Was this the quarter Manzoori had a pic on? There were a few incarnations - they always felt pretty ramshackle knocked together in five minutes constructions if memory serves me right. It was situated at the bottom of the park on the right.
Apologies for the BMX shot but without spending hours digging I doubt I’d be able to find a skate one.
This is a skatepark?! It looks worse than some of the DIY efforts I’ve built (and they have been shite!). How come there were good skateparks going in at Dean Lane and Stockwell in the late 1970s and this ended up like this? Intriguing.
And where abouts was Skate City?
I think it was on the South Bank side of the Thames but further up, Lambeth maybe?
It’s featured on here: Watch Sidewalk Surfing online - BFI Player
It was next to where HMS Belfast was moored. I still have my Skate City pin badges. You needed a different colour badge to skate different parts of the park. They supposedly denoted proficiency or something.
I’m not sure. @buildafire mentioned a photo shot at the original Meanwhile Gardens of Manzoori skating a quarter and that was perhaps the final published photo of the park before it went.
Would make a nice t-shirt!
Was green good for the big ramps?
No. You only got to skate the freestyle area 
I have got a blue one though which meant I could skate some banks. Never got a red though which was like an access all areas pass. (Sorry for the middle age shred thread tangent).
I’m only 50. Although after the last week’s mountain bike crashes I feel about 90.
This is ace!
Might have to blow the dust off my badge machine. 
Agreed.
This almost has t-shirt potential too. 
The manzoori photo was in sidewalk. 84600 day in the life article. He skated lots of spots between Marylebone and Ladbroke Grove - including a full pipe thing in a shop on portobello road.
It was around 99-00.
I don’t remember any wooden extension. It was just on the rough concrete with what we’re likely soft wheels.
There’s potentially footage of it either as super 8 or otherwise in hating life or logic 2
Some Skate City footage / coverage here
Wow. This is really interesting. I really want to write an article about the skateboarding craze of the late 1970s and the ineffectual health and safety response to it by authorities. There was a bit of a panic at the time with papers like the Mail reporting cases of people dying from head injuries skating. It led to this naff ad:
More naffness but this time for ice lollies:
https://www.hatads.org.uk/catalogue/record/0e43fa9d-36c0-428b-b22a-d62c167c32bd
Apols for quality. Dug it out of my photobucket account.
I’d be really interested to read that, I’ll see what stuff I’ve found that would be of relevance and send it over 
(those videos are ace!)
Skate City had ‘Marshalls’ . They were iirc just big kids who were locals who were relatively good. They sort of policed who skated what. Bear in mind that I was only seven or eight at the time and was staying with my godfather whilst the folks were overseas and was riding one of his son’s boards. So I can’t have been all that good. I could stand on it on push about and manage little kickturns yet still got those two badges. I think you had to be able to carve the end of the big bowl and make it back out to get a red badge but I’m not sure. I know I wasn’t good enough to get one though. I don’t know how well enforced the badge system was. I just towed the line as a visitor and ‘little un’. I had yet to convince my parents to part with the cash for a board plus they had heard it was a dangerous activity and were reluctant for me to get a one. It took a bit of nagging but I did get one eventually. Unfortunately I don’t have that anymore although I did keep it for years - it went missing at some point in the late eighties. I do have the borrowed board though. I got that from my godfather in the mid nineties. We had a conversation about the few months I spent staying with him in, (probably) ‘78 and he still had a load of his sons stuff in the attic. It’s a knackered Benji board(?) with homemade DogTown graphics, blue Krypts and Bennetts, complete with wooden risers. I’ll post a pic in random photos or somewhere when I get a chance - that’s if anyone’s interested. (It’s a bit Middle Age Shred again though*).
With the mention of Meanwhile 2 jogging my memory, I have been looking for anything referring to a park that was kind of Kennington 2. It was in a council estate off of the Edgware Road. Probably in Lisson Grove somewhere. It was the same Radical Banking modular construction as Kennington and Meanwhile 2 but was squarer than the Kennington bowl. I can’t find a photo or much other than what is essentially the same question posted by someone on Middle Age Shred (that someone isn’t me incidentally) . I skated it in the late 80’s but I think it was already closed as a skatepark to the public and was being used as a playground for the next door community centre. I only got to skate it because I was with the guy who built it and he sweet talked the nursery/community centre people. Any ideas?
Iain Borden’s assumption that this is Portland skatepark is correct and that was the first ever park in the UK. It’s long gone. Buried under a moon buggy track initially, it became the site for a market and I think it’s a car park now.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/711598738908932/permalink/2360118550723601/
