Photo by Zach Malfa-Kowalski
This is our third January in a row of spending some considerable time in America’s never-ending prospective 51st state, and what Billy Rohan once coined as the sixth borough of New York City. Past journeys — short of a day trip to the eastern island of Vieques — have kept us conveniently in San Juan, where the majority of the #trending Puerto Rican winter phenomenon keeps its home base. The island is big, but not that big: driving from San Juan to the west side is like driving from New York to Philly, except you stare out the window and see rolling hills rather than…the Linden refinery.
Mayaguez is one of the main cities on the west side of the island, and with one night in San Juan, we trekked the hundred miles there. After a pit-stop for the trip’s official sustenance (Medallas and arroz con pollo), a mini concrete racetrack-type spot with a Flushing-width gap in the middle, and a spot check at an abandoned waterpark visible from the highway (we got kicked out by stoned security guars in under ten minutes), we made it to Mayaguez with about an hour of daylight left to skate one of the funnest parks any of us had ever been to.
Filmed by Johnny Wilson
One of Mayaguez’s standouts skate-wise is a gigantic University of Puerto Rico campus. Like most college campuses, you could theoretically skate it for a week and not get bored — provided you never got kicked out. We skated for two hours later than we were expecting to, and then headed towards the well-lit park in Aguadilla.
Next day was a trip to more-or-less the most scenic park imaginable in Quebradillas, where we bumped into the squad from Shorty’s. Off the parks for the rest of the trip, and in these streets talking about shit Robert Lopez Mont did. (“Yeah man, Robert fakie flipped that three story drop when he was 14, man.”)
