Philadelphia skateboarding: Independent Trucks Rip Ride Rally 2022

Indy's own edit of the Independent Trucks Rip Ride Rally jams in Philly this year.  

As a blogger who has been mostly telling my own weird stories, of moments I rode and witnessed in BMX and skateboarding back in the day, for 14 years, this blog has led me into a lot of new ground.  With The Spot Finder blog, I wanted to dive into the stories of epic bike and skate spots, and that leads to the scenes behind those spots.  Post by post, I started with places I had either been to ride many years ago, or spots I've heard of.  Nearly all the posts have turned me on to videos and footage that's completely new to me.  And I love that.  

I knew of Love Park from skate videos, and hearing skaters talk about it, years ago, the place  was legendary.  After that post, I realized the TED Talk in the last post was also from Philly, which led to a skatepark there.  I was working towards a post about FDR, the DIY skatepark that's now as famous as Burnside, in Oregon, the original under-the-bridge, DIY skatepark.  As I dug into the Philly skate scene, I learned it's a much bigger, and a much more hardcore scene that I thought.  

Then my laptop decided to konk out for a couple of weeks, which gave me time away from blogging, whether I wanted it or not.  Since I was so focused on content creating, it really bummed me out at first.  But it turned into a cool reset, a hiatus away from the things I've been doing daily for so long, while stuck offline for two weeks, except for Twitter.  

My laptop came back to life today, basically on its own, much to my surprise.  The list of blog posts in my head two weeks ago faded away.  I decided to dig through YouTube, see other videos there were about the Philadelphia skate scene, and FDR.  I wanted to find a solid video of real skateboarding there.  I found one.  Rather than diving back into the FDR post right away, I decided to embed this video, which is a ton of epic skateboarding in Philly this year, sponsored by Independent Trucks.  Indy's Rip Ride Rally is a bunch of serious, hardcore skating, at several spots in Philly, including FDR.  So pop open a cold whatever and check this video out, it's 20-some minutes of serious skating, without any filler.  The FDR post will be coming soon.  

Skateboarding TED x talk- The story behind Philadelphia's Paine's Park

A skateboarder who went to law school.  TED Talk by Josh Nims, and his long push to build an official skatepark in Philadelphia. 

 

In the last post, I embedded the documentary about Love Park, the heart of  Philadelphia's hardcore skateboarding scene.  With the demise of Love Park, skaters took their drive in different directions.  Josh Nims was part of the group that took their DIY skateboarding energy into official channels, trying to get city hall behind skateboarding projects.  In this TEDx Philadelphia talk, Josh speaks about how a widespread group of supporters came together to build a series of skate spots, even using some of the original granite pieces from LOVE Park.  

The result was the Paine's Park skatepark.  It's not just a skatepark, but a nexus point for people from many backgrounds, converging in Philly.  It's an official skatepark for the hardcore skaters of Philadelphia, and for those cruising through the area on bikes, or walking or jogging.  

Now I'm out on the West Coast, with no chance to visit all the places I'm blogging about, right now.  As I dig into the videos and websites about different spots, I'm learning more about the scenes in different areas.  Just because you build a skatepark, bike park, or climbing gym, doesn't mean you have a scene of people using it.  From what I can see, Paine's Park is less popular now than many spots in Philly, but it's a part of the web of skateboard spots in Philly, which has a thriving skateboard scene.  

Here's a look at Paine's Park, in a video uploaded around 2016.  It's a sunny day, and there are no skaters in sight at that particular time.  But there's some great terrain to skate.

Here's a more recent video of Paine's Park, from late 2021 or early 2022.  It's still pretty empty, but now covered in graffiti.  The great terrain is still there, just not crowds of skaters.  This could be a slow time of day, or it could be less used than some of the other skate spots, which there are several around Philly.