For the Love of Skateboarding
St. Pete Beach Home to a New Indoor Skatepark By Gabrielle Reeder
GABRIELLE REEDER
Kenny Michaels with two custom-made Koncrete Party skate decks.
Once a skater, always a skater. At least that’s the case for Kenny Michaels who, along with his wife and their three kids, sold their house in Arizona and moved to Florida in the midst of a pandemic to open the only indoor skate park and skate shop in St. Pete Beach. On August 21, Koncrete Party Skateboards opened its doors to a 3,001 sq. ft. skate park and skate shop at 7470 Gulf Blvd. “I think every kid has the dream to build something really cool or create something really cool. [For me] it was my dream skateshop,” Michaels said. When Michaels was 16 he dedicated his afternoons to his family’s car shop, customizing cars and consequently breathing in toxic fumes and exhaust. Being a young entrepreneur, Michaels designed a back-up plan to escape the car business, putting his profits toward a skateboard business. Eventually, he started developing and designing skate decks – the “board” part of a skateboard. However, when Michaels tried to find a distributor, he ran into elitism within the industry. “Everybody is taking the biggest companies up front and taking their orders and the small companies don’t get any orders in, so it’s hard for us to print our own graphics for our boards,” Michaels said. “Hopefully the indus-
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try sees these smaller companies “On this beach, there’re not a lot and recognizes the work that’s being of spots for kids, there’re not a lot of put in, and they can do something to spots for youngsters. Even the adult help get the momentum behind othkids only have so much to do. So, it’s er companies that have good causes nice to be able to give something like – because there are companies that that and at the same time it’s very have no causes other than their own stressful,” Michaels said. pocket.” Koncrete Party Skateboards has Instead of giving up his business 2000 sq. ft of skateboarding area, endeavors, Michaels utilized the skills with a mini ramp and a street section he learned in his car shop and made complete with a box, a curb and two his own graphics out of automotive training ramps. vinyls. “I like this place a lot,” said Andre “We started pushing the vinyl Nieves, a local skater. “It’s the only ingraphics and then started seeing door park on the beach around here, it in mainstream so that’s probably go[products],” Mi- “It’s the only indoor park ing to make it really chaels said. “I on the beach around popular. But yeah, the was like, ‘I’m just here, so that’s probably area is pretty dope going to ride my and everything is suwave and do my going to make it real- per cool in here.” ly popular...the area is The shop attracts thing.’” In July 2020, pretty dope.” regulars, but, due to Michaels and his the prime beach locafamily sold their house, and took a tion, a lot of the customers are tourgamble that landed them in St. Pete ists, Michaels said. In the past, other Beach. shops that have opened at 7470 Gulf “When we got here, we decidBlvd. have not been so lucky, going ed we wanted a skate shop on the out of business rather quickly. beach, but aside from having the Michaels hopes his shop breaks the skate shop on the beach, I wanted a curse of the location. mini ramp inside because that was “It’s a huge roll of the dice and we my thing,” Michaels said. have no idea where it’s going to go, According to Michaels, Koncrete but all we can do is hope for the best,” Party Skateboards provides an outlet Michaels said. for skater kids of all ages. More at koncreteparty.com.
theGabber.com | November 4, 2021 - November 10, 2021
