Skateboarding with be the aim of the day Tuesday as local skate parks celebrate national Go Skate Day.
Each year on June 21, skaters of all ages and experience levels are encouraged to get out and skate together as a community.
Local Brownsville residents and long-time skaters Raul Valdez Jr. and Tom Gómez, have brought back the annual Go Skate Day celebration at Oliveira Park after a brief hiatus in previous years due to COVID-19, with the last occuring in 2019.
The event comes before the 2 p.m. Beach Bash Skate Jam event on South Padre Island at Tompkins Park.
“We felt that that’s cool for the advanced skaters and the kids that can drive or whose parents will drive them out to the Island, but we didn’t want to leave the Brownsville kids out,” Gómez said.
So the duo decided to bring back the Brownsville event in the morning to connect with local skaters at Oliveira skatepark.
From 8 a.m. until 1 p.m., skaters are encouraged to come by and free skate and meet their juniors and seniors in the community. The Brownsville Fire Department is partnering with the organizers to provide breakfast tacos in the morning, while the Brownsville Police Department will provide a hotdog lunch in the afternoon. Healthy Communities of Brownsville, Inc. has donated 20 skateboarding helmets for local skaters after completing the event’s helmet safety clinic. There will also be item giveaways for participants.
Eventually, Valdez Jr. and Gómez hope to grow the event with grants and additional funding, but for now, they want to focus on building it into the skating community.
“All we want to see is that the kids go out there and skate,” said Valdez Jr.
“We really want to attract the newer crowd, which would be the smaller kids that usually sit on the sideline and watch. They can be intimidated to get in there because when you have all the older kids going back and forth, with this event, we can spend time with them and get to know them,” he said.
According to Valdez Jr., the Rio Grande Valley has a long and rich history of skateboarding, with local skaters turning pro or sponsored like his friend Santana Galvan sponsored by G&S Skateboards.
However, places like skate shops and permanent spaces to skate in the community have come and gone in waves over the years, so having events where they can share and solidify the local history and the culture with newcomers is invaluable.
It also allows them to teach the older skaters of the new cohort how to keep events like this going so Gómez and Valdez Jr. can pass on the torch and keep skateboarding alive in the Valley.
Valdez Jr. is excited about the possibilities of the event as he prepares to celebrate his 50th birthday and 40 years of skateboarding.
“I just want to see every kid skating and rolling—having fun,” he said.
