Skate, Rise, Repeat: Women Taking the Streets
Through Bronx Girls Skate, Kava Vasquez and Mel Ramirez are empowering women of color to reclaim urban spaces, build community, and celebrate skateboarding as a tool for liberation.
Story by Kava Vasquez & Mel Ramirez
Story by Tommy Corey
Sponsored by XYZ
[Kava]
When I graduated from college in 2017, I was left with two amazing opportunities to combine research, travel, and my social justice principles. First, I did a Davis Peace Prize project in Maputo, Mozambique. I collaborated with the local Association to Skate Mozambique to expand their existing programming and build a skate program specifically for girls. Next, I got a Thomas J. Watson fellowship, which allowed me to pursue a passion-driven project, which translated to how women are personally, politically, and economically empowered through skateboarding.
In addition to exploring the nuances of how women worldwide experience their womanhood in public spaces, I found that women's participation in sports varies from country to country. There are religious, cultural, and climate components. No matter where I went for my research, Mexico, Germany, India, Cambodia Sweden, South Africa - I found that skateboarding was a grand equalizer. I didn't need to speak the language or communicate with these women to know that they all utilized skateboarding as a tool for social empowerment. I was witnessing women from all over the world creatively honoring their cultures while resisting the desire to westernize or perform their passion for skateboarding in a way that was inauthentic to their roots.
[Mel]
I have been training in taekwondo since I was six years old. My father, an immigrant, received help from my Godfather to open a taekwondo school in the Bronx that ran for five years. When my Godfather passed, we had to close the school. It was heartbreaking because we lost everything, even my bow - a traditional gesture of respect and courtesy.
I had been teaching youth taekwondo at my dad's school. These kids confided in me, opening up to me about bullying and other issues they faced. I got to teach them how to defend themselves against the challenges of everyday life. When the school closed I didn't even get to say goodbye. What saved me from slipping into a deep depression was a friend who invited me to the court across the street to skateboard - and that's when I fell in love.
Although there were a few initial encounters and admiration from afar, Kava & Mel connected through social media. Upon their first meetup, they discussed their shared ideas and aspirations to forge their love of skateboarding into a meaningful endeavor.
In 2020, they co-founded Bronx Girls Skate - a women's community group that promotes and celebrates women's liberation through the sport of skateboarding in the Bronx and beyond.
[Kava]
No one ever thinks of skateboarding as an outdoor sport, even though we are outside all day trying to find a spot or catch a vibe. BXGS reimagines outdoor sports by bringing people out in an urban environment.
Being outside and being in nature isn't always the same thing. During the pandemic, we saw the policing and privatization of public spaces. There are barely any trees in the Bronx and it's ten degrees hotter than the wealthier neighborhood just a few zip codes over. I think nuancing our understanding of the outside boasts access to the outdoors, but more importantly, a relationship with the outdoors.
[Mel]
As street skaters, we're constantly making the most of outside, whether in the streets or at the park. We find nothing and make it into something; even if it's the tiniest ledge, we turn that into a spot outside.
[Kava]
There are so many places where people are communal, and sometimes in the United States, culturally, and in this generation, there's been a lot of isolation, especially post-pandemic. It's part of why we started in the pandemic because community was a want and a need. We must remind people that you don't have to do everything alone.
Is anyone ever really self-made? Are we not made up of our relationships and the advice we get from loved ones? I feel like skateboarding itself is a metaphor for that. If you fall off your skateboard nine times out of ten, you learn how to pick yourself up, but it's better when you have a hand to help you up. It's important to share this perspective with the younger generation. You don't have to do things in isolation; you don't have to do things alone. When you take a chance on yourself and come into a public space, and you're with the community, you're allowing people to show up as themselves.
There's a perspective, especially among folks in urban environments, that the outdoors is something you have to fly somewhere to access or that the outdoors is not for people who look like us. Through Bronx Girls Skate, there's an opportunity to break those barriers by encouraging women and girls to go outside and take up space - and hopefully, the next stage of that is building a deeper relationship with the environment and each other.
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