Portland’s Burnside Skatepark celebrates anniversary

More than 30 years ago, a group of Portlanders created their own skatepark without any permission under the Burnside Bridge. The Burnside Skatepark is credited as the first do-it-yourself, or DIY, skatepark project that sparked a wave of new skateparks being built across the country. The park turns 34 on Halloween. Jaymeer is a board member and muralist for the Burnside Skatepark. He joins us to share more on the history and impact the park has had in Portland and around the world.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. More than 30 years ago, a group of Portlanders created their own skatepark under the Burnside Bridge, without any permission. The Burnside Skatepark is credited as the first “do it yourself” skate park, one that sparked a wave of similar parks across the country. It turns 34 on Halloween. My next guest, Jaymeer, is a board member and muralist for the Burnside Skatepark. He joins us to talk about the park’s history, impact and future. Welcome to the show.

Jaymeer: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Miller: You arrived in Portland a few years after the Burnside Skatepark was created. What’s your first memory of it?

Jaymeer: Oh, actually I drove down from Mt. Hood. And a friend drove me up to a parking lot, which was on the upper side of the street and said, “I got something to show you.” We went and looked over a small wall, and, lo and behold, there was the Burnside Skatepark. I was pretty amazed.

Miller: Had you heard about it already?

Jaymeer: No, I hadn’t heard about it at that point in time. I know it had already had some coverage in skate mags and different stuff, but I had no idea.

Miller: News just hadn’t gotten to Mt. Hood.

Jaymeer: I had no idea a place like that even existed.

Miller: Did you drop in that day?

Jaymeer: No, no, I didn’t have my board with me, but …

Miller: I don’t even know if that’s the right phrase, to drop in.

Jaymeer: Sure. You would drop in on a transition or a quarter pipe.

Miller: You didn’t have it that day. Do you remember the first time you actually skated it?

Jaymeer: Not really, roughly, but I just instantly started going there a lot and talked to different locals. I got an opportunity to do some painting there. The whole place was painted at that point in time, so it was pretty wild. I was just amazed the place even existed.

Miller: So, as I said, this has been called the first “do it yourself” skatepark. What does DIY mean in the context of a big expanse of concrete? Something that normally I would think that officials with big machines would have to be on site to do. How did just a bunch of skateboarders who loved their sport create this?

Jaymeer: Well, a lot of people over the years have built wooden ramps and different things, so this just happened to be under a bridge. About four or five guys got the idea, at one point in time, had a couple of bags of concrete and they were like, “we’re gonna go down here and put this up against this wall.” In the fashion of “do it yourself,” you’re not doing it alone. You’re doing it with a friend or other people, kind of builds a community which is a unique thing that I’ve realized that the DIY culture really does.

Miller: And more of a sense of ownership?

Jaymeer: Sure, yeah, once people are invested into something, whether it’s just donating their work, time and money, then they take a sense of ownership in the area, and pride, and a love, and a passion.

Miller: What have you heard about what that site was like before these skaters turned it into a park?

Jaymeer: There’s old photos and different stuff, but even into the mid-90s, it was an extremely rough area. The trains were right there, so there were train hoppers, there were gangs, there was drugs, there was a lot of seedy things happening under a bridge, in a kind of desolate area of town.

Miller: How much did the skatepark change that?

Jaymeer: You know, there’s 10 to 20 letters of recommendation from the early days of the park, within the first couple of years. And I think they really can show that amount; it says it deterred crime, it reduced crime and theft, and a lot of different things. The skaters really started to clean up the area, not only with brooms, but with the traffic and stuff that people came by.

Miller: With their presence.

Jaymeer: Yeah, sure. They activated the area that was left to anyone to do whatever they wanted. When their presence was in there, people saw, “hey, there are kids here,” and this and that. Everybody was really supportive, from the cops that were driving by to the neighboring business owners, and building owners, and property owners.

Miller: Now that the history has all been written, I suppose – and we’re talking about stuff that’s happened now three decades ago – but thinking back, does it surprise you that these kids and skaters, who often would have been not always embraced by business owners, by police officers, by elected officials, were celebrated for having, as you say, activated the space? Does it surprise you at all, in retrospect?

Jaymeer: I mean, nobody expected something like this would still be alive. We’re still writing the history of the culture, nation and worldwide. There are probably thousands of DIYs across the world now, so it’s really exploded from this one situation. Other places showed that “hey, we can do this too,” and then it really was embraced and kind of took off. But yeah, I don’t know that anybody expected that it would be around, or there would even be a skatepark, because from what I’ve heard they were just like, “oh, there’s a place we can just go.” It’s hard to explain and everything, but, yeah, it is shocking. That’s Burnside.

Miller: So, how much do you credit the Burnside Skatepark with leading other people in other cities to do something similar?

