Skate Bylines

Story by Dominique Teoh

Sarah Meurle by Sam Ashley at Love Malmö, Sweden, 2024 courtesy of Free Skate Mag. Edmund Bacon with a model of Philadelphia’s Society Hill Towers, 1960; Love Park, 1965; cover of ‘Philadelphia Central District Study’ all from the Edmund Bacon Photo Project c/o Fisher Fine Arts Library

Collage by Farran Golding

Skateboarding is getting old. Countless spots have been lost through the years, yet enough time has passed that some are actually returning. From Pier 7 in San Francisco to the Brooklyn Banks in New York City, some of skateboarding’s holy sites have begun their resurrection. Campaigns to save skate spots have proliferated and success stories like Long Live Southbank prove cultural preservation is not only worth fighting for but a battle which can be won. Skateboarders may seem unlikely candidates to be thrust into the world of civic activism but the deep connection skaters have to place, material and community is unmistakable. But what happens when a spot is destroyed forever? How, then, is its legacy preserved in a tangible form that goes beyond images and stories? The LOVE Malmö project which rebirthed a portion of Philadelphia’s Love Park in Sweden last year as ‘Klerkgatan & JFK’, gave way to a new precedent. Salvaging the ruins, slabs of granite were shipped across the ocean, turning rubble into something both relic and resurrected. These materials were then integrated into a new spot, giving rise to a form of skateboarding “spolia.”

Serendipitous and Sensible: How Can Spolia Be Applied to Skateboarding?

“Spolia” refers to materials that are salvaged from one structure and reintegrated into another whether for ideological reasons, practical purposes or both. The term originates from the Latin word for “spoils,” with the Arch of Constantine often used as a textbook example. Completed in 315 CE, the arch was built to commemorate one of Constantine’s military victories. However, much of the decoration was taken from older monuments that celebrated previous emperors. The heads of these emperors, as depicted in reliefs and statues, were then replaced with Constantine’s own.

Constantine was vying for control of the entire Roman Empire, shedding blood to defeat his co-emperors and bring the Tetrarchy — the Roman form of governance at the time — to an end. The use of spolia was thus deliberate and ideological, turning the arch into a symbol of Constantine’s power.

The Arch of Constantine incorporates reliefs of older structures into its facade. Wikimedia

Spolia can also be pragmatic. Rather than quarry new stone to build a house, existing materials found in the area can be repurposed — an approach which shares much with skateboarding’s DIY mentality, in which skaters use found (or stolen) materials from their environment to build skateable objects. Bricks, wooden pallets, Jersey barriers, beer cans, car tyres — everything is fair game.

Few people capture this DIY spirit as beautifully as Derrick Dykas, a local legend in Detroit’s skateboarding community. Dykas was a driving force behind The Wig, one of the city’s most celebrated DIY parks, and he managed to translate this experience into a job with the City of Detroit.

As an official city employee, Dykas is able to salvage quality material. Steel rings from an old playground, granite from various parks and plazas, landscaping boulders he’d been collecting over the years. All these materials were reworked and integrated into his latest brainchild, the Eliza Howell DIY. There’s even a bank-to-curb that incorporates granite originally used in Hart Plaza, at the foot of Isamu Noguchi’s Pylon sculpture.

This symbiotic relationship between skateboarding and the city feels serendipitous and sensible. Repurposing discarded objects is an effective way to cut costs whilst getting quality material into skateboarding spaces.

Preserving Memory

Amelia Gan, an architectural designer, first introduced me to the concept of spolia. Catching up over lunch, she explained her research to me as I struggled to keep up between bites of noodles. Gan was looking at spolia as a way of preserving memory and mediating identity. “Actively engaging with these objects in settings beyond museums and ruins, where they are integrated into current contexts, allows us to relate to them in both personal and collective ways and thereby derives and ascribes different layers of cultural value,” she explains. 

The focus of her research was Yuan Ming Yuan, a collection of palaces and gardens dating back to the Qing Dynasty, but her ideas can also be applied to skateboarding. “The goal of this project is not to bring back history, however, but to enable active engagement with the past in the present, while projecting forward,” she writes on her website.

“Spoliation doesn’t fight the ephemeral nature of street skating, but embraces it while allowing for continuity through transformation”

Applying this to skate spots provides room for thought. Spolia provides us with a lens to think about how we might preserve the legacy of a spot, particularly after it has been destroyed. A skate spot could be preserved in a museum, but that’s not too different from slapping a bunch of skate-stoppers on it; or you could try to save it through some form of community action (legal or otherwise).

