I am a girl raised, cultured and very fanatic of the 90's decade. In it I was born, in it I got my first musical encounters, which still today mark a remarkable influence in my life; and it was in that period where I discovered a passion that I never had the courage to practice but I had the courage to admire on TV and to enjoy in almost all the cities where I have lived throughout my life: skate, friends, parks, rock and roll and above all, fantastic memories of a stage of my life where everything was simpler and more exciting too...
So that's how my time with this style of rebellion begins... You know what I mean; with some nostalgia about the Skate Park I'm about to introduce you to. A place, just as you see it in the pictures. Designed in the first years of the new century, and that I did not have the opportunity to have lived as I would have liked; since I did not live in the city where I live today, but that I did have the opportunity to visit many times in my adolescence and where I built ties and bonds of friendship with people who are still my friends and close friends.
Something as simple as scraping your knees after a series of spectacular falls on a skateboard can be enough of an element to form such beautiful memories, years later. Those scars removed and didn't leave too much of a mark on my body, but those chats, those tips, sharing music over the infrared network with 3rd generation Nokia mobile phones, and trying, without saying it (evidently) to replicate what we all did when playing Tony Hawk on PlayStatation 1 is priceless...
A famous scene in ‘Cinema Paradiso’ where the protagonist of the film is told by a family member ‘Don't succumb to nostalgia. Go away, don't come back. Do your life, don't look back, nothing else is left...’ implying that it's dangerous to go back in time and put some heart into that mix... But a few days ago, for reasons totally unrelated to Skateboarding, I ended up finding myself at the edge of the mountains of my city; at one of its highest points, right where the Skate Park is located; at the edge of the beginning of the mountains... And what can I tell you? And what can I tell you, everything that, half sy able to write and describe to you, suddenly hit me at speeds impossible to relate?
Suddenly, I had remembered my Punk rocker side. How I loved the tunes of the Ramones but admired what the Sex Pistols tried to do with their bitterness and character... I found myself in a city that only has its memories left. I looked at the contacts I have available on my mobile phone, and I simply couldn't find more than 3 friends I used to have fun and enjoy myself with in the Skate Park..... I'm not trying to be a spoilsport or a pessimist, I'm just trying to state what my Wednesday walk brought me as an objective... Arriving at such an important place in my life, that created so many memories and wonders and that doesn't have much connection with the present? It is indeed a sad thing...
However, keep your spirits up. It was a wonderful afternoon sitting on the premises. Walking its perimeters and photographing the details that still remain within the concrete of its structure; signatures, graffiti, dedications, the odd insult, the odd cheesy declaration of love, but which neither the rain, nor the sun, nor the years have been able to dissolve.... Even for those of us who search for the essence, there is that fundamental part in things, in places, in memories, wherever we go.... Maybe because of the time I went, or because of the weather that day, I didn't run into teenagers from this era. While rock and skate are not what they once were, where I live, we have the joy of carrying the skate culture within us. And there will always be someone to pass the torch to carry on. Maybe next time, but I'm thankful I remembered what I remembered when I visited you, Skate Park, I thank you.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
