Today is a good day for UK skateboarding.
Southbank is holding its Summer Jam in London, celebrating 50 years of skateboarding at Southbank with skating, DJs, beginners’ sessions, a women and girls’ jam, best trick and more. Leeds has the LS-TEN + Welcome Jam and BBQ, while Derby has C.R.E.A.M.
Three events.
Three different scenes.
Loads of people on boards.
But there’s something worth remembering when the music starts and everyone crowds around the obstacle.
The event isn't the scene.
The people are.
Southbank makes that obvious.
Fifty years is ridiculous when you actually think about it.
Generations of skaters have used the same space.
Different boards.
Different clothes.
Different tricks.
Different music coming through the speakers.
But the basic idea hasn't changed much.
Someone sees a piece of architecture that wasn't built for skateboarding and decides to skate it anyway.
Then someone else turns up.
And another.
Eventually a spot becomes part of skateboarding history.
That doesn't only happen at famous places.
It happens at your local park too.
The difference is nobody is documenting every year of it.
That battered ledge you've skated a hundred times might mean nothing to someone walking past.
To you, it might be where you landed something for the first time.
Where you met someone you still skate with.
Where you spent an entire summer.
That's why weekends like this matter.
Not because everybody needs competitions.
Not because skateboarding needs another organised activity.
They matter because people turn up.
A beginner can stand beside somebody who's been skating twenty years.
Someone can arrive alone and leave knowing five people.
Someone who hasn't skated for months might pick their board up again.
And tomorrow there are more chances to do exactly that, with events including the Caldicot Skatepark Farewell Jam, Pioneer Skatepark's 40th anniversary celebration in St Albans and Croxley Jam.
That's a healthy skate scene.
Big spots.
Small parks.
Old heads.
New kids.
People organising things because they care enough to make something happen.
So if there's a jam near you today, go support it.
If there isn't?
Go skate anyway.
Because when the speakers are packed away and the prizes are gone, the thing that actually matters is still there.
People turning up with boards.
ART FIRST. STREETS ALWAYS.
