Skateboarding began in mid 20th century California, but there was no way for its early pioneers to foresee the sport’s growth across the entire country, even into southeastern towns.
Sidewalk surfing has flourished in west coast cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles as a common pastime. Skateboarding is marketed heavily in these areas, and local residents don’t shoot a second glance at kids skateboarding past their front porch.
But it’s taken a different form in places like Baton Rouge, where the not-so-common pastime entrenched itself through a number of local skate shops, skateboard companies, an extensive skate park and most importantly, in the people who love to skateboard.
But regional differences aren’t lost on Baton Rouge skateboarders, especially those who have done the travelling. Yanaki Lopez, a Baton Rouge Community College student, grew up in Richmond, Calif., near the bay area of San Francisco, which exposed him to skateboarding at an early age.
“Between the ages of 5 and 13, everybody at some point had a skateboard or had a cousin who gave them a hand-me-down or something,” Lopez reminisced. “Even gangbangers can push [skate] down the street to a store. Even my dad can push around.”
With so many people at least dabbling in the hobby, it wasn’t too difficult to find places to skate, Lopez said.
“You step out the front door and the world is your oyster,” he said of the San Francisco Bay Area. “All of the curbs, all the bumps in the sidewalk — everything. Those are all the obstacles, and you don’t just go out to skate a spot, you go out to skate a whole city. It’s like going to Disneyland — there’s just rides everywhere.”
Skateboarding in Baton Rouge
Between the popularity of skateboarding and other, more serious crime afoot, Lopez said areas between Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco paid little mind to “skater kids.” An abundance of concrete, smooth ground and new architecture also made things easier on skaters. But ultimately, Lopez said he likes skating better in Baton Rouge, for several reasons.
“The industry isn’t here,” he cited first. “I would say 75 percent of the skateboard industry exists on the [west] coast, in California, in San Francisco and Los Angeles.”
That placement can affect skaters’ motives, Lopez said. It can affect the way they skate, the tricks they try and the way they present themselves.
“There are a lot of people who are kind of like succubae,” he said. “They’re trying to latch on to the industry and get free things.”
In Baton Rouge, Lopez was impressed to find shops like FIDNA Skate Shop on Perkins Road sold parts and boards from locally based companies like Heartthrob, Chief and Killing Floor Skateboards. Because of the lack of major companies, he also believes people here skate more genuinely, because they enjoy it as a fun hobby.
These shops have also supplied the long boards and smaller, plastic, Penny skateboards students have used to jet around LSU. While not all these students skate on actual skateboards, more are beginning to see the convenience in using some kind of board for transportation.
Business sophomore Stephen Wyrick said he can’t preform tricks and doesn’t ride normal skateboards, but his smaller, 22-inch Penny board works out pretty well for getting from class to class.
“I was living in the ERC and was able to go from there to PFT in five minutes,” he said.
Between the large wheels which help bound over cracks in the ground, rough concrete and other debris across campus, and a compact size that allows someone to stick the board in a backpack, boards like this can prove more utilitarian.
“It’s easier because you can bring it into class and you don’t have to worry about it getting stolen too,” Wyrick said.
Skate Parks and Local Skateboard Culture
While Baton Rouge isn’t as fit for street skating as a place like San Francisco, the BREC’s Extreme Sports & Skate Park has provided a location for skateboarders to consistently practice, which has proven increasingly helpful for talented and hardworking skaters.
“People have progressed a lot here since we got the skate park,” said Lance Chapin, a skateboarder for Killingfloor Skateboards. “It’s awesome, dude. It’s definitely the best skate park in Louisiana.”
It’s common for skaters to travel from Lafayette or New Orleans to the park, which was built by the respected California Skate Parks, said Chapin.
This isn’t the first skate park in Baton Rouge, however. Michael Breaux will transfer from LSU to the University of New Orleans in Spring, but he’s been engaged in the Baton Rouge skating community since he was a child. This involvement included jobs with RUKUS Skateshop and the now deceased Revolution Skate Park, which was built by RUKUS owners. Because the park was indoors, Breaux and other employees could rearrange the set ups and the build of the park to their preferences.
Breaux remembered “all types of skate jams there.” He was directly implanted into Baton Rouge skating culture at the park, attending regular skating events, get-togethers and barbeques.
“It was the first place I got into seeing live music,” he said.
The park opened in 2004 and shut down in 2006, which didn’t help the local, budding skateboarding community.
“Some people stopped skating, some moved away and others had priorities over skateboarding,” he recalled. “People fell out of skating.”
So Baton Rouge skateboarders had to root their hobby entirely on the street, pinpointing “spots” — convenient locations or improvised set ups to skateboard on. Lopez cited some locations on the south side of LSU’s campus where skate boarders have built ramps in uninhabited lots or found low-lying rails good for grinding, or sliding their boards across.
The Extreme Sports & Skateboarding park offered a location for budding skateboarders to consistently practice. And since street skating in Baton Rouge is “busted” according to Breaux, (“With new city renovations, a lot of our old spots are gone now, and it’s a death sentence to skate those new spots because you’ll get arrested.”) a lot of skaters watch videos of professionals in an attempt to practice, emulate or learn from these tricks at the skate park.
That was one way Breaux learned as a young skateboarder as well. Baton Rouge was also unlike California in that professional skateboarders didn’t drop into parks for kids to gawk over.
“No pros came here, so we watched their videos at the time,” Breaux said. “That’s how we got hyped.”
But today, the standards set by professional skateboarders are much higher. Breaux said Baton Rouge skateboarders can study videos of professionals like Columbian skateboarder David Gonzalez, who accomplishes tricks that “no one would have thought could happen six years ago.”
“These [Baton Rouge] kids have the opportunity and the resources to get better,” Breaux explained. “Statistically, and, as far as people making careers of it, skateboarding is the best it’s ever been here.”