Best Skate Boarding in Richmond: Mary Munford School?

According to an article in Style Weekly, this week, not only is Mary Munford Elementary the best place to skate in the city but also according to mayoral hopeful, Paul Goldman, a skate park in downtown could revive Richmond.

But the city has more catching up to do, Quillen says: “Every city on the East Coast, not even mentioning the West Coast where it all started, has a small, city-run skate park.”

“You want to attract younger professionals, you want to put out that hip vibe,” the elder Goldman says.

“But no skate park,” Quillen laments.

“Bee-bop boo boo,” Goldman’s son adds, mimicking the sound from the Donkey Kong video game when a player loses a level.

Some of the best city skating right now is at Mary Munford Elementary School, Goldman says. If he wins the mayoral election, he’d like Thomas to switch to a city school, like Munford, and out of the county school he attends. (Thomas’ mother lives in Henrico.)

But Mary Munford wasn’t built for skating. Skate parks feature concrete paving with bowls and ramps for skateboards to thrash around in.

As Goldman mulls over the idea, it gains symbolic weight. Approving a skate park — even if you’re more football- or basketball-oriented — he says, signifies a live-and-let-live philosophy important to a mayor or any leader, really.

The wheels seem to be turning: Without the Braves, Goldman posits, a park could be a new monument to regional cooperation where county and city skaters could glide side by side. The perfect complement to Richmond’s rich preservation tradition, it would demonstrate how cool the city is. In fact, Goldman reasons, if Richmond had only sculpted a downtown skate park before the dot-com bubble, the city wouldn’t have lost tens of thousands of jobs to places like Raleigh, N.C.

hmmm. Well I’m not skater, but my daughter goes to Mary Munford and I have to say, I’m not sure what makes Mary Munford good for skating. Yes, there is a blacktop, but that’s about it. And, I’ve never seen skate boarders there. Scooters, yes, skate boards, no.

Not that I think having a skate park in downtown Richmond is a bad idea — just not the stuff you run a mayoral candidacy around.