Nyack Skaters, let’s get you pumped for Spring 2015!

Last Saturday filmmakers Bridget Machete and James Hostomsky met in Memorial Park for the “Go Skateboarding Day” event where they set up their cameras to meet Nyack’s most prominent skateboarders. Here’s an account, in no particular order, of what their production day looked like.

Cameras on! We’re looking for skaters in Memorial Park, Nyack, NY. No one actually shows up on time. Cameras off! We wait half an hour! Cameras on! We take some B-roll footage while we walk around. Then we decide to drive around and look for people to film. That’s what happens in guerilla style filmmaking if subjects don’t want to come to you, you go over to them.

“Kick Flip. Heel Flip. Goofy Foot. Ollie,” we are trying to listen for the skaters slang on the street. We stop by a “Gypsy Donut” shop and donate some money in the jar for “Nyack Needs a Skatepark” foundation and here we meet our first skater. He has a T-shirt with a skateboarding company’s logo and Bridget just asks him if he skates. She tells him that we’re filming a documentary about skateboarders in Nyack and need to interview skaters. He agrees to be interviewed. His name is Shane Ryan Kelly and he is an exciting individual who has skated for about eleven years now and we are incredibly lucky to meet him.

Now with an amusingly enthusiastic persistence, we’re back at Nyack Memorial Park and are joined by two brothers Blade and Veer Wayne. They have moved to Nyack two years ago and were pretty disappointed to learn that the town has no skatepark. But if it did, it would be great and they would spend every single day skating there.

On with our search for trick boarding, long boarding, tramp boarding, any skateboarding at all. We get to meet most of the skaters by just driving around the town. We thought, ironically if there were a skatepark this would have been so much easier. But skateboarders are all over Nyack, for some it is an action sport, for some a method of transportation, some do aerial tricks… the list goes on and on. We also see very young kids on their skateboards, now more teenagers than ever choose to learn skateboarding than they do baseball or basketball.

The longer we film the easier it is to remember why we signed up to do this documentary and what we hoped to gain. We meet more local Nyack skaters, skaters from neighboring towns, and whole generation of new skaters. To a lot of these people, skateboarding is first and foremost a culture and all of them agree unanimously that Nyack needs a place where the culture of skateboarding can be cultivated and where people who share the passion for this sport can meet together. We tell them that our documentary is promoting and following the “Nyack Needs a Skaterpark” grass movement and that we hope to see the brand new concrete skating plaza on the banks of Hudson River next spring. In return we get some excited grins and nods of approval. “Can’t wait for Spring 2015!” some of them say.

So we got approximately two hours of footage to promote the skateboarding initiatives in Nyack but we’ll be back in Memorial Park to film more on July 12th. This cinematic journey through skate and youth culture in Nyack and Rockland County will no doubt get you pumped for the days of breezy sunshine and outdoor shenanigans at the Nyack Skate plaza in Memorial Park hopefully coming next spring. Help us create a powerful piece that will prove that films can make a difference locally, nationally and globally. Tells us your skateboarding story and why are you entwined in this culture. Why does Nyack need a Skatepark? Go to our event page on Facebook to find out more information about the next Skateboarding Event being filmed on July 12th at https://www.facebook.com/events/656789167746306/

#filmmakers #bridgetmachete #jameshostomsky #memorialpark #goskateboardingday