I was 7 years old when I was first introduced to the skateboarding scene in Pittsburgh. I went with my older brother to Shady Skates, an indoor skatepark that once operated just off of Penn Avenue, where the East End Food Co-op now stands. We went in to buy our first real skateboard — a Tony Hawk pro model — that we shared. Back then, there wasn’t any help to be had when it came to learning how to skate, and we often feared rolling into the way of one of the older, better skaters, who usually had something harsh to say after the fact. Needless to say, being a young, new skater at the time could be nerve-wracking.
There were other indoor parks around in the ‘90s and 2000s — 885 of West Mifflin and B-Cubed in the top of the Airport Ice Arena — but all have since closed. It took a Pittsburgh-area native’s return to the city for skateboarders here to finally get a new indoor skatepark. Kerry Weber, originally from Washington County, opened Switch & Signal in 2018. What once was a mostly operational but closed bowling alley in Swissvale is now Pittsburgh’s only legitimate indoor skatepark, and it’s one that has helped advance positive changes to the local skate scene.
Weber credits his own childhood visits to Shady Skates for planting the seed to one day run his own skatepark. “That’s kind of the origin story of Switch & Signal, 1989, 1990 Shady Skates, and [me] being completely blown away that this kind of place existed in the first place,” he tells Pittsburgh City Paper.
Weber says his relationship with skateboarding was not always positive. “As much as I love skateboarding, I have not always loved the skateboarding scene,” Weber says, referencing skating in not just Pittsburgh, but nationwide. “When I went to Shady Skates in those early days, it was very aggressive.”
It makes sense that skaters used to be more standoffish or aggressive in their interactions and presentation. “In the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Weber says, “skateboarding was a fringe thing that you did because you were counter-culture, you were an outsider, or you were a kid that was just alone.”
Perceptions have changed somewhat, with the fame of Tony Hawk, the X-Games, and now the Olympics. Some skaters say it’s gotten too soft, but according to Weber, skateboarding doesn’t have to be exclusionary or restrictive to keep its authenticity and counter-culture roots. “I think the difference between us and other skateparks has been that we are going to be a space where you can just come in and skate, but we are also well aware that there are other needs that need to be met.”
One of those needs, Weber says, “is having a better entry point.” One big hurdle for kids and adults getting into skateboarding is the purchase of your first skateboard, or as Weber puts it, “laying out a bunch of money for something that may not serve you.” Switch & Signal tries to correct that issue. “We offer free park boards, and we encourage people not to buy skateboards until they’re sure of what they want.” Switch & Signal also offers free helmets and pads for park use at no cost.
At Switch & Signal, beginners don’t have to worry about clashing with advanced skaters during sessions. Each week, the park allotts special hours for different types of skaters. There are multi-level kids classes and adult beginner classes, as well as 12-and-under sessions where parents can also skate for free. The inclusion goes beyond age, with women and trans sessions, and a program that introduces skateboarding to the visually impaired.
Weber jokes at one point that some people classify Switch & Signal as the “woke” skatepark. “I do not take that as a pejorative. We are happily the woke skatepark,” Weber says. “I wear that as a badge of honor.”
As a culture, skateboarding is relatively young, only really taking off in the 1970s. Skateboarding culture initially was a boys club without much diversity, creating a petri dish for prejudice and exclusion.
“Skateboarding can have all these positive benefits of feeling strength from accomplishment and feeling independent,” Weber says, “but now we’re able to get all those benefits without any of the negative bullshit that leads to homophobia, sexism, and misogynistic attitudes. One of the things I’m really proud of at Switch & Signal is that we’ve rooted out or exposed all that.”
While Switch & Signal has a small skate shop in the park, they mostly leave that aspect to others, like Radio Skateshop in Bloomfield. Eric Calfo opened it in 2020 after years of skating the city’s streets and hanging out with friends in the skate shops and indoor parks of the past.
When asked about the driving factor for why he wanted to start a shop, Calfo tells City Paper, “Going to a skate shop as a kid, that’s where I met a lot of my friends I still am friends with today. And I just know how important skate shops are for a scene to thrive.”
Like any good skate shop, Radio acts as a home base for the skate community — an informal social club for skaters. They’re always playing a skate video, allowing folks to hang out on the bench by the window, or by the table out front.
“There’s this group of kids that live in Lawrenceville,” Calfo says, “they would always ride past on the sidewalk with bikes or scooters or whatever, and we’d be sitting there. They’d stop and chat, and we’d ask when they were gonna get a skateboard.” Eventually, they did, and Calfo says all they do now is skate.
As for skate shops that inspired Radio, Calfo says Lotties of Los Angeles was a big one. “I always love shops that push street skating first and foremost and have a good hangout spot for all the kids in the neighborhood.”