Jaymeer: Well, the second DIY was around 1996, that was in Philly, and it started under a bridge. I think, of course, they were inspired by us. But once they started working on their park, other people really took notice: “Wow, Burnside did it, these other guys did it, we could do it too.” The first 10 years, there was only five DIY Parks, so it was a slow start.

Miller: You said there’s thousands now?

Jaymeer: I would imagine. There’s ones in Europe across the ocean, there’s ones in multiple cities in the United States, like all over the place. There’s thousands of skateparks, that’s for sure, which in the mid-90s, there was only 15 free concrete public skateparks. I think we’d be pressed to find a state that has less than 15 skateparks now.

Miller: At this point, if you talked to a skater, let’s say it’s anywhere in the US, what’s the chance that they’ve heard of the Burnside Skatepark?

Jaymeer: It’s probably the most famous skatepark in the world. People make pilgrimages here from all over the world. People moved to Portland to ride Burnside 20 years ago. It’s been in magazines. It’s been in movies. It’s been on TV programs. It’s been in music videos. It was on a video game – “Tony Hawk Pro Skater.” So a lot of people know it from that. That was just re-released a year or two ago, and they remastered the levels in the video game and everything too. Yeah, it goes way beyond just even the skateboarding community and crowd, to reaching into people of many different walks of life.

Miller: What makes it special, just as a place to ride? Separate from its history as the first DIY one, separate from it activating a place that was a little bit unsavory, in some ways. Just as a place to ride a skateboard, what makes it special?

Jaymeer: I mean, without just jumping right into the energy, I think the sacred geometry of the transitions. They are something special.

Miller: The sacred geometry of the transitions?

Jaymeer: Sure. The designs that the guys built were unique at the time. A lot of skateparks nowadays have incorporated elements of the architecture of Burnside and include them in their park designs.

Miller: But they started that here.

Jaymeer: Some of that, yeah.

Miller: When you say sacred, what’s the physical feeling of being on it? What makes it sacred for you?

Jaymeer: A lot of people have described it in a lot of different ways. Some of them: it’s our home, it’s our church. It’s where we go practice our Zen, our kung fu, all those things. Skateboarding is that. I think we’ve realized over many decades that it’s not a vagabond activity or a negative thing. It’s in the Olympics and different things now.

The energy around a DIY skatepark is different than just a normal public park. It’s special, you feel it when you travel to any DIY anywhere, you know it with the people you see, the people you meet. [You feel] the love that they have for a plot of land somewhere, a skatepark feature. It’s really something special.

Miller: What has it meant to you, over the years, to put your art there? To be a muralist there? To be an art director there?

Jaymeer: I’ve always said that I’m just blessed to be a part of this place. It’s priceless and I try to represent for the people everywhere, and the locals. I’m just happy to be a part of it.

Miller: It seems like maybe it’s even hard to put in words how significant this is for your life.

Jaymeer: Yeah. I’ve dedicated 30 years of my life down there, under the bridge. I’m still happy to go down there and show up, and sweep up, or clean up, and pick up the trash, do whatever needs to be done, to make it a better place … and make the world a better place. It’s pretty special. I’m honored.

Miller: Meanwhile, in the coming years, it seems pretty likely the Burnside Bridge is going to be replaced. What’s that project going to mean for the skatepark?

Jaymeer: We’ve been talking to them for years, and we’ve been on the bridge planning committee and different things. We’re going to have some limited closure; it’s a five year plus project, and hopefully we’re only going to be closed for six months, on and off at different times, throughout the project timeline. Hopefully, we’ll do some other activations in the area during those times, or maybe some skate dots or other features or stuff. We’re open 365 days a year, 24/7, so that’s gonna be different. We’re supposed to be preserved, and a lot of people care about the park, so, it’s interesting times we’re living in. And hopefully we get a really awesome new bridge over our heads that helps keep us dry. It’s tough to skate here in the Northwest, and we need more covered areas to practice our art.

Miller: There’s also going to be a public skatepark, a new one near the Steel Bridge in Old Town with public money, unlike the DIY one. What are your thoughts about this? And what are you hoping for from that park?

Jaymeer: Wow! Well, we’ve been waiting for 15, 16 years – we had a skatepark master plan for the city of Portland that was made that long ago. That was our crown gem park, and it’s been 16 years now, they were all supposed to be built. I’m hoping that it all goes smoothly, and we get a world class competition-type park that can host events and do different things. We’re probably, here in Portland, the skatepark capital of the world. So it’s high time we get the major crown gem park going for the city, the public and the world.

Miller: Jaymeer, thanks so much.

Jaymeer: Oh, awesome. Thank you.

Miller: Jaymeer is a board member and muralist of the Burnside Skatepark.

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