Words and video by Tony Moore
We’re not Brazil we’re Northern Ireland,
But its all the same to me.
These words sang by our national football teams fans, ring true to me in our wee world of skating.
We’re not LA, SF, NYC, London, Barca, Sydney or Shanghai.
We’re Belfast. And we paint the streets of the city with our skating, just as others do around the globe.
This city is smaller than the skate hotspots of the world, but that brings something different to the table. We’re a tighter community, one where everyone knows and feeds off one another. This in turn has bred talent, both in the past and in the now. Add to this an excellent central skatepark, a homegrown company supporting local skaters (wireless) and an organisation responsible for securing more skateparks and running annual competitions (Skateboard NI), I know it will continue to harvest rippers long into the future.
Belfast’s scene is healthy, with plenty of Young Bucks coming up deserving of a wider audience…but with a local shop video due to drop in 2015 (LOKO), this will be sooner rather than later. I hope you all get to see it.
The short edit here hopefully shows a bit more of what it’s like to skate in Belfast. Made from clips of a couple of sessions, just cruising around the city centre with a small group, bumping into a few other skaters along the way and having fun. No real plan or agenda, just exploring the city. It’s sessions like these that remind me why I skate. Joy.