In most cases, though, spots are lost forever, and it’s in these situations that spolia offers another way of preserving a spot’s memory, allowing us to engage with the past, while opening up new possibilities for the future. Spoliation doesn’t fight the ephemeral nature of street skating, but embraces it while allowing for continuity through transformation, balancing what can perhaps be considered the yin and yang of skateboarding, the notions of “skate and destroy” and “skate and create.”

Love Park under construction in 1965. The Edmund Bacon Photo Project / Fisher Fine Arts Library

To, Malmö … With Love, Philadelphia

Mention Philadelphia to a skateboarder and there’s a good chance their first thought will go to JFK Plaza or at least what it looked like before it was redeveloped in 2016. The ledges, the fountain gap, Robert Indiana’s iconic ‘LOVE’ sculpture, which lends the spot its colloquialism, Love Park. Captured through video and transmitted to the world, Love greatly shaped an image of the city for skateboarders around the world. Love Park is also a prime example of skate spolia. After losing your second home, the next question becomes: What happens to all that granite?

On one hand, Brian Panebianco and the Sabotage crew snuck into a city storage lot to skate the park’s remains. Then there are community efforts like Front Street Park, in which Love Park granite was used to upgrade a pre-existing spot; this time in a collaborative effort between SkatePhilly, Vans and the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation department.

Like holy relics, Love Park material spread far and wide; but none of this would have been possible if not for Love Park Heather, a Philly local who was not only a skateboarder but also, rather fortuitously, an experienced lawyer. From approvals to logistics, Heather facilitated much of the work that allowed these materials to be saved in the first place, providing a crucial bridge between skateboarders and the city.

Efforts to preserve Love Park material extended beyond state lines. Josh Kalis transported some of those granite slabs to Michigan, where they were used as raw material for a new indoor skatepark. Kalis is synonymous with Love Park and there’s clearly an effort to preserve the park’s history; but rather than get hung up on the past, Kalis’ main motivation is to support a new generation of skaters in Michigan. If we understand spolia as an effort to “engage with the past in the present, while projecting forward,” as characterised by Gan, then Kalis provides us with a perfect example.

Gustav Eden offers another beautiful approach in the form of Love Malmö, transporting Love Park granite across the Atlantic ocean to be integrated into the streets of Sweden. “When Love Park was being lost, I wanted to try and see if we could help to preserve parts of the space so that the history of Love Park could continue. Give skaters back the opportunity to experience the spot – from dimensions to textures,” says Eden, speaking to Ben Powell for Free Skate Mag. 

The Love Malmö team was able to reconstruct a section of Love Park using salvaged material from the original site. But they put just as much thought into where the replica will sit, taking Malmö’s streetscape into account. By playing with the relationship between material and site, Love Malmö went beyond mere replication, preserving Love Park’s memory while embracing the new possibilities that come with Malmö’s vastly different physical and social context.

This intercontinental project is not just about transplanting objects. It’s about transplanting the values ingrained within them. As Eden says on an episode of Beyond Boards, “The people who used this space, they gave it its value, and we want to invite that value into the streetscape of Malmö.” It’s a way of paying respect to the community Love Park nurtured, while extending the values of that community both into the future and into a new context.

Constantine’s spolia was rooted in power, turning his structures into symbols of empire. Eden’s attitude to spolia, on the other hand, is rooted in respect. Rather than enforce a power dynamic between two cities — as Roman emperors did — Eden hopes this park will strengthen the relationship between the cities of Philadelphia and Malmö, connecting two communities halfway across the world.

Already, the Philly-Malmö connection seems to be working. Philadelphia was shutting down one spot after another, but now they’re involving skaters in the redevelopment process, particularly in the case of Thomas Paine Plaza, better known as “Muni.”

Muni was iconic in its own right, peppered with domino sculptures and elongated benches that offered myriad routes for lines. The plaza was located in the heart of the city, just across the street from Love Park, and it captured a sense of mess and spontaneity often found lacking in skateparks. It was no surprise that skaters gravitated to the plaza after Love Park was shut down; nor was it a surprise that Muni’s loss would be just as deeply felt.

