More sad skatepark news this week with the closure of Palace Skateboards‘ free-to-skate Mwadlands facility. All praise must go to Lev and co at Palace for putting this place together and lighting up the gloom of Peckham with this bespoke Radlands facsimile that has seen some very heavy sessions go down throughout the winter.
As Lev Tanju explained in his recent Free Skate Mag interview, the Palace Mwadlands skatepark was always intended to be temporary solution to the lack of indoor facilities in the nation’s capital and thus as the lease came to an end, it was dismantled earlier this week and relegated to skateboard history like its inspiration Radlands.
With all that said however, there is already talk of Palace doing something similar at an as-yet-to-be-confirmed date, but knowing the way Gareth, Lev and the Palace crew operate, it’ll probably just appear out of the ether in the not too distant future.
“I wish the skatepark could be there forever but then I’m kind of like ‘fuck it’, it’ll go and then hopefully we’ll make another one, one day. But it’s shown us that it’s the sort of thing we should be doing. If you don’t get off your arse and do it, nothing happens. The community and the government should be helping us do these things though” – Lev Tanju
Mwadlands crew – full force chilling. Photo: Wig Worland
