In recent decades, San Francisco has drawn many skateboarding enthusiasts in. Although it can be overlooked as just a hobby, skateboarding has morphed into a large subculture of the Bay Area.
The earliest days of skateboarding date back to the ‘50s. The sport originated in California and Hawaii. It was intended to be an offshoot of surfing and a way to transfer the feeling of riding waves from sea to land. Originally, the influx of skateboarding culture in San Francisco was attributed to its unique landscape. Outside of constructed skate parks, steep hills offer an optimal environment for skateboarding. San Francisco is well known for its laid-back lifestyle which attracts skateboarders who favor a relaxed and fluid approach to skateboarding.
However, the increase in Bay Area skateboarding also came with the rise in popularity of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza in the late ‘80s. Skate icons like Mark Gonzales and James Kelch transformed the Embarcadero from a city plaza to a skater’s playground. These skate parks continued to appear throughout the city. Waller Street, SoMa and Pier 7 are just a few of many spots where you can see San Francisco’s skate culture thrive in its truest form.
Lara Botto, junior environmental studies major has been skating for seven years. As a Bay Area native, she is well-versed in San Francisco skateboarding spots. “My favorite skate park is Potrero which is in the Mission and I skate there as much as I can, which is at least three times a week. I also really like Lower Bobs across the bridge in Oakland. It was actually built illegally by skaters themselves instead of being built by a skate company, which I think is really cool,” she said.
Skateboarding in San Francisco has become a significant part of the city’s identity and appeal. Outside of the sport itself, the culture surrounding skateboarding has influenced popular skate brands to establish themselves in San Francisco. The beloved skateboard magazine, Thrasher, as well as local shops such as For The City on Haight Street, have inspired an arrival of new retail catering towards the skateboarding culture in San Francisco.
The San Francisco Skate Club on Divisadero Street offers private skateboarding lessons and after-school programs for young skateboarders. Besides private lessons, the city also offers skateboarding programs like Shred n’ Butter, which is a series of free skateboarding lessons sponsored by San Francisco Recreation & Parks. Establishments like these create a greater sense of community around skateboarding here in San Francisco.
Skateboarding is reflected in the personal style of its residents. Eamonn Scott, first-year international business major, has been skateboarding since he was 12-years-old and has seen firsthand the influence that skateboarding has on personal style. “My father was a skateboarder, and he always dressed in ‘skater’ fashion, so I always looked up to him and his style. As I started skating on my own I would wear Vans and other skate shoes. But as a whole, skater fashion is pretty broad, and other subgenres draw from skating in modern-day fashion. For example, you see kids in San Francisco wearing JNCO jeans, baggy clothes and Adidas Superstars, Sambas and Gazelles. All of those have skating origins,” he said.
Aside from fashion, Scott believes that skate culture has an impact on attitude. “Skating forces you to adopt this persistent attitude regarding the learning process and trying to land a trick. It forces you to keep that mental attitude and get back up and try again,” he said.
The mentality that skateboarding procures is one of resilience. San Francisco itself demonstrated this outlook in 2023 with the development of the U.N. Skate Plaza.
Throughout the past few years, San Francisco has fallen victim to the “failed city narrative,” having lost 6.3 percent of its population between 2019 and 2021. Many attribute this to high costs of living, homelessness, drug and crime issues. The U.N. Plaza in downtown San Francisco had long been considered a perfect example of this decline until the city reinvented the area by creating a new skate plaza built above the Civic Center BART station. The unique design of the skate plaza does not feature traditional half-pipes or deep bowls, but instead plays off of its urban environment by incorporating skateable features that mimic curbs and concrete benches that would adorn any city sidewalk.
Similar to how skateboarding encourages people to just keep trying, the city of San Francisco adopted this mindset in an effort to revive a once-deserted area. The development of the U.N. Skate Plaza is a lesson in persistence, one that all skaters must learn, and exemplifies the symbolic influence of skate culture in San Francisco.
