The one thing that has always captured my attention with skateboarding is the fact that it’s a very creative movement based on whatever element surrounds you and we just use them to skate or alter them in a way that they can be used for skateboarding.
I heard of Bum Park from my friend Ricardo. We went the first time and it was amazing, a whole experience. We parked on the side of the road, crossed a bridge with some rail road tracks, walked through a little forest and there it was, in the middle of nowhere.
It was called “Bum Park” because it was a place full of bums. It had couches and mattresses next to the river and under the trees, pretty sketchy.
This park was created by some Broward County locals. Tyler (one of the locals) does an outstanding job on ramps and concrete in general. I mean he built Lot11 and other parks in South Florida.
At the beginning there were very few obstacles and ramps, little by little more and more was added. It was perfect, having a huge space to skate and best hang out spot because of how secret it was.
Bum Park was a place created in the middle of nowhere by a group of skateboarders that found an empty space and started adding obstacles one by one until it became an actual DIY skatepark. Usually it only had one or two crews, it was always the same people around and then right after Covid time with all local parks getting closed, it became very popular, we even had pros skating there constantly.
Once it was in everyone’s stories in social media it just got crowded. There were about 300 people skating there at one point. Which was a bit scary knowing that COVID was around.
Sadly the park was demolished and closed around April 2021.
At first the police wouldn’t mess with us or even care about anyone at Bum Park since we all left when it was sun down. At that time mosquitoes would come out and there was no light.
Some kid (that doesn’t skate or had nothing to do with the skateboarding community) jumped off the bridge and landed on a boat that was navigating under the bridge. The cops started kicking us out and they would even tell us it was not because of the skaters, they were tired of kids mudding (mud racing) at the back of this location and people getting in the water, since this was an outlet to the ocean people were reporting this.
Eventually they just tore down the place and we had it open for about another month, afterwards the police stated it was not safe since some high voltage cables had been reported falling and they had to completely close Bum Park.
I’ll say this park was a place we’re I grew as a photographer, the landscape was just excellent, I met a lot of cool people here.
I’ll miss this place….
