A Day At The Bay

On September 15^th I attended the reopening of a very popular European skate park called Bay Sixty 6. The park celebrated the reopening by hosting a skateboard demo with the Nike Skateboarding team.

Being able to go to such a monumental event was amazing because I was in the right place at the right time and It was a once in a life time occasion. Being able to watch a skate demo is a fairly difficult thing to do because they can become very packed, so being in another country and being able to watch a demo was very rewarding and almost surreal. I got to spend the whole day meeting a lot of the locals and skating the brand new park course.

I went to the park with four of my Richmond student friends who are also into the action sport scene. As I was standing at the sideline of the course ready to get a trick in I started talking to my friend Rob who is from Belgium. As I was talking to him I noticed that he was wearing a belt with an “h” on it and I recognized that it was a Hermes belt. I was shocked when I saw that because I know that Hermes was a very expensive designer brand, so I was at a loss for words that he wore it to a skate park where your clothes get ruined or dirty. When I asked him if he was crazy for wearing that he didn’t understand why I found it odd to wear something so nice to a skate park where it can get ruined. He then explained that where he comes from, designer things are not cherished to be a flashy piece of property that most others see them as. To him it was his regular clothing but to me growing up in the US and having the influence of the media that I’m surrounded by, designer clothing is only something I hear about in a rap song. In all It was a very special and eye opening day in London!