Skate Culture Article #17: Southbank...

Nestled on the banks of the Thames river in London near Waterloo Station is the Southbank Centre. It's a complex of artistic venues built in the 1950s and 60s. In more recent decades it's undercroft section of the Southbank centre has been taken over as an urban skatepark. It's undercover and has some stairs and flat banks and so is perfect. They've even commissioned small concrete structures in the past to add a bit of skate terrain to the area. On top of that it is plastered top to bottom on graffiti hailing itself as a centre for sub culture activities.


So essentially not designed as a skatepark but adopted as a skate spot. It has become one of those places where the presence of skaters displaces any nefarious activities that might otherwise happen in such a place.


It's actually quite odd skating there as they've set up wee boards to stop runaway skateboards taking out tourist ankles so there are lots of tourists just hanging about watching. Sort of feels like a demo.


You can see info and pictures from the place at the Long Live Southbank website.


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Notes of Skate Culture Articles...

This is part of a series of Skate Culture Articles I've been writing as an insight into the sport of skateboarding for an outsider. You can find the rest of the articles by entering tagged skateculturearticle by tractorfactoryphotos into the BlipSearch.