The City of Lakeland Officially Gets It in Skateboarding

The City of Lakeland has officially proclaimed the weekend of Go Skateboarding Day this year as a Skateboard Friendly City Weekend. On Saturday, June 21, at Innoskate, we'll be pushing through the City of Lakeland from Lake Bonny Skatepark to the Polk Museum of Art, where we'll see Rodney Mullen and Paul Schmitt break down skateboarding and their history with it. What a weekend that's going to be. See you there! Check out this official document:

Speaking of that, we have quite a history with this Go Skateboarding Day thing. For the first one back in 2006, we organized a skate through downtown that ended up with police putting me, Ryan, and others in our crew stomach down to the concrete, cuffing us, and detaining us in the back of the squad car. Squad! The following year was similar, but eventually the city wised up to our antics and our stunts were no longer a surprise. I have to admit, a few years into it when the police started being cool to us and simply escorting us down the street as we skated in packs, it just wasn't as fun. Oh well, now we're friends with them, but what we need in Tampa is what Lakeland is doing there in their city. A modern, free, padless skateboarding facility downtown. We were just about there until a duck pond that accidentally sat there for decades got turned into a classic example of how things in gub'ment sometimes get messed up. We hope to see it cleared up and worked out soon. Anyway, here's a throwback to that first Go Skateboarding Day in Tampa. Clements and our old colleague Jeff Lako pinned.