How skateboarding inspired the Rays City Connect jersey

Rays put the SKATE in skateboarding with this new jersey concept.

Tampa Bay is widely celebrated for many things — pristine beaches, excellent cigars, Cuban sandwiches — but when the average person thinks of the Tampa Bay area, skateboarding isn’t something that would typically come to mind.

And the Tampa Bay Rays are here to educate you on that point.

“What if we used this platform to tell a completely different story?” Rays VP Warren Hypes asked at the City Connect debut press conference. “That story is the skateboard culture in Tampa Bay.”

Colloquially known as the Bro Bowl, one of the world’s first publicly provided skateboard park is a key part of Tampa Bay’s history.

The park is located in a part of Tampa that was once known as “The Scrub,” an area that was settled by enslaved people who were freed during the Civil War, and that grew to be a thriving community. By the 1950’s, the area was known for having a happening night life with some of the biggest African American performers, such as Ella Fitzgerald and B.B King, frequenting the local night clubs. It was in this neighborhood Ray Charles recorded his first song. Indeed, a dance craze that swept the nation for generations has its origins traced back to the same area, as Hank Ballard spotted local teens doing the moves and wrote the song “The Twist.”

Unfortunately, during the 70’s many of those businesses on Central that had been thriving, fell on hard times and closed down. In the late 1960’s an unarmed black teenager named Martin Chambers was shot shortly after a nearby store had been burglarized. A riot lasted three days in Tampa with Central Avenue serving as the epicenter. It wasn’t long after that the interstate came to Tampa and rerouted traffic away from the community resulting in the closure of many of the previously thriving African American own businesses.

It was in this context, in 1979, the Bro Bowl was constructed in Perry Harvey, Sr. Park.

Skateboarding at the time was just taking off in popularity and the Bro Bowl in Tampa is recognized by many as the first public skatepark in the world. The bowl quickly became a hangout for many of the area’s youth, who considered the skatepark an oasis. Soon, colorful graffiti graced almost every inch of pavement. The skaters at the park formed a strong bond and most would eventually refer to the skatepark as the Bro Bowl as that was where their brothers were located.

The Bowl was immensely popular among skateboarders. Birdhouse, the skateboard company formed partly by Tony Hawk, shot part of one of their videos at the bowl. The 2004 video game Tony Hawk’s Underground also features the Bowl as a playable area in its famous Tampa level.

As you might expect, a public park welcoming unsupervised teenagers of all walks of life also brought graffiti art front and center, another element the Rays have sought to capture in the City Connect “Grit x Glow” concept.

The skate park remained popular throughout the years, but in the early 2010’s the Bowl along with the rest of the park, was ticketed to be demolished as part of a city-wide plan to rejuvenate certain parts of town.

As it was one of the last remaining bastions from the golden age of skateboarding, and well connected to the rich African American history, petitions were successfully made for the Bro Bowl to be designated a National Historic Site in 2013, becoming the first skatepark to do so.

However, that didn’t actually prevent the Bowl from being demolished. Instead, it would be perfectly replicated through advanced laser records, albeit without the four decades worth of graffiti, at the new Perry Harvey Sr. Park. Only the center formation retains the original paintwork in the move to the new location.

The park outside of the Bowl would also feature homages to the local area’s history as there are statues of teenagers performing The Twist as well as a ‘history walk’ in which someone could stroll past several ribbons in the concrete walkway that tells the history of the area.

Tampa’s skatepark’s only addition was a half pipe, for those who might be so bold. All of Perry Harvey Sr. Park is worth a visit, but there are also many amateur skate videos on YouTube highlighting the skateparks contours, ramps, and skyline views.

“Skateboarding makes you look at the world a different way,” Hypes explained. You look at stairs and handrails and pathways in a whole new light.