Ted Barrow's This Old Ledge is one of our favorite YouTube shows. The latest episode is about LA Schoolyards and the Legend of Lockwood.
Lockwood Avenue Elementary School sits on Virgil Avenue in Los Angeles, in the stretch between East Hollywood and Los Feliz. It's a primary school. Kids go there. It also happens to be one of the most important pieces of ground in street skating, and it's the reason there's a skate shop in Antwerp with a schoolyard's name over the door.
Ground Zero for the Mid-90s
Lockwood Elementary’s legendary status in skateboarding came from nothing more than basic architecture: smooth asphalt, banks, and those schoolyard picnic tables. Filmers like Socrates Leal and Aaron Meza shot video of some icons like Guy Mariano, Gino Iannucci, Keenan Milton, and Paulo Diaz. Those guys established modern street skating standards.
Antwerp, 1996
Sven Aerts was watching those videos in Belgium. In 1996 he opened a skate shop in Antwerp and named it after the schoolyard. He explained it plainly in 2018, when we put out the Vans collab:
In skateboarding history, Lockwood Avenue Elementary School (Los Angeles) is a place of myth, and it's left enough of an impression on me to make my skate shop its namesake in 1996.
Thirty Years of Somebody Else's Schoolyard
Whether or not you care about how we got our name, Barrow’s 17 minute edit is well worth your time. It’s real history straight from the people who lived it, making a solid point that a random schoolyard had a bigger impact on street skating than most official skateparks ever will.
We're about to celebrate 30 years of Lockwood soon! Come visit us and ask about it, and subscribe to the newsletter if you want to hear what lands next.