📷 via Greg Navarro, Jerry Mraz & Steve R.
It has been a little over a month since a city-approved granite ledge was dropped off at Tompkins. This is, by all objective measures, the most perfect Tompkins obstacle in the history of skateboarding at Tompkins. The marble delivery guy said it weighed 8,000 pounds. It was rumored to cost roughly what a used 2018 Honda Civic would run you today. Nike SB paid for it; it wasn’t heisted from a quarry by a granite Robin Hood. It is the sort of obstacle we travel and play mind games with security just to land ten to fifteen minutes of bliss with. And it was at Tompkins! It was never leaving! We don’t get kicked out of it!
Skateboarders had, in many ways, won.
We have observed in the past that, on a macro level, the pendulum swinging towards Olympic-approved skateparks would be met on the opposite side with the most brilliant ding-dongery imaginable. Tell a little kid to do his math homework, and he’ll start building a fort out of chairs and couch cushions. Tell skateboarders to “train,” and they’ll string together a dozen street signs leading up to a knocked-over pole with nails sticking out of it over a mound of mulch.
In the month since The Most Perfect Tompkins Obstacle Ever™ has been introduced, a similar phenomenon has been occurring on a local level.
It is not that the ledge hasn’t been getting mileage — there is a line-up to skate it at any waking hour, and it is certainly all over the timeline.
But while there is friction at the granite edge, there is no …mental friction — at least not enough for a place with a history of turning a broken computer printer into a skateable obstacle.
Event horizon may have been Franco propping a twenty-foot-long box from the long ledge jam on the brick pillars by the back corner.
Franco via @gav1nga1n
From that point onward, the T.F. cosmos became untethered in the best ways possible.
The Andrew box that was probably 80% more of a branding exercise than an optimal shape for a box became a means by which to propel Akobi into orbit.
Via @stolen.item
The bump-to-bar that had every flip trick imaginable done on it ceased to be viable. It needed to be propped up on deteriorating boxes to become …an even bigger bump-to-bar to render the A.B.D scroll anew.
Via @nycshawn
Via @rossberkowitz
Via @mylesstrampello
How about a BMX-style wallride made from the remnants of quarterpipe turned 45-degrees on its side?
@gabefe1z via @ecmelodi.archive
Or what if you turn the skeleton of the First Avenue Dunkin Donuts into a polejam?
Via @jacobygonzalez
To top it all off, imagine telling a member of the 2010s East Village skateboard proletariat that their local would one-day have a vert wall?
Via Jerry Mraz
A few of us were there on the morning of the granite ledge installation to witness hard-fought history. One of the reps from The Skatepark Project, which facilitated the ledge and dealt with the city’s red tape to secure it there, commented how awesome it was that there was finally a permanent obstacle at T.F.
“This is so sick. We should do more stuff like this here.”
In obvious agreement, somebody half-joked: “Yeah, how about another one of these?”
Imagine just how fucking deep-fried the tetris would get if there was another ledge there.
Tompkins School of Art and Design.