Guerilla SK8 Park in Jersey City, Part 1

Sometimes people just go ahead and create what they need without waiting for the government to act. That’s what a bunch of kids and young adults did in Jersey City a few years ago. At least, that’s what I surmise after the fact. I don’t actually know what they decided, when, and why. I just know what they did. I know, because I walked into it by chance. Here’s that story.

It was in November of 2006, about a month or so after I’d become interested in photographing local graffiti. I was walking in the neighborhood, or perhaps I was in the car on the way back from my Sunday AM grocery run. One of the other, it doesn’t much matter. Anyhow, I spotted some color:

That’s the stuff, says I, that’s the stuff. When I got closer, I noticed a ramp against a wall:

And then this:

Someone was obviously using this site—the floor slab of an abandoned industrial building of some sort—as a park for skateboarding and BMX bike riding. See:

I took this in July of 2007. Notice that the art on the walls has changed. It seems that some local, and not so local, graffiti writers used this site as something of an experimental gallery even as the skateboarders and BMXers used it to hone their athletic skills.

All off the books, so to speak. They were trespassing on this land. But no one cared. The cops certainly knew what was going on. Sure, it was a little off the beaten path, but only a little. The site’s not particularly remote or hidden. Oh, they knew, the cops. But why hassle the kids. They weren’t hurting anyone; the land wasn’t being used for anything. Let ‘em use it; keeps ‘em outa’ trouble.

Then this appeared:

Someone was hauling concrete back there and building mounds and ramps. Someone knew about construction. Someone was investing in improvements in this property that they didn’t own. Call it crazy; call it initiative; call it real.

Then, disaster struck in early November, 2007:

The land had been sold and the surface broken-up, presumably in preparation for construction (construction which has not, post-financial meltdown, happened yet). The skate park was gone. Investment wiped out.

I suppose it was inevitable in one way or another. After all, they didn’t own the land. Sooner or later the legal owner would exercise owner’s rights and the skate park would be gone. Squatter’s rights makes a nice movie—and wouldn’t this make a really heartwarming little film? kids work hard, reclaim abandoned land, Simon Legree kicks them off, City Fathers get Legree on some criminal charge, kids are rewarded, city builds new park bigger and better—but that’s the movies.

This is Jersey City. Jersey City is not the movies.

Still, there’s more to the story. But, I tell you now, that more doesn’t include a happy ending for the kids and their park. At least not yet.

Later.