Sports Above the fray: Skateboarding fills gap for young black men in Baltimore

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A man jumping in the air doing a trick on a skateboard.

Jamal Cottman, 20, does a trick in front of the Baltimore Visitor Center on June 20, 2016. A group of street skateboarders, some who are part of a crew called '"Milk Squad," get together and skate around this Maryland city's Inner Harbor. Caitlin Faw/Baltimore Sun/TNS

By Baltimore Sun, adapted by Newsela staff

Published:08/04/2016

Word Count:736

BALTIMORE, Md. — The clank of skateboards hitting concrete fills the entrance of a parking garage on South Charles Street. It's a gloomy, rainy Sunday evening.

Twenty-year-old Jamone Mckenzie glides, crouches, then leans the ball of his back foot into his skateboard. He jumps, and the skateboard flips in the air underneath him. Then, with perfect timing, his feet touch the board as its wheels land.

Mckenzie is part of a growing community of black street skateboarders in Baltimore. They gather daily and use the city's landscapes to master their craft. In this emerging, tight-knit subculture, many young men have found refuge and community they say would otherwise be missing in their lives.

The skaters are from different neighborhoods. Many of them are from the parts of Baltimore crippled by violence and poverty, while a few are relatively privileged. Some feel overlooked by the city and the mainstream skating community, while others say their skills are not at the level that would earn acknowledgement. But the bond that connects this group is the love of the skateboard, and it's through the skateboard that their differences disappear.

Seeking Out Fellow Skateboarders

Growing up, Mckenzie briefly lived in a homeless shelter in Reisterstown with his brother and mother. On his journey from school back to the shelter, he’d pass the Hannah More Skate Park and would be captivated by the skateboarders. He vowed that one day he would skate, too.

At first, Mckenzie cultivated his hobby alone. Eventually, though, he started to travel from his current home in Randallstown into the city to find fellow skateboarders.

“I never knew it was this big until I got down here — there are hundreds of us,” he said.

Mckenzie is a member of Milk Squad, a Baltimore-based skate crew. The group's skills have gained enough attention to receive sponsorship from Bodymore Skateboard Co.

Stab Wounds And A Bullet Scar

McKenzie's mother, Nicola Mckenzie, 37, said she has watched her son's growth as a skateboarder in awe. "He could be doing something illegal," she said. She is simply glad that her son is alive. Over 340 people were murdered in Baltimore in 2015, one of the deadliest years in the city's history.

That’s a fate Yaamiyn Whitaker, 21, knows he avoided. He lifts his shirt and points to stab wounds and the scar left by a bullet.

The thin young man spent much of his life moving around Baltimore, living with different family members. He has a younger brother who was recently sent to prison. He remembers with sadness friends who have been murdered.

But for Whitaker, the draw of the skateboard was stronger than the grip of the streets. He said skateboarding offered him the chance to explore a world beyond Baltimore, even traveling to Hamburg, Germany, with a group of skaters. Today, he’s a member of Milk Squad and can often be seen skating around the harbor.

"We've Been Overlooked"

He said the city’s reputation for violence means young men like himself often don’t receive the mentorship they need. Likewise, they rarely receive the attention of the broader skateboarding community.

“The scene here is live and dead at the same time. We’re live because we got things going on,” he said. “The dead part is we ain’t got that eye looking over us. We’ve been overlooked.”

The current generation of skateboarders in Baltimore can skate for free in two public outdoor skate parks. One is in Carroll Park and the other is in Hampden. The Hampden park exists in large part because of Stephanie Murdock, 33, president of the nonprofit Skatepark of Baltimore. The park hopes to help as many as 100 young people skate for free every day.

“Unfortunately, recreation activities are limited for young kids in Baltimore,” said Murdock. “It took us 10 years to get our public skate park — it’s an uphill battle.”

Skating From The Start

She said she constantly meets people who don’t believe black skateboarders exist in Baltimore.

There are several well-known black skaters. There is the late Harold Hunter, Stevie Williams and Terry Kennedy, to name a few. However, the idea of a black skateboarder isn't part of the mainstream imagination, according to professor Gregory Snyder.

Skateboarding has always been practiced by many different kinds of people, said Snyder. “A lot of [skateboarding] history needs to be reconstructed. ... There have been black skaters since" the beginning. paragraph about the central idea of the article using 2 details from the article to support your answer.