Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Get the Inside Look at Philadelphia's Skate Scene
Find out why the City of Brotherly Love is one of the best places to skate in the US.
Skating in Philadelphia is hard. Rugged terrain, uneven sidewalks, and every weather condition imaginable is hurled at skaters whose goal is to thrash the City of Brotherly Love. “The streets are rough. The spots are rough. There’s a lot you’ve got to battle,” says Kerry Getz, owner of iconic Philly skate shop, Nocturnal. But adversity breeds creativity and that’s the message “Greetings From Philadelphia” communicates loud and clear.
The “Greetings From” series takes a deep dive into the skateboarding culture of some of the world’s most iconic cities. Not just the terrain—the gaps and the rails—but also the soul of the people that drive the scene, and the history that has shaped the lifestyle today. With episodes shot in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Marseille and more, Greetings From Philadelphia’s is a 16-minute visual tour of one of the United States’ most historic cities.
Greetings From Philadelphia
© Colin Kerrigan
Ask someone to describe Philly and there’s a good chance “gritty” will come up in the description. Hell, you might hear about Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ and, by extension, the town’s mascot. Philly’s a city of proud blue-collar workers, rich immigrant histories, and a deep passion for sports. Yes, it’s a city of culture, class, and distinction, but it’s also the “f*ck around and find out” city. Not too many things reflect that more than Philly’s skateboarding culture.
“It builds character, it makes you tough. It’s just that gritty, raw energy. The skateboarding scene is lit up,” says Jahmir Brown, a Philadelphia native. “The legacy is very huge, and iconic, but now it’s our scene. And we’re doing what we want to do.”
At the start of the 21st century, approximately seven percent of Philadelphia’s 1.5 million residents called themselves skateboarders. In the 1980s, at any given moment you could find dozens, if not hundreds of skateboarders draped over John F. Kennedy Plaza’s Love Park at Fifteenth Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Center City. The scene was booming. So much so, that local authorities felt the need to crack down. Two separate bans, in 1994 and 2000, led to heated tensions between Philadelphia skateboarders and local law enforcement.
Greetings From Philadelphia
© Colin Kerrigan
Bitter struggles for their own space led to the city agreeing to contribute sixteen thousand square feet of unused public land beneath the interstate of South Philly’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park—becoming today’s FDR Skatepark. Thanks to a further relaxation in attitudes towards the sport, Muni Park is now skateable, something unheard of in the ’90s.
Thanks to the fight of Philadelphia’s skateboarders, the city’s scene lives and thrives to this day. It’s a vibrant, diverse, passionate culture that reflects the city it grew from.
“There’s a lot of people that are Philadelphia skateboarders that are not from here. There’s a lot of Philadelphia skateboarders that were born and raised here,” says Brown. “And no matter what, there’s love for everyone. But when you from here we like to claim that shit a little harder, ‘Nah, I’m FROM Philly.’”
17 min
Philadelphia
Go street-level in one of skating's most influential cities with the locals who make up the Philly scene.
