Rolling into mother’s day
Kids, moms learn to shred on ‘Skate With Your Mom Day’ at the Old Stone House
BY BEN VERDE
More than 100 skaters
fl ocked to Washington Park
on Mother’s Day weekend to
participate in the fi rst-ever
“Skate With Your Mom Day”
in Park Slope.
The event, hosted on May 8
by the Pablo Ramirez Foundation,
sought to encourage New
Yorkers of all ages to pick up
a skateboard with their family
members in an inclusive
environment, according to the
group’s director.
“The idea of skating with
your mom, in a nutshell, is to
bring families close together
and to show that kids are not
that far apart from their parents,”
said Loren Michelle,
who started the foundation in
honor of her late son, the celebrated
skateboarder Pablo
Ramirez.
Through the foundation,
Michelle and her son’s friends
work to help kids and young
adults develop a positive lifestyle
through skateboarding,
music and art.
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Skaters on Saturday took
advantage of complimentary
lessons from Crown Heights
skate-shop SkateYogi, and
scored some free swag donated
by Vans, Williamsburg
skateshop KCDC, the nonprofi
t Boards for Bros, and
the skate collective GrlSwirl.
Many moms never think
of giving skateboarding a
shot, Michelle said, but when
given the opportunity, they
have a blast. “The minute you
give them the opportunity to
just try, they lit up,” she said.
“This is about not saying no
to life, saying yes to life.”
“Pablo would defi nitely
say yes to life all the time,”
she added.
The inclusiveness of Saturday’s
event is something
Michelle hopes to recreate on
an even larger scale through
the Pablo Ramirez Foundation’s
biggest initiative yet:
the Brooklyn Skate Garden.
The project, which seeks to
build a skatepark that doubles
as a greenspace, was recently
awarded $300,000 of Councilmember
Brad Lander’s Participatory
Budgeting funding
to get the ball rolling.
“It would be a space where
everyone is welcome,” Michelle
said in April of the Brooklyn
Skate Garden. “Young kids
could skate, teenagers could
skate, newbies could skate.
How could a mother learn to
skate and feel comfortable?
How could people that have
never gotten on a skateboard
feel comfortable? How could
families come and feel like it’s
cool for them to be here with
their eight-year-old?”
SKATE ON: Skaters gathered at
Washington Park on May 8 for the
Pablo Ramirez Foundation’s fi rstever
“Skate With Your Mom Day.”
Photo by Caroline Ourso
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