My Early Years of Skating

Prior to skateboarding, I would enjoy the sport only by watching it on the t.v, or watching my friend’s. I would only watch skateboarding and think to myself it would be something fun to learn. I was introduced to skateboarding during my freshman year in high school. A good friend of mine got into skating a few months before our freshman year, and during the first week of school he got a new skateboard. He gave me his old board and insisted that I should get into skating. I was hesitant at first, thinking I could not learn a sport such as skateboarding, but I have been skating ever since.

The first year of skateboarding, we would skate behind a Wal-Mart within walking distance of our neighborhood. The area was very plain; there was nothing there but the cement ground covered by a large green roof. We named the area,” The Green,” based off the roof, and we would skate there for hours everyday. “The Green” was a good place to skate because it was covered with a roof so we had a place to skate when it rained, it was behind the store so there were no cars or pedestrians to look out for, and the best thing about skating here was nobody cared if we were back there.

We did not know this at first, but “The Green” was used by police as a speed trap to catch speeders going through the area. There were several incidents where we would be skating and cops would pull up, and as we began to pack up and leave, the cops insisted that we stay. We were very surprised to hear this, but we continued to skate while the cops watched us as entertainment. The cops would occasionally talk to us and they allowed us to skate the area as long as they didn’t have any complaints by the workers, or we didn’t trash the place.

We continued to skate the spot for over a years, bringing rails, boxes and building several ramps. Once one of us got our license, we spent our time skating several spots and skate parks around Columbus. To this day we still skate The Green on rainy days and we were glad to have the privilege of having an area in which we had to ourselves.