While Radio gets all types of customers, Calfo says his favorite is a kid getting their first board. “I just remember how magical it felt going to a skate shop for the first time. You don’t really know that this world exists until you’re in there, seeing all the decks with their graphics, the shirts, mags, the videos playing in the background.”
Radio has produced a couple of its own videos. Their first official shop video, Caller 10, came out in 2023, featuring a soundtrack that nods to radio stations of Pittsburgh’s past and present. The shop also hosts video premieres from big skate brands like Quasi, Polar Skate Co., and WKND.
The latter brand’s video, entitled JIT, came from a team of skaters mostly based out of Los Angeles, but Pittsburgh skaters were psyched to see many of their local spots featured throughout. “That one was really cool,” Calfo says, “because they came here filming some stuff in Pittsburgh.”
As to why Pittsburgh feels so different from other cities for skating, Calfo says, “I think, visually, it’s just a pretty unique city, and it shows anytime someone films here.”
Take the old rink under Bloomfield Bridge, for example. There is now a new deck hockey rink beside the bocce ball courts and parking lot below the bridge, but if you’re not a skater, you may never have looked behind the bridge supports farther back. With the Radio crew’s initiative, a small, once-abandoned asphalt rink has become a go-to spot for skating.
“We pretty much did everything in the beginning,” Calfo says. “Eventually, we got a small donation to do whatever we could to make it better for skating.” They used the money to rent a resurfacing machine and tried to make things more skateable. After that, a dozen ramps, boxes, benches, and other obstacles were built and placed throughout the space. “We knew it wasn’t going to be the end-all solution, but we figured if we could create some momentum, and who knows after that.”
Calfo and others started a petition to turn this area under the Bloomfield Bridge into a real skate park. This was a few years ago, and it received some positive attention, but with repairs to the bridge pending, the City wasn’t ready to promise anything. “They did put a light in,” Calfo says. “I didn’t know if it was for us, but I talked to the person with the City, the one who I was talking to about the park, and they were like ‘yeah, that’s there for you guys.’”
Down near an entrance to Panther Hollow, off Boundary Street, a group of Pitt students also built a skate park on their own. The result is Oakland DIY, which has grown into a hub for skaters of all ages, with a lot of college students calling it their local. A junior at University of Pittsburgh, AJ Haddon, took over the project from Raul Casas, who started it all, about a year ago. Haddon is leading new additions to the park and preparing their yearly events.
“My first day here in Pittsburgh, I moved myself in, and I saw Raul posted on [social media] that they were doing a concrete pour,” Haddon, a Chicago native, tells CP. “I was totally getting my hands dirty, fully immersed in concrete.”
Haddon had built a few ledges and ramps before, like many skaters, but nothing of this scale. “I go to school for engineering, so it goes hand-in-hand, but this is where I learned everything in terms of building skatepark-level stuff.”
Haddon says that when there are building days, all types come to help. “The youngest we will get is 12 and the oldest is 65,” he says. “It’s every variety of person you can imagine. The diversity here is insane.”
Recently, the City has assisted with making the space better for skaters and visitors alike. “We slowly started working with one of the Schenley Park supervisors,” Haddon says. “He said they didn’t do much with this area because it just didn’t get much use. And once we started building more and more, we asked, ‘hey, can we get a couple of trash cans?’ Or, ‘can we get the water fountain to start running again?’ He saw what we were doing and eventually he was like, ‘let’s make this official.’”
With further help from City Council, Oakland DIY has an official name and park sign. “We can truly make this place home.” Haddon says. “[The City helps] us with the asphalt, removing tree roots, landscaping.”
The park’s material costs are mostly supported by donations. “There’s a lot more than just concrete that goes into this place,” Haddon says. “Wood is expensive, metal, tools. Getting enough tools for people is important, with more and more people wanting to help.”
Oakland DIY holds events like their yearly summer and Halloween skate jams with music, food vendors, vintage clothing, and more. Radio Skateshop even pitches in with free merch and boards for skate contest winners, and Haddon says he has eyes on something special for this year’s summer event. “Page’s Ice Cream is starting an ice cream truck,” Haddon says. “If we can get them down here, that’s awesome. More local businesses, local help, you know.”
Even without event days, the park is usually pretty busy, Haddon says. “A good summer day, around five or six ‘o’clock, this place is rolling with 30, 40 people.”
Haddon says some of the more outdated, negative aspects of skateboarding culture have been organically broken down by the community at Oakland DIY. “If anything negative were to be happening here, I know, right away, every single person here would shut them up, or just be like ‘hey, let’s not do that,’” Haddon says. “But, knock on wood, nothing bad has ever happened here.”
After some thought, Haddon says, “Maybe my broom. Someone broke my broom a couple of times, but what are you going to do? “Haddon smiles. “Other than that, people respect the hell out of it.”
This article appears in May 7-13, 2025.
