Today (December 3rd) is an important day in Southtown history because it marks the 26th anniversary of indoor skate park Skank Skates opening its doors to the public. The skate park opened up in 1988 after construction began that fall. Above you can see the first ramp in the park right after it was constructed (some of that ramp remains intact inside of Skanks today)! Today Skank Skates remains the longest running indoor skate park in the country.

Yesterday we released a good batch of photos from Southtown’s past which included a portion of photos of inside of Skank Skates. The dates of the photos ranged from 1988 to 2009, and you can find them all on our Historic Southtown flickr album. Check out a photo of Bruce Williams of NIL8 skating the ramp in the early 2000’s below!