|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pleasanton resident JD Sanchez blasts a backside indy grab at a private vert ramp in Livermore. Sanchez uses this park, located deep in the hills, to practice for several of his professional competitions. (Photo by Bryce Kanights) 
Pleasanton resident Joaquin Harder jumps into a backside noseslide at one of the ledges at the Ken Mercer Sports Park. (Photo by Christian Trujano) 
Crowds of skaters, scooter riders and cyclysts test out the new pump track located at the Sunken Gardens Skate Park in Livermore. (Photo courtesy of LARPD) 
Sanchez said being able to skate his friend’s private ramp in Livermore has helped step up his own game over the past year. (Photo by Bryce Kanights) 
Jake Hammer, a San Ramon resident, practices his ollie at the San Ramon Skatepark, which he says is usually empty. (Photo by Christian Trujano) 
Sanchez practices his bag of tricks during the recent X Games New Orleans 2026 event, which lasted from July 24 to July 26. (Photo by Bryce Kanights)
For decades, skateboarding was seen as a subculture of kids running around with a piece of wood on four wheels damaging public property and overall running amok.
Yet as the years passed by, more and more people began accepting skateboarding for what it can truly be: a sport that builds confidence, social skills and a willingness to never give up. Now, skateboarding is included in the Olympics and more cities continuing opening up skate parks across the country.
In the Tri-Valley, despite its deep ties within the skateboarding community and the handful of parks scattered across the region, skateboarding can feel like a dying scene as more kids wanting wheels seem to gravitate toward scooters and e-bikes.
“It’s pretty disheartening,” Jake Hammer, a San Ramon resident, said in regard to how few skaters he sees at his local skate park. “San Ramon Skate Park, there’s never anyone.”
Still, that hasn’t stopped Hammer and other local skaters from having a good time and honing their skills at the parks they do have, even if they might not be the best in the world.
“Even though we don’t have the best parks ever, they’re still a bunch of skaters always skating the parks,” JustinDaniel Kamanakai Sanchez — better known as JD — told the Pleasanton Weekly.
The history of skateboarding is a rather long one that started back in the 1950s and ’60s when surfers and others during that time made makeshift skateboards out of surfboards and other tiny pieces of wood. They would typically nail or drill roller skate wheels on these pieces of wood and skate down hills or along the beach.
It was during that era that Laura Turner DeMott, who made a name for herself in the sport as a teen in the Bay Area and later made her home in Pleasanton as an adult, became the first girl or woman to ever appear in a skateboarding magazine. DeMott was inducted into the International Skateboarding Hall of Fame in Southern California in 2014.
As the years progressed, so did skateboarding. Boards became wider, skaters started launching themselves several feet in the air and the invention of the kickflip all helped bring skateboarding to where it is today.
And as the sport grew in popularity, so did the demand for skate parks. But for suburban and rural areas, both of which are in the Tri-Valley, finding those parks can be a little more difficult, especially if you don’t have a car and need to take a two-hour bus ride between each park.
Still, that hasn’t stopped many of the local skaters from keeping the skateboarding scene alive and from making a name for themselves.
One of the skaters who is looking to do the latter is Sanchez, a competition skater who has earned second place during past X Games competitions, including recently in Sacramento.
Sanchez was originally born in Hawaii before his family moved to Cordelia — a city located just south of Fairfield — where he lived for most of his life. He and his family relocated to Pleasanton around four years ago.
Sanchez said he first started skating when he was around 6-1/2 years old after he saw his dad skating one time at the park.
“I was like dang, I kind of want to try that,” he said. “Ever since that day, I’ve been hooked.”
For Sanchez, moving to the Tri-Valley was the best thing that could have happened for his skating career because of a vert ramp his friend owns. He said his dad, who was a carpenter, helped build the ramp around spring of last year with some other guys.
