The M74 Park: How skateboarding is thriving in the UK’s wettest city

Incorporating skateboarding, BMXing and other urban sports into the system has always been divisive. But Glasgow is bucking the trend.

📸 Newsquest archive

Skateboarding is a notoriously hydrophobic sport. When water seeps into a board’s components they corrode, weaken and warp. It makes Glasgow, the wettest city in the UK, an unlikely hub for skaters. But shifts in the city’s approach to urban sports have set Glasgow on a path to becoming a top skate destination with children across the city taking up the sport in droves.

For most of its history skateboarding was a fringe subculture. The persistence required to get good at it brings together disparate youths in cities around the world. It enables freaks and geeks to bond over music, photography, videography, fashion and art. Though it’s a sport, the nuanced way skaters approach runs and do tricks is more like dance and its DIY spirit refuses to be broken by its recent inclusion in mainstream sporting events.