When Muni was fenced off in 2023, it seemed like the same cycle of events would repeat itself. Again people stole slabs of stone — a ceremonial act of sentimental looting that seems to accompany the loss of any iconic spot — and eulogies began surfacing in the form of social media posts and videos, Brian Panebianco’s THE FINAL PLAZA being a defining one.

“Again people stole slabs of stone — a ceremonial act of sentimental looting that seems to accompany the loss of any iconic spot”

Panebianco’s 13-minute video documents Muni’s destruction over the course of half a year. As the video progresses, the spot turns from a street plaza into what is essentially a DIY park, packed with makeshift ramps and loose tiles stacked into ledges. Seeing opportunity even in demise, the Downtown crew hit every spot that surfaced with each new phase of the plaza’s destruction. On its surface, this would be a classic skate-and-destroy project, only this time it’s city workers doing the destroying.

As tragic as Muni’s fate was, plans for its redevelopment have taken a surprising turn, with the city adopting a friendlier approach to skateboarding. Thanks to Pat Heid’s advocacy through SkatePhilly and bolstered by the global example of Love Malmö, Muni’s redesign now includes a space for skateboarding. There are even plans to reuse salvaged Muni benches as well as Love Park granite, bringing the legacy of two legendary spots together into one plaza.

This is a significant development in Philadelphia’s long war with skateboarding. The use of original Muni and Love Park material is an acknowledgment of the value skateboarding brings to the city, as well as a memorial to the iconic spots the city destroyed. Time will tell if this gesture is as true in practice as it is symbolic, but it’s a hopeful sign for the future.

Engaging With The Past

Spolia, in regards to skateboarding, is predicated on the idea that spots hold meaning, and the act of spoliation is a direct effort to preserve that meaning; however, this sort of preservation takes place in an altered form. There are, of course, more literal ways of reclaiming a busted spot.

An obvious first step would be to remove skate-stoppers. This was the case with Pier 7 in San Francisco, where an anonymous group was able to restore the spot to its former glory by removing skate-stoppers and filling in cracks. It didn’t take long for skaters to turn up after that.

OGs were reliving old days, while fresher faces were eager to session a piece of history. Mark Suciu, for one, talked about recreating one of Marcus McBride’s lines. “It’s like the gap between skateboarding’s past and present has temporarily collapsed,” according to Jenkem Magazine.

“[Street League] may be a faithful reproduction in form and dimension, but it lacks the social and political context of the original site, as well as the physical idiosyncrasies of the original material. In other words, skating Hubba Hideout in its heyday … is not tantamount to skating a version of the place in what equates to a real-life version of Skate 3’s park builder.”

If a spot can’t be restored, a replica could be built. The SLS Resurrection Series is a notable (and highly commercialised) example, in which pros compete on reconstructed spots like Hubba Hideout and the Wilshire 15. A big appeal of these events is to see what skaters can throw down today, effectively turning the spot into a yardstick for skateboarding’s progression, a constant variable against which the past and present can be compared.

There’s a clear desire to engage with the past here; if not with the spots themselves then with as close a replica as possible. But it should be recognised that skating a replica is not a one-to-one experience with skating the original. It may be a faithful reproduction in form and dimension, but it lacks the social and political context of the original site, as well as the physical idiosyncrasies of the original material. In other words, skating Hubba Hideout in its heyday — a spot whose name derives from slang for crack cocaine — is not tantamount to skating a version of the place in what equates to a real-life version of Skate 3’s park builder.

Resurrecting a spot for a commercialised spectacle feels sacrilegious, if not short-sighted from an environmental perspective. Rather than build and destroy a spot for a one-off event, why not create something permanent that will benefit the community in the long run?

Léo Valls shows us another way forward in this regard. Since 2019, the French pro has been installing skateable sculptures throughout his hometown Bordeaux, with the latest series set up as part of the 2024 Connect Festival. These sculptures are integrated into Bordeaux’s streets and remain open to all members of the public, skaters and non-skaters alike. Granted, they have nothing to do with preserving old spots, but they do present a community-focused alternative to flashy commercial events, as well as an understanding that spots are inseparable from their environment.

Skaters have also resurrected spots in-situ, that is in their original location. Enrique Lorenzo restored the St. Marti rail in Barcelona; while Cory Keen went through the effort of restoring the L.A. High handrail, creating what Jenkem calls “a piece of re-history.” These rails may be replicas, but the spot remains in the original site, retaining the physical and social context that goes with it. Everything surrounding the replica remains largely the same, from the texture of the roll-up to the disgruntled security guard around the corner.

