On 21st June, the entire world had celebrated Go Skateboarding Day amid lockdown. Go Skateboarding Day (GSD) is an annual holiday created by the International Association of Skateboard Companies (IASC) to promote skateboarding with the objective of encouraging young people to get outside and practice the sport. The holiday was started in California by Don Brown and is held on June 21, which is also the longest day of summer and turns out, it is International Yoga Day, Father's Day as well.
With 18,522 positive cases reported today, India’s Covid-19 caseload stands at 5,66,840. Despite that people are not losing hope and they are trying to do whatever they can with being safe. Inspire Crew had a conversation with different skateboarding groups from different states and they told us how did they celebrate the day.
Talking to Ruben who is the founder of Elevate Manipur said, "We had a fun time on Go Skate Day 2020. Due to the lockdown, we could not skate around the city so we went to the Bombing Hills. This year we didn't do any competitions like we used to do. We just chill around with our Skateboarding/Longboarding Family.
A big hello from Kovalam Skateclub, We hope everyone is healthy and safe during these strange times. Just like most of the world, COVID-19 has also changed the way we work and operate at the Skateclub. There were many restrictions concerning what we could do on Go-Skateboarding Day, especially when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of our kids.
This being said, however, we still wanted to offer the kids a nice day with special attention for the safety guidelines. So we went to work and created a go-skateboarding event with a limited group of kids!
We started the day by cooking our favourite meals together. Next on, we gave Mini, one of our longest female skateboarding participants, a new mobile phone. Because of the virus, many classes are now online. As we feel it is our responsibility to promote and facilitate education, we felt it was necessary to provide her with a phone so she could attend her online classes.
All the other kids also received books and bags to go to school when they open again. We finished the day with some skateboarding while maintaining the distance of course. This was how we celebrated go-skateboarding-day, says Vineeth who is the founder of Kovalam Skate Club and joint secretary at SISP.
Well, this was our Go Skateboarding day Celebration where we decided to do social work in our community surroundings since our skateboarding spot is located in a very drug and alcohol afflicted area. So during this time of the pandemic. We distributed packed food to the homeless dogs and alcoholic homeless people along with face mask and sanitizers.
We also did our bit to spread awareness on COVID 19 by distributing pamphlets and sticking posters including information on COVID 19 around town and shops. We didn’t get to skate because it was raining the entire day and stopped only for a while", said SkateKonnect founder Tenzing Tsundu Bhutai. Skateconect is an organisation based in Gangtok, Sikkim.
Jake from Chennai skateboarding team said, "6 of us planned to celebrate Go Skateboarding Day before the hard lockdown started. So we decided on doing it on the 17th of June. We were in ECR hitting the streets as our normal skate spots were closed. We spend hunting spots and skating through it. Tanzeem, Hemnath, Sandy, Deep, Zubi, Jake and Rosy our girl skater. We were the crew that spent the day.
This photo is from Goa Skateboarding team. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of cases in Goa stood at 754 on 22nd June with 655 active cases.
Thank you to all the skateboarding groups and people for sharing all the photos with Inspire Crew.
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