Back To The Banks
Photos by Elena Saviano
The Brooklyn Banks first entered skateboarding’s collective consciousness in 1984, when Powell-Peralta’s Future Primitive exploded onto household television screens worldwide.
The New York City segment of the video features Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, and Mike McGill weaving through foot traffic, then flying around the graffiti-covered Big Banks with local legend Ian Frahm, all to the sounds of cliché, ‘80s electronic tunes.
For the century before skateboarders flocked to the brick paradise on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, the space was largely neglected. Leading up to the opening of the thoroughfare for travel in 1883, a byproduct of the bridge’s stone support system created massive caverns, whose dark and consistently cool conditions were ideal for wine merchants to store their wares. Later, as automobiles became more prevalent, city officials decided to remove trolleys from the bridge in 1950, adding exit ramps on the Manhattan end in the process. Two decades later, the city constructed a large plaza for pedestrians, dubbed ‘Red Brick Park’ by Henry Stern, a former city parks commissioner, in 1972.
Following Future Primitive, the Banks were a guaranteed safe spot to skate for local and visiting skaters for the next twenty years. Then, in 2004, city officials fenced off the plaza for landscaping ‘improvements.’ With that came major alterations to the Little Banks, rendering that section of the spot unskateable. It was then that Steve Rodriguez, long revered as the mayor of New York City skateboarding, decided to intervene. He liaised with the city and persuaded them to leave the rest of the plaza intact, due to its cultural significance.
Rodriguez began hosting an annual Back to the Banks contest in 2005, which raised thousands of dollars to upkeep the plaza every year. Then, in 2010, major construction to rehabilitate the bridge began. At the time, restoration efforts were slated to take four years. In retrospect, that was clearly not the case. When sections of the iconic red brick were uprooted in 2020, the Banks’ fate seemed sealed. In an effort to give the spot a voice, Rodriguez, along with co-founders Rosa Chang and Rob Magliaro, founded Gotham Park, a 501(c)3 public charity aimed at advocating for the space.
Today, with support from Tony Hawk’s foundation, The Skatepark Project, the Brooklyn Banks are one step closer to being restored to their former glory. The three-phase project begins May 25th, with the nine stair and adjacent basketball courts being opened to the public. Phase two will be a reconstruction of the Small Banks, which include the infamous bank-to-wall that served as the measuring stick for amateur and professional skaters throughout the ‘90s. Ultimately, the final phase will entail re-bricking the Big Banks, the details of which are still being discussed.
To Rodriguez, advocacy is a no-brainer, especially when it comes to such a historic spot. As a culture, he believes that skateboarding can benefit from storytelling, history, and being able to physically experience the same spots that past generations did.
‘Advocacy, not just for the Banks but all skate spots and culture, is so important because you will miss something in your experience of skateboarding if you don't have that historical context of what came before you. I know it's not the physical act of skateboarding, but it's something that many generations of skaters benefit from,’ Rodriguez said.
In all of his years of advocacy work, along with what he has learned from others about the space, Rodriguez realized that the Banks play an integral role not just in New York City’s history, but within modern American culture as a whole.
‘Down by the Banks there is actually a plaque [which signifies] where George Washington slept in what was the ‘First Presidential Mansion.’ A big part of the Brooklyn Bridge is there today. To me, that's awesome information. So why wouldn't it be the opposite if someone said, ‘Oh, this is where a lot of street skateboarding influenced New York City and this was the melting pot for everybody from all the different boroughs.’ To me, that’s just as important as any other historical landmark,’ Rodriguez said.
The Skatepark Project has a history of supporting skateboarding in New York City, going back to the LES Skatepark. At the time, they were able to provide monetary support which, in Rodriguez’s words, ‘finished the project right.’ Their efforts go so much further than grant funding–it’s the hours of resources they have devoted to saving the spot. Their expertise in working alongside local government has expedited the process more than Rodriguez and his partners could have imagined.
‘I gotta give a big shout out to Benjamin [Anderson Bashein] and Alec [Beck] because they really care. They aren't just checking boxes. Benjamin, who is the executive director, is on calls at night, or super early in the morning. He's also on the board of our nonprofit, Gotham Park, and his dedication is insane. It's super commendable and it stems down indefinitely; it's kind of like the personification of Tony Hawk. If there is a patron saint in skateboarding, it is Tony Hawk,’ Rodriguez said.
As exciting as it is that the Banks will once again be skateable, it’s important to remember that nothing is guaranteed. In terms of permanent protection of the spot, New York law requires a ‘landmarked’ status. Just like how the spot was closed for renovations in 2010, there remains the risk of a possible reclosure in the future. However, given the space’s current legal and structural condition, in addition to what politicians have said recently, Rodriguez is confident that the Banks will be ‘open and usable for the foreseeable future.’ Moving forward, it is essential to respect the spot, which will demonstrate to the powers-that-be that the community members that use and engage with the space are deserving of it.
‘My hope is that the end users of the space respect it, keep it clean, and keep it chill,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Those are things that help decide how spaces are eventually activated and will alter.’
With the reopening of the Brooklyn Banks and Future Primitive turning forty next year, perhaps now Mountain, Caballero, and McGill might recreate that iconic scene from the video, nearly four decades later.
Stay updated with Gotham Park to witness the three-phase reopening process unfold. Additionally, consider donating to The Skatepark Project so that they can continue to build more public skateparks across the country and beyond.