One way to compare these methods is to think about Theseus’s paradox: if every piece of a ship is replaced over the course of time, is it still the same ship in the end? 

Restoring a spot in-situ is like replacing a missing part; building a replica is like constructing a whole other ship with the same blueprint; while spoliation avoids the conundrum altogether, as it does not claim to be the same ship. Its purpose is not to reconstruct history, but to preserve a part of it while opening new possibilities as a part of something else entirely.

Holy Relics

There are practical reasons for skate spolia. A good slab of granite is a good slab of granite, and it would be a waste to let it sit in a dump. But there is also cultural value in that material. Ted Barrow puts it elegantly, speaking of the Brooklyn Banks on an episode of Thrasher Magazine’s This Old Ledge: “The physical remains of our culture and how radical it is is tied to the bricks themselves in spots like this.”

A spot is made meaningful through the community that inhabits it, the nails and bails that go down, as well as their immortalisation through videos and magazines. When the spot as a whole is destroyed, their fragments become a physical record of that history. It’s no surprise, then, that some skaters collect chunks of stone from iconic spots.

In a way, these stones aren’t too different from holy relics; and as in most religions, these relics may be commodified. The Berrics, for example, was able to pull off production through destruction, turning the demolition of its skatepark into raw material for online content as well as physical product. Taking a leaf from the influencer marketing handbook, they invited skaters like Bam Margera and Chris Joslin to skate the park for one last time. The featured pro then destroyed an obstacle — figuratively and literally — before signing pieces of the ruins. The autographed pieces were later made available for pre-order online. In other words: “Now you, too, can own a piece of our self-proclaimed history!”

Maintaining Cultural Continuity

Spoliation offers a response to cities that are constantly developing and redeveloping, and it may expand the tools available to skateboarders who hope to infiltrate and redirect that process towards something more inclusive. If anything, reusing existing material may be more cost-effective for a city’s budget, while reducing a project’s environmental impact. Unless, of course, you’re transporting material across the Atlantic ocean.

But spoliation is just as much about transferring values as it is about transplanting objects. Examples like Love Malmö and Muni remind us that there is history in that material, and integrating them into new contexts allows us to continue engaging and building on it. It’s a means of maintaining continuity even as our physical environment changes, whether it’s preserving that legacy locally or introducing it into another community.

Conserving a spot makes sense, but preserving it is a bit of an oxymoron. Spots are constantly changing. A seasoned ledge is morphed by weather as well as years of waxing and grinding, while street skating itself is all about transformation — creating new uses for an object and giving it unintended meanings. In many ways, skateboarding is all about grey areas and skate spolia occupies that liminal space in much the same spirit, taking the middle way between preservation and destruction.

Dominique Teoh is a skateboarder and video producer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His writing has appeared in Wonderwhy, a magazine that explores cultural movements across Southeast Asia, as well as Subscript, a blog he has not touched in years but constantly says he will revive.

If architecture is up your street

“It’s becoming a true community spot again, like it once was” — In an on-the-spot dispatch from Brooklyn Banks, Tyrese Alleyne-Davis speaks to the generations of locals brought together by red bricks.

“It’s an accessible first point of, like, ‘How do I connect with this culture?’” — Ian Browning examines park pace in New York City through the lens of the Lower East Side Skatepark in ‘The Civic Center of New York City Skateboarding’.

More long reads

“Suppose that, by knowing his friend so well, and going out shooting with him and editing that footage and presenting it as he did, [Greg] Hunt achieved that most impossible thing — he gave us a way of knowing another person without ever meeting him.” — In a heartfelt essay from The Most Fun Thing, Kyle Beachy considers style, soul and the legacy of Dylan Rieder.

“It’s that, married with physical talent, which makes a good skateboarder. But I do think it’s the personality bit that’s more crucial. And that’s where the interview comes in. It explores that very thing.” — Question and answer interviews have long been a predominant format for written skateboarding journalism. To unpack how they became so ubiquitous and decipher what, exactly, makes for a good one, the script was flipped on Eric Swisher of The Chrome Ball Incident.

From Quartersnacks to the NY Times, the San Francisco Standard to Thrasher Magazine, Skate Jawn to GQ — you can find a range of stories about skateboarding across magazines, websites, newspapers and more in the Skate Bylines Journalism Library.

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