Justice
The Freeway Bridge For Atlanta's Skateboarders
Crackdowns on the city’s skaters have come in waves, but Black Blocks has remained a safe haven through it all.
I moved to Atlanta in 1996, just missing the city’s skateboarding glory days. Locals told me at the time that a major crackdown on skaters had just occurred. In an attempt to avoid getting in trouble with police, my friends and I began frequenting a nearly desolate triangle of public space over a highway on the edge of downtown—a black and white checkerboard oddity mostly used by homeless people.
Local skateboarders mocked us for using such a subpar spot. They were right, but so many excellent places to skateboard had been eliminated by the city as part of its effort to “clean up” downtown before the Olympics that summer. The part of the new Folk Art Park we called Black Blocks was at least a place where we could be left in peace.