You might recall the panic siren going off on Instagram a few weeks ago when they first fenced off Blue Park for construction. (To be fair, there’s precedent for panic over there.)
The park reopens today, on this obvious torrential wash-out of a Sunday, with a handful of new obstacles built by The Skatepark Project (formerly known as the Tony Hawk Foundation), and Vans.
The new stuff includes:
Way back in 2018, a rainbow-haired man adorned in face art ruled the land. His sermons could be heard blasting from car speakers all throughout New York. His visage was unavoidable on our phone screens. Some devotees even painted a ten-stair set in Bushwick with the spectrum of his colorful head as a tribute. According to a QS commenter, those stairs were two blocks from his childhood home. His name was Tekashi 6ix9ne.
And on a day when the wind-chill brings the temperature down to 12 degrees, we bring you some… good news.
Space 198, the new free, INDOOR Vans park is opening on January 2nd at 198 Randolph Street in Brooklyn. Unlike the belated House of Vans, which was more of an event space inside of a skatepark (and brought out people’s inner savages anytime there was a mid-winter open day there), this park is a community-oriented space built for skateboarding.
It’s going to be open Thursday through Sundays — you just need to to sign up on the website beforehand. And it’s off the Jefferson L stop in Bushwick, making everyone’s life a bit easier than a 20-minute walk through the snow to Greenpoint that we used to do ;)
As they were putting the finishing touches on it, they gave a handful of crews the chance to check out the park last week, and here’s what we came back with. Be nice to Jersey Dave when you see him, because chances are, his phone has not stopped buzzing for the past two weeks.
Filmed by Will Rosenstock, Paul Young, Max Hull, Cristian Berrios & Kyota Umeki.
