On a recent weekend, the Vans brand threw another one of their block parties. The brand, the pop-punk sportswear signifier that arose out of suburban California skater culture and is now an outfit of apparel multinational VF Corporation, has been doing this, semi-regularly, in the years since opening their Skate 198 space in Bushwick.
“We’re really trying to push skateboarding to the forefront of culture,” Justin Villano, a branding director at Vans, told me later. “It’s not all just skateboarders, it’s like the lifestyle of skateboarding, skate-adjacent people, whether it’s photography, fashion, [sic] food.”
Their latest one attracted a couple hundred, largely Brooklyn skaters, who could be seen repeatedly dropping ollies and cavemans. The Vans group would give out cash prizes, maybe a hundred dollars or so, for more adventurous tricks, like ollieing over pizza boxes. The company had hired a pair of DJs, monikers HiTech and Jubilee, to show up later and make everything feel like a standard rave.
An extension of Vans’ “Always Pushing” ad campaign, the block party served largely to advertise the small, corner skate space the company has been running since shortly before the pandemic. There was repeated mention of the space’s coming “Fall Season,” for which the company offers skate school lessons, yoga programs aimed at skaters and, of course, open skating sessions out of the space, which took the place of the company’s previous House of Vans in nearby Greenpoint, which shuttered in 2018.
“It’s really good to have spaces like this in the city. It’s hard to find parks where we’re allowed to skate and kinda go all out,” someone at the block party told me. They declined to tell me their name. Someone else, who said their name was Niamkee, said she was relieved to have somewhere where “there’s no fighting, this is an open space.”
“Having this area be free is good for that,” says Niamkee.
Skate Space 198 is located at 198 Randolph Street. Sign up for a free “skate session” here.
All photos taken by Josh Riesgo for Bushwick Daily.
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