Skateboarding in Maidstone

My best bud Steve found this video on YouTube today. The kids skating here have filmed themselves in the Oakwood Park Educational Complex, one of the most diverse, yet least used skate spots in the town.



I literally grew up here, all through secondary school and uni. During the latter years only Steve and I could be found sessioning the St. Simon Stock roundabout, the Oakwood 5 and the KIAD stepping stones. Brilliant works of architecture on the part of Maidstone Council caused the majority of Maidstone skaters to spend their days at the Law Courts and, from around 1998, the ridiculously smooth surface and never-ending, rounded-top, board-sliding wall of the Country Hall surroundings.

What I noticed whilst watching this footage is the style of these guys' skating. It's exactly the same as when I was there in 1995. Maidstone seems to produce a particular type of skater, who's level of ability is capped somewhere below our American equivalents, who's trick list has been aquired from watching older skaters in the scene and influenced by the shapes of the Kent concrete beneath them, myself included. It's like time has stood still.