Hey guys!

I’m just home after an absolutely mad adventure.

Danny, our friend Rhiannon, and I decided to hit four different skateparks in Brooklyn, and skate to get to each one.

(Okay well, actually, the first skatepark was in Queens).

Danny and I have been on a weekly routine of filming skate vlogs for three weeks in a row now.

It’s something we used to do a long time ago too, and it’s been really nice to get back into it this summer.

I always think it’s fascinating how we end up deciding where to skate. It’s a super intuitive thing. We typically don’t know where we’re going until the night before or the morning of.

We don’t stress it and the idea always comes when it comes. And every time we finally settle on something, the feeling is, that’s it! That’s where we’re meant to skate this week!

This time, as we were brainstorming, four different skateparks came up. Three that we’ve been to before, and one new skatepark.

When I looked them up on Maps, I realized they’re totally within skating distance of each other.

And Danny’s been into long distance skating ever since he accompanied Chad Caruso on his second Skate Across America (by driving the support vehicle).

So the Divine Idea was upon us!

We’d meet up at 88th St Skatepark (aka London Planetree Skatepark) in Woodhaven, Queens, then skate to all the other ones: Transit Tech Skatepark (aka City Line Skatepark), Gateway Estates Skatepark (that’s the one we’d never heard of before) and finally Canarsie Skatepark.

It was an epic adventure, and honestly, the skates in between the parks weren’t that bad at all!

The longest stretch was Gateway Estates to Canarsie—four miles—but most of that stretch was along the absolutely beautiful Belt Parkway bike lane. It goes right by Shirley Chisholm State Park, and we ended up stopping and sitting on some rocks by the water at Canarsie Pier on the way.

If you didn’t already know, that part of Brooklyn is beautiful. It’s all marshy and lovely with a constant cool breeze coming in from the sea. It’s just…refreshing to be in that area.

So let me take you through each of the different skateparks we went to.

And once the vlog is up, I’ll update this post with the link so you can watch me skating each one, too!

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88th Street Skatepark AKA London Planetree Skatepark

This one’s a classic for us. It’s a great, chill skatepark in such a sweet neighborhood—big grandma’s house vibes over there.

Lots of ledges and rails (but notably—no quarter pipes). Sometimes I refer to it as a “Street League Skatepark”. The most fun obstacle by far in my opinion is the euro gap. Getting speed for the euro using the two bank ramps is so much fun; it makes me feel like I’m a kid at Camp Woodward again.

There’s not much shade in the skatepark itself, so be prepared to cook. However, there’s plenty of shady spots right outside of the fenced-in skatepark area, and there’s also a great sprinkler in the kid’s park you can run through periodically when you get too hot.

Transit Tech AKA City Line Skatepark

This is another one that Danny and I love.

It’s a tiny skatepark tucked in next to a school and nestled in the middle of a pretty nice city park. Today, Danny described it as “Tech Deck sized”.

For a tiny park, it’s impressively designed with a good flow and really fun obstacles because of how small they are. This is home to one of my favorite quarter pipes in NYC for rattling off tricks and trying new ones.

Gateway Estates Skatepark

This was the curveball of the day for us.

I actually found out about it by Googling “What are some NYC Skateparks I probably haven’t heard of?”, and lo-and-behold—Gateway Estates!

This one is interesting. It’s tucked in the middle of a (quite beautiful) affordable housing complex. It’s peaceful and serene, and I doubt it ever gets too crowded (this was confirmed by a local).

The park has a decent flow, but the design seems a bit quirky to me—a lot of the obstacles seem out of place in terms of how intense or large they are (I commonly refer to this as “buck”) at a park where you might expect to have a more chill and relaxed session.

While there are some smaller and more “normal” things, like the manual pad, the handrails are absolutely massive for example, and the euro gaps (which are mirrored—seems kind of silly to have two identical obstacles in one park) are way less inviting than the one at 88th St due to their more intense transition.

The hips at this park, are also not very “seshable” in my opinion, again due to their more intense transition compared to something like the hip at LES for example, which you could casually sesh for days.

This park also has a “bowl” tucked into the back (if you can even call it that), which is interesting, but so tight as to make it a bit awkward. You definitely can’t comfortably skate it like a mini ramp—trust me, I tried. As soon as you drop in on one side, you’re already going up the other.

Still, I had fun here, and there are some fun obstacles like the brick banks with the metal angle iron on top, and I’d say this park is worth checking out to see how you like it.

There was a local rollerblader here having loads of fun.

Canarsie Skatepark

I had been to Canarsie Skatepark before, but it was in the dead of winter, and it was a much different experience in the summertime.

To be honest, when we arrived to this park today, it felt like walking into a mystical fairyland.

There’s tons of greenery all around and paths you can take to skate freely into the rest of the wider Canarsie Park (which is a beautiful park by the way).

Man, I love a skatepark that’s well integrated into its surroundings, and that isn’t fenced in! Go Canarsie for that.

The skatepark is absolutely sprawling with plenty of space, tons of fun and not-too-scary obstacles to hit, and even a snake-run-esque offshoot with lots obstacles along the way!

This was the perfect park to end the day.

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While the skateparks were all pretty fun, and I’d say it’s definitely at least worth checking them all out to see which ones you like, it was really the adventure of skating to all of the parks in one day that made this day so cool.

If you’re feeling ambitious, I’d definitely recommend giving this Queens + Brooklyn NYC skate day a shot!

If you end up taking this route or hitting any of these parks, leave a comment and let me know what you think!

—GP

P.S. You can watch my skate vlogs on YouTube here. Hope to see you there!