Spots: Uptown Manhattan — Harlem & Morningside
Spot: Columbia covers quite a bit of ground, so this spot review will be broken up into individual portions of the campus.
Big Three / Law School Area
Across from the Law School area, is the most skated part of the campus. There are a whole bunch of marble ledges and benches on choppy ground due to weathering and increased cracks, loose bricks, etc. over the years. They are still very much skateable, but you’ll need to designate a bit of effort into revitalizing them via waxing/breaking in because they haven’t gotten much burn since the early-2000s. The big three is around the size of your average five stair, and has an approach that is only about two feet wide, and probably fifty feet long. The ledges at the bottom are all waxed well, although a bit lower than an average bench-sized ledge. Below is the fountain structure which acts almost like a quarter-pipe. You’re going to have to figure out how to get to it on your own if you want to skate it, but the entrance is somewhere on a side street.
Otherwise, there’s a six stair rail in front of the housing building that will probably get you kicked out very quickly, and a thirteen stair hubba ledge with a short runway that Pat Smith 5050ed in a Transworld photo some years back.
Brick Banks / St. Paul’s Chapel Area
The chapel area contains three sets of banks, broken up by two sets of six stairs with round rails going down them. You need to ollie up onto the banks in order to skate them, or bring a sign or any other sheet of metal or wood in order to avoid that step. You can skate them as generic banks, slanted manual pads, do tricks into them because there is a chain at the top, or do tricks over the rail into the bank if you can ollie over it. There ledges running alongside both sides of the entire bank layout, they are rounded off, round granite, but will both grind/slide given the right amount of wax. You can either skate them completely over the bank or pop into it.
Tennis Court / Residential Area
Here you will find infinite amounts of two-foot-high marble ledges on brick ground. They will usually need wax when you’re skating here. There are two sets of ledge-to-round-rail obstacles that enable you to approach the rail from the side, making it only about two-feet, to a-foot-and-a-half high. There are also several waxed concrete ledges up top without ends that could be skated. Right outside the building that separates the campus from the tennis courts is a miniture two-flat-two double set that Denzel Washington walked up when he played Malcolm X in 1992. It his infinite runway, a super-choppy landing, and remnants of Denzel’s foot-steps.
Bust — ♦♦♦♦ / Very Likely: Usually, you’re going to get kicked out in under half an hour depending on which part you skate. The big three area is the most prone-to-kickout region of the entire spot, although the campus cops roll around everywhere. The entire campus is big enough to enable you to be kicked out of one part, and re-enter the campus through another area and skate different parts, but more often than not, they will follow you out to Broadway or Amsterdam to ensure you’re not off skating something else. There is one insane Jamaican security guard that used to roam around here around 2003 who would chase down skaters with intents of killing them, but he hasn’t been seen for some time, so hopefully, he either got deported, or found another job.
Location: 116th Street and Broadway. Take the 1 train to 116th Street–Columbia University, and the campus is right outside. There are certain discreet entrances that prevent security from spotting you easily, but you will have to figure those out on your own.
Pictures (Click to Enlarge):
