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Ben Leyden’s Transgression skatepark Jam

Sunday sub zero bowl carnage in Leith, Scotland

It’s an often-repeated maxim of ours that it is the skateboarding communities of the UK that keep skateboard culture alive. Whether that be local skater-owned shops, local scene videos, or local skateparks working alongside those scenes to put on events is immaterial: the important thing is that people are enthusiastic and willing to make things happen.

This is even more paramount in the depths of winter (especially given the Arctic weather front currently enveloping the entire country). So, when Livi OG and good friend Ben Leyden called a month ago to let us know that he was planning on holding a winter jam at his local indoor skatepark, it went without saying that we were keen.

Transgression skatepark sits inside a shopping centre called Ocean Terminal on the outskirts of Edinburgh (technically in Leith) and hosts a variety of indoor obstacles including a pump track, a small but fun array of street obstacles and the focus of this Sunday’s jam – a small bowl complex.

Ben was somewhat nervous as this was the first event he’d ever organised but he needn’t have worried as the Scottish skateboard scene has a long-established commitment to getting off their arses at the merest hint of a session.
Leyden sounded the skateboard equivalent of the Horn of Gondor and his compatriots, (and a scattering of humans from the Southern lands, along with myself and Rye Gray) heeded the call and descended en masse for what turned out to be an excellent Sunday evening of hectic bowl shredding.

It’s all well and good that brands fund trips and projects that make up the bulk of the skate media’s output – things have always been that way – but it’s locally focused events like this one that introduce new people to skating, and keep those already embedded hyped to continue. All praise to Ben Leyden and his lovely wife for getting things organised, shouts out to Edinburgh’s OG Bristo Square crew who turned out in force, and knucks to all those people who killed it on a sub zero Sunday night in a shopping centre. It gets no realer than that to be perfectly honest.

As we’re discussing Scottish skateboarding events – don’t forget that Skateboard Scotland’s longstanding War of the Thistles event is also happening next weekend.
Check the link here for all War of the Thistles info.

If we don’t make it happen ourselves, nobody will do it for us.

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