A bike ride Sunday night included a stop to check on the newly cleaned and painted Albany Skatepark.
If you haven’t already seen it this weekend, go by the Albany Skatepark. You’ll be astonished at the way it looks: Cleaned up and devoid of several years’ accumulation of graffiti.
I stopped there on a bike ride Sunday night because I had seen a Facebook post by the Rotary Club of Albany:
“Great job to our partners Stoked 2 Sk8, Fitzpatrick Painting and Construction and over 20 volunteers, ages 6- 92, working together to give the skate park a new coat of paint for the summer season.”
The post referred to a volunteer project on Saturday. It was organized by Joshua Slamp, owner of “Stoked 2 Sk8,” a skateboard shop at Two Rivers Market in downtown Albany.
The skatepark is across Sixth Avenue from Hackleman Park.
When I walked around there on Sunday, Slamp was there too. As a skateboarder in his youth and now, at 50, a father of teenagers, he told me he felt the 25-year-old skatepark badly needed a facelift.
The volunteers used a special paint not just to cover graffiti on the curved walls but also to resurface the bottom of the park’s dips and ramps. The paint was donated.
Slamp wanted mainly to rid the park of offensive markings, and that was achieved. There are a couple of wall paintings that qualify as art, or at least decoration, and the paint volunteers left those alone.
The volunteers also did not repaint a deep and graffiti-covered bowl in back of the park. Let people bent on using spray paint use it there if they must, I gather the thinking was.
If I understood him correctly, Slamp hopes that upgrading the park’s appearance will also improve its reputation. He wants young skateboarders to feel they can go there to hone their skills and have trouble-fee fun. (hh)
Joshua Slamp looks over the repainted skatepark on Sunday evening, June 9, 2024.
This deep bowl with steep sides in the back of the park was left the way it was. The whole skatepark looked like this before Saturday’s repainting.
As JFK said before he was dead, “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Certainly NOT the Democrat mantra of today.
KUDOS to people that are willing to get off their butts and do something positive-
It looks great. I hope the ones that use it respect it and try to keep it nice. Thanks to the volunteers and the donated paint!
Someone should update this https://goskate.com/sp/listing/albany-skatepark/
as there are more options to skate nearby
I’ll bet it didn’t cost those “great, by-the-way” volunteers 21.5 million to redo that skatepark. Kudos to all of them.
You can change your name, but CapB shows through.
I don’t know who you are talking about, but I think I would like this CapB person.
Thanks for your write up on the skate park upgrade! I’m one of the Rotarians who volunteered, and felt that the project was great! Keep on pedaling brother!
That turned out great. Nice work everyone.
Great volunteer work, thanks!