My friend Kevin Connbarney called me on Saturday though and got me in on a Sunday session in the Bean with himself, Brandon Waring, Justin Riley and Justin Gates… a seriously legit group of dudes to roll with.
I jumped in my car just after 2 and made the trip over the Tobin into Boston, and after cruising the North End for 15-20 minutes I found a spot and geared up for the day. I don’t like rolling with a bag so I strapped on my boots, filled my pockets with wax, a skate tool, and my cell, grabbed my water bottle and was on my way.
Kev, B, and Riley took the Blue Line from Wonderland, so I skated over and met them at the Government Center subway station at City Hall Plaza. After they made a quick pit stop in the Dunks, and Kevin changed into his pants right there on the sidewalk, we were off to our first spot of the day.
We initially headed out with no real plan, but I told the guys about a plaza on Long Wharf where I had seen a bunch of waxed ledges, so we started towards the ocean. First, we stopped at a C-ledge that is a actually a monument in front of Joe’s American Bar & Grill. This spot is ok, but the ground is bumpy and covered in leaves so we made a quick exit from there and heading back to my spot.
The plaza at the end of Long Wharf is all brick and cobbles, but the ledges are all waxed up pretty good, but could benefit from more use to smooth them down. We hung out here for a bit with Kev (AO-Acid), Riley (AO-Neg-Mistrial) and myself (Mizou-360) throwing a few tricks before we all decided to get back on the move.
From there, things went south fast for us, as we skated to the Greenway, the Bank of America building, and another spot in the financial district to find that all the ledges had been capped. It seems like Boston business have spent lots of money in the past few years to make nearly everything unskateable. But we didn’t let this stop us, so we continued to search for spots.
Our next stop was back at City Hall Plaza, where we went to meet up with Justin Gates, who I used to roll with back in the glory days of skating (ie, like 10 years ago…). It was good to see him and we all had a little fun on the stair-drop ledges there but once again got fed up with the brick and cobble run-ups and landings so we moved on.
Next we made a stop at some classic Boston ledges, the Courthouse ledges. Just a block from the Boston Garden, these ledges at the Courthouse are long and the perfect height. They are waxed up and smooth from years of use, but once again the run-up just wasn’t agreeing with us; so after a short session here we followed B to our final spot of the day.
We took a long skate down by the Charles and past the public pools to a nice sunny walkway right on the river. This was by far the best spot of the day (we should have come here first!), as the ground was flat pavement and the spot has six cement benches that are perfectly waxed and smoothed.
Everyone started throwing down here. We were getting a great flow going, weaving and grinding in and around all kinds of dumb pedestrians who just couldn’t understand to get out of our way. It was a classic session. I can’t wait to do it all again sometime soon, and I’ll try to remember to get pictures next time as well.
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