LO...VE... with the crooked "O." Draw that on a piece of paper and ask any skateboarder from the 1990's what it represents. They'll know. Any serious skater from that era, around the world. They'll say, "LOVE Park, Philadelphia. Great street skating spot." It was that well known.
Street skateboarding as a genre' got going around 1984, with skaters like Mark Gonzales, Tommy Guerrero, and Natas Kaupas leading the skaters of the world to explore their local urban terrain. Vert skating still ruled through the late 1980's, as far as board sales, fame, and money for the big names. It was the era where Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero and a dozen others battled for fame in the remaining pools and on halfpipes. Then the the third big wave of skateboarding popularity peaked, and it began to drop off. As it dropped, the U.S. dropped into the long recession of the early 1990's. Skateboarding went underground, just as video cameras became inexpensive enough for average people to start making their own videos. A revolution took place in all the fledgling action sports. Home made videos began to take the place of magazines as the main medium.
As all these things were happening, freestyle/street skater turned entrepreneur, Steve Rocco, and his crazy little company with the big name, World Industries, snapped up and promoted street skaters. The tide of skating turned and the next big wave, of the 1990's, was led by the street skaters. In San Francisco, home of Thrasher magazine, the Embarcadero/EMB scene gained fame in the magazines, and early videos. Ledges, benches and rails became the objects of choice.
But at the same time, back East in Philly, where there was no magazine, no major skateboard media, Love Park rose to prominence as a major street skating spot. This video above is the story of the rise, and the death, of the park with the four letter name, LOVE Park. It's the little public park that put the city of Philadelphia on the skateboard map in a huge way.
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