There's only one skatepark in the entire county, Brown Park, which is pretty far out of the way for most residents as it’s on the very edge of the county.

Atop its unfortunate location, skateboarders have always seemed to have a problem with the park. Its smaller than a basketball court so there's not really a lot of room for obstacles, and it shows. The park only has 5 obstacles and a vert ramp (commonly known as a half-pipe). The vert ramp is sectional which means it was multiple sheets of metal put together, however, over the years, a gap grew between the panels on the ground due to weathering which skaters would hit at a high speed and get sent flying off their boards making it an extreme hazard and useless.

This summer, the pressing issue was actually addressed. Skaters have been pleased to see there have been two big adjustments to the park. There are two platforms that makeup Brown Park, they’re connected by a rail and the bank mentioned earlier. A big problem skaters had with the park is that the higher platform was too small to gain any real speed. To combat this problem, two quarter pipe ramps have been added behind the bank, making it possible for skaters to gain the speed needed to perform tricks. The other major modification made is the vert ramp has been resurfaced and repainted making it possible and safe to skate on again.

Due to the park being skateable, there has been much more attention drawn to it recently. Over the summer, for the first time in a while, there was a skateboarding competition at Brown Skate Park. The competition was held by an organization called Triangle Skateboard Alliance. It was founded in James City County but focuses on promoting skateboarding all around coastal Virginia. The Alliance saw the potential in brown park and worked with Gloucester parks and recreation to make the improvements that were made.

The event was a charity event held to raise school supplies for schools in need. To participate in the competition you had to bring five school supplies and to watch you had to bring two. There were three different categories of skaters, beginner, intermediate and advanced.

“It was fun, the kids were really really creative. In fact they created some jumps I've never seen before. One guy broke a skateboard,” recalls Gloucester High Schools theater director Clint Alexander. The event was judged by none other than Alexander himself and Lt. Petrowicz. Skaters were judged in their category with factors taken into account such as how many obstacles they used, how consistently they landed their tricks, overall performance and things of that nature. Lt. Petro recalls, “We were all consistent, because we all were getting different feels and then we’d score them and we’d kind of converse with each other and me and Clint were like right on with him, you could clearly see who was the better performer.” There were prizes handed out to the winners of each category, the beginner level won a sheet of grip tape, the intermediate winner got a set of wheels and the advanced victor went home with a brand new deck. There were also smaller prizes such as gift certificates to the movie theater, many of these prizes were gifts from the community.

While the event was for experienced skateboarders, it could still be enjoyed by anybody interested in skateboarding as a spectator. In fact, there were more spectators than skaters. All types of citizens came out to enjoy the event from kids to adults, families and couples who were all brought together over their interest in the art of skateboarding To spectate the event you only needed to bring two school supplies, which costs much less than a ticket to the movies or a football game and is much more original. Sophomore Kyleigh Johnson called it “a different and cool experience”.

The adjustments made to the park may seem very minor however they greatly improve the usefulness for Brown Park. It is exciting for many people, skaters and none skaters alike, to see the Gloucester community shine a positive light on skateboarding. The Gloucester skate community truly is alive and well.