Vert ramps are large ramps where skaters launch themselves several feet in the air — commonly associated with people like Tony Hawk and other skateboarding legends from the ’80s and ’90s.
Sanchez said being able to practice at the ramp has helped tremendously to train for his competitions.
“Having this ramp nearby really helps step up my game for sure,” he said.
But not everyone in the Tri-Valley has access to ramps like that, nor do they prefer to skate those types of obstacles.
For others like Joaquin Harder, a Pleasanton resident who recently graduated from Foothill High School, they tend to skate the hidden street spots around town or the skate park at the Ken Mercer Sports Park, arguably the most prominent skate park in Pleasanton.
Even though there is another one at Val Vista Park, Harder said he mainly goes to Ken Mercer Sports Park, even though it might not be the most packed or pristine skate park, because it’s almost more of a street spot.
“This is as street skating as you can get without leaving the park,” Harder said.
Harder said he thinks the park has one of the best ledges ever and an amazing quarter pipe where people can learn tricks.
Still, he and Sanchez said he would love to see the park get rebuilt into something bigger and better.
Both recalled the city of Pleasanton’s plans to rebuild the skate park before it hit pause on the plans because of financial challenges with the city’s budget.
“Hopefully that could get reignited and get built because that was an amazing plan,” Sanchez said, noting how Sports Park is located about five minutes from his house.
A similar project was considered in Danville, but the Town Council eventually decided to follow through with plans for a sports park that did not include the skate park.
However, one new addition to the skateboarding scene in the Tri-Valley that Sanchez did praise was the new pump track at the Sunken Gardens Skate Park in Livermore.
He said he already skated on the pump track a couple of times — he was there during its grand opening — and said it is really fun. He also said pump tracks in general are particularly good for beginners and anyone looking to get comfortable on a skateboard.
But sometimes, it’s not just about having the perfect skate park. It’s about the community.
Over in San Ramon, Hammer said the fact that his local skate park is almost always empty usually forces him to make the trip over to San Francisco or other parts of the Bay Area because he wants to be around other skaters.
“I prefer to be there or like Fremont … because there’s actual people there,” Hammer said.
He said the overall skate scene and culture in the Tri-Valley is “pretty dead”.
And that’s the thing about skateboarding. Residents might assume that skaters would prefer an entire skate park to themselves — in some cases it might be true — the same way a soccer player or basketball player would like field or court space to practice solo.
But for skaters, having others around them, even if they might be strangers, helps build that sense of community. One might see another skater trying a trick and offer words of encouragement, others might see a beginner struggling and help them out.
Or, just having other skaters in the park might make someone push themselves because they see so many others doing the same.
In somewhere like San Ramon, Hammer said apart from maybe one or two other locals like himself who come out once a week, he really only sees younger kids on their bikes or e-bikes and not many skaters. Meanwhile in San Francisco and Fremont, he said the difference is pretty drastic because he’ll see mostly little kids on skateboards rather than bikes.
And while Harder said there can be up to 10 locals at Ken Mercer Sports Park skating, that usually only happens on the weekends.
Both Harder and Sanchez said they have hope in keeping the culture alive in the Tri-Valley.
Sanchez said while he feels like the sport is seen mostly as an afterthought for most of the cities and they might not have the best infrastructure at the moment, it hasn’t stopped skaters from making the best out of what they do have around them.
He added that a true, skater-owned skate shop would greatly benefit the skate scene in the Tri-Valley because of how they serve as a community hub for local skateboarders. Skate shops also typically have sponsorship deals with local skaters who wear and represent the shop’s brand in exchange for merchandise.
Livermore used to have Street Science Skate Shop — Sanchez said he used to go there all the time for its mini ramp — but it has since closed.
Sanchez said maybe if the skate park at Ken Mercer ever gets built, one option could be to open a shop in the Hopyard Village shopping plaza right next to the park.
“The skate culture out here is definitely still booming,” Sanchez said. “You always see skaters skating, which is sick.”
