If the sting of the early February wind bothered Chase Naquin, you sure couldn’t tell. At 15, he was among the younger members of the Saturday afternoon crowd of rollerbladers, skateboarders and BMX riders at the New Orleans Skatepark. I asked him what the best trick he’d ever landed there was.
“Back flip like a month ago—I landed it twice,” he said with a proud grin. “And the first time I learned to grind. I felt accomplished.”
You could see that sense of accomplishment on a lot of faces that day: BMX riders pulling full 360-degree rotations in midair above 12-foot ramps, seasoned rollerbladers trying out new grind combos, and ripe new skateboarders landing their first ollies and kick flips.
The park is large and varied enough to accommodate all these different athletes and their stunts at once: tall, smooth half pipes meet ramps of different steepness and several grind boxes, lines of PVC pipe and rails are all logically incorporated into the park’s overall design. This level of versatility had always been the vision of the original project leader, Ed Veiseh.
“I wasn’t building the park for any specific group,” Veiseh says. “I wanted everybody to be able to come and enjoy a skatepark.”
Veiseh spent his own childhood free time in rollerskating rinks, had a teenage stint as a Tony Hawk-adoring skateboarder, and finally found his athletic solace in inline skating. Skating became an everyday routine, and gigs teaching new skaters and videoing skate demos soon followed. Pro sponsorship, competition and organizing skating events led to the fruition of his own company, Aerial Sports Productions.
Finally, a couple of apprenticeships building ramps and other obstacles for X-Games competitions drove Veiseh to his next project—building skateparks. He built his first in Aberdeen, Scotland, and his last—at least for now—in Arabi, just east of New Orleans. As one of the many projects dedicated to the revitalization of the post-Katrina Gulf South, construction began in January 2008, and was finished just two months later with the help of residents, volunteers and dedicated local skaters—some of whom would become the future managers of the park.
“The coolest thing about the whole deal was in the last week I was doing nothing but directing, I didn’t even pick up a hand tool because there were so many people helping,” says Veiseh. “I spent the last day just dancing around and celebrating that it was complete and that New Orleans and the skate scene were going to have a whole new revolutionized chapter.”
This new chapter could mean unforeseen benefits in terms of community involvement, social enrichment and even crime prevention for Arabi, New Orleans and the surrounding areas. In its first few months, Bloodstained Skatepark—as it was originally named—was already a welcomed haven for fun-starved children and their parents, who frantically searched for distraction and amusement for their children amidst one of the worst disasters in U.S. history.
“What’s been reported to me is that when we built the park in Aberdeen, Scotland, the police reported an immediate five percent drop in crime,” says Veiseh. “As far as the impact in New Orleans, the people were super receptive. I had parents coming to me with tears in their eyes—they were so happy that there was some place for their kids to go, because they had been cooped up for so long. All everyone was doing was working and rebuilding and there was no place for kids.”
After Veiseh relocated back to Texas, the park was left in the hands of organizers at the Adullam Christian Fellowship/City of Hope next door. But due to logistical issues, the park’s management eventually ended up in the hands of its biggest supporters—the skaters themselves.
“So now the skaters themselves have pretty much taken up ownership, and are renting it from the church just so they can have a place to skate,” says Veiseh. “It’s incredible for me to hear that.”
Two of these skaters, local aggressive inline rollerbladers Andrew Waddle and John Bourgeois, have been a part of the park’s history since the first boards were nailed down. With the support and financial backing of their mutual skating friend Halley Borenstein, this collective of twenty-somethings have kept the New Orleans Skatepark open, properly maintained and on a path for expansion.
“When I found out about [the park] before I was running it, I was incredibly happy even being from New Orleans that there was something this close,” says Borenstein. “And most people from New Orleans don’t know it’s there.”
Despite the smaller, tight-knit crowd that have become regular customers, the park has still managed to stay open in a nationally faltering economy. Five dollars gets you inside the gates, but regular patrons may prefer a $50 monthly membership, good for unlimited park visits.
“All we really need is for every day to be sunny, and it would be fine for $5 a person,” says Borenstein. “That’s what it really comes down to, but the rainy days really cost us.”
“We’ve also had a lot of support from all of our friends,” says Waddle. “They all put money in for the first few months.”
With the park’s first skate competition—the Bayou Bash Rollerblading Park Comp—these inline entrepreneurs worked to create a buzz and draw attention to the talent and community that is steadily growing around the park. Hundreds of skaters from all around the Gulf South attended, proving the immediate community benefit of providing more regional skaters with a safe, paved haven of ramps, boxes and PVC pipe. This first competition was open only to rollerbladers, but as the park and its popularity grow to accommodate the local skate scene, so too will the comps themselves.
“We’ll eventually expand the comp,” says Waddle. “We’re not gonna limit it to rollerblading, we’re also gonna open it to other crowds for BMX and skateboarding.”
“We want to support all sports that want to do anything here,” says Borenstein, echoing the sentiments and vision of Veiseh himself.
Besides hosting more competitions and opening the snoball stand that currently serves as the park’s makeshift office, Borenstein and Waddle plan to make their park still more versatile with the addition of a skate shop. The church next door—who still owns the property and park itself—is giving the park managers a Winnebago, out of which skaters can buy, sell or trade old skates, parts, helmets and etc.
“That’s a big thing—we wanna sell skateboards, boards we make the graphics for, plus other people’s wheels and trucks, so kids can come here and buy a board and get their own graphics made,” says Borenstein. “Right now we trade equipment. When kids come who are skateboarding and they wanna rollerblade, they ask us, and we’ve given them advice and sold them equipment.”
“I come here to learn,” says 17-year-old BMXer Andrew Nicholson. “I really do get influenced by the tricks they do, they go balls to the wall.”
As the sun is setting later and later in the coming months, the park itself will stay open later too, boosted by the giant, bright lights rigged up around it for night sessions. So next time you’ve got an itch to hop on that board or bike or strap on those Razors, head down St. Claude Ave—for less a drive than you might think—until it turns into St. Bernard Hwy, and keep an eye out on your right, 7451 W. St. Bernard Highway in Arabi.
For more information, videos shot at the park, and footage from the Bayou Bash comp last month, visit their website at www.nolaskatepark.com.
New Orleans Skatepark (aka Bloodstained Skatepark), 7451 W. St. Bernard Hwy in Arabi.
