Getting on board

Skateboarders display their skills at Horniman Circle

There is a school called Palm Beach in Napean Sea Road that served a dual purpose in 2011. A group of skateboarders would take over a big classroom in the old, run-down building after the students had left. That's where they would practise the niche sport, which speaks volumes about the dearth of proper skateboarding facilities in the city at that point.

But that venue didn't last long. The school authorities eventually shunted the skateboarders out. They shifted to a roller-skating rink in Mahim but even there, they weren't made to feel welcome. The roller-skaters felt that the skateboarders were infringing on their space. So, with nowhere else to go, the skateboarding community decided to take matters into their own hands. They approached a few corporates with the idea of building a skate park, met with further rejection, and yet kept pursuing the matter till, in 2016, they found an ally in Sagar Naik, the then young mayor of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. He gave them the nod for a skate park in Nerul, and that set the wheels rolling - quite literally - for the skateboarding community in the city to evolve and grow.

Members of the BombaySB group mingle with BMX riders at the skate park in Nerul, Navi Mumbai

Things have now come to such a pass that this weekend will witness the launch of a new three-day virtual event, called Bombay Street League, which celebrates the burgeoning community (Altamash Sayed, co-founder of the BombaySB group that is organising it, tells us that the city has roughly 30,000 active skateboarders at present). The league will culminate on June 21, International Go Skateboarding Day, and involves various workshops, hip-hop gigs and rap cyphers, and a virtual street skateboarding competition where individuals have to send in entries that will be judged on form and technique. The workshops will focus on different facets of the sport, such as painting and customising skateboards and sneakers, and creating content like photographs and films based around it. There will even be a live DJ set, where the artiste, Maddeof, will incorporate skating sounds into his set to stick to the theme.

The league, essentially, is meant to be a multi-dimensional experience that educates people about what the skating community stands for, what it believes in. And the main part of this belief system, Sayed tells us, is inclusivity and the freedom to make your own rules. "A skate park is not just for us. It becomes a hub for everybody from BMX riders, B-boys and B-girls, to photographers and videographers interested in the sport. This fosters a sense of culture that other public places in the city don't provide," he says, adding that what attracted him to the sport is that unlike in the case of say, cricket, where 22 players have to conform to a rule book, skateboarders have no such restrictions. "You can do whatever you want - cruise on the streets, perform tricks at a park, whatever - and there is a sense of freedom in that."

Altamash Sayed

Yet, there are challenges that remain, even though a second skate park that BombaySB built on Carter Road would witness around 50 youngsters every day before the pandemic hit. Brands, for one, are only interested in projecting their own interests without keeping the community's greater good in mind, Sayed says. They grab a slice of the pie and leave the skaters with the crumbs. He adds that the government should also recognise the fact that skateboarding is now an Olympic sport, meaning that it can be a vehicle to win laurels for the country. That's the sort of perception that Bombay Street League is aimed at building. It seeks to bring the sport from the fringes to somewhere closer to the mainstream, or, more specifically, from outside
a classroom in an old school building to your computer screen.

On June 19 to 21, 10.30 am to 7.30 pm
Log on to @bombay_street_league on Instagram
Free