B.Unique Skate Crew

I came across a video of aggressive skater Ramelle Knight and friends doing their thing at the now defunct UnderGroundSkatePark. When it was still open, my son spent hours and hours skating there so it was a sad day when they decided to close down. I blogged here in March of this year about a story I wrote on the merging of skate and urban trends for Footwear Intelligence magazine. I posted up some of the images I took for the story there as well.



I know that in-line skaters catch a lot of guff for their sport supposedly being less manly than skateboarding, which is the usual juvenile b.s. (I tell ya, this young generation wins the prize for being obsessed with gayness--work it out fellas.) The in-line skaters at that park were just as athletic as the skateboarders, and despite all the sniping you may read on-line, everyone there was respectful of each other and got along great, whether they rode inline, skateboarded or rode BMX.

When I interviewed the owner of the park for the story, we talked about why there is animosity between inline skaters and skateboarders, and he explained how it's not like that outside of the United States. He also thinks that a lot of it is fighting over resources. Because skateboarding is more established, its older members, many of whom have gone corporate, have the power to dictate where focus and money is directed and, not surprisingly, they favor their own sport, not only because they can relate to it more, but they have financial interest in maintaining it as the action sport of choice.