Join us Sunday June 3 at Canarsie Skatepark for a skate jam with contests in between with KeithTooBlackTooBeWhite!

Join us Sunday June 3 at Canarsie Skatepark for a skate jam with contests in between with KeithTooBlackTooBeWhite!

Please welcome our new Flatbush Director Keith 2Black2BWhite

For Immediate Release:
February 29, 2012
For more information contact Paula Hewitt Amram openroadpark@gmail.com

Please welcome our Flatbush Director Keith 2Black2BWhite as he kicks off the End-of-Winter-that-Wasn’t contest series.

Join Keith at PS 206 this Sunday March 4th from 2 to 6pm

Keith is throwing each contest at a surprise new spot in Brooklyn each week. Come skate spots you never knew. The series is sponsored by NYC skaters and skater run companies: Homage, Banco Tendencies, Culture Skateboards, Jason Oliver Goodman, Open Road and Keith.

This Sunday March 4th at PS 206 the format will be best trick on (or off) the ledge. Prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place.

To RSVP and for updates: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/137141079742091/
Address:
PS 206, Brooklyn
Joseph F Lamb School
2200 gravesend neck road,
Brooklyn NY

Open Road is a NYC based non-profit that advocates for public access to public places for everybody.

Keith 2Black2BWhite has been quietly holding down the NYC skate scene for years with his volunteering and raw hypeness at events. Finally given the chance to do something, he decided to put on his own events for the kids of Brooklyn because there aren’t many events in this borough.

Citywide Skatepark Map Featured Park: Rockaway

Click here to go to the Map. Photo: Yasmine Tucker

Open Road Rooftop 350 Grand Street at Essex in Manhattan

Update: Rooftop sessions Monday Thru Friday 3 to 5 PM

We open back up Monday March 26 for FREE sessions but you must RSVP to Paula at openroadpark@gmail.com with your full name so we can put you on the list.

In the 2011 to 2012 school year we had a team of 50 skaters + artists from all over NYC volunteering at the roof with kids from all 5 schools in the building. Thank you all. We get going again in March. Be ready.

Today in Fort Greene

In the playground of PS 20 Arts + Letters in Fort Greene Brooklyn skateboarding, BMX, and basketball co-exist with kindergarten kids playing, unfenced, nearby.

An ollie over the gap contest that pitches the skateboarders right into the busy play equipment doesn't faze anyone. In fact the kids follow the skaters around, asking to borrow their boards. And when someone lands a trick they shout. Then they try it.

Tarela Kelvin Ebiotu, (above), a graduate of PS 20 and now a college student nearby, shows the kids how it's done. Thanks Tarel.

Winter Contest + Skate Advocacy at Susan B in Jamaica Queens Dec 28 2011

photo by Eric Cooper

Skate Contest and Advocacy Wed Dec 21, 4pm

Join us Wed Dec 28 Wed Dec 21 at 4pm at Susan B 238 in Queens. Contest 4-5, Advocate for public access to public parks (including 12+A) 5-6pm.


New Breed skateboards - Jamaica clip from newbreedskateboards on Vimeo.

For Directions click here

Please Welcome our New Director of Skateboarding Rob Campbell

For Immediate Release

December 18, 2011
For more information please contact: Paula Hewitt Amram, openroadpark@gmail.com

We are pleased to announce that Rob Campbell, pro skater, NYC native, and owner of New Breed Skateboards, is the new Director of Skateboarding for Open Road.

Please join us in welcoming him at his upcoming work with us in our Skateboarding Physical Education classes, our annual skateboarding events, and our advocacy to ensure skate spots remain open to the public citywide.

Welcome Rob!

For more information:
http://www.nyskateboarding.com/2010/07/introducing-new-breed-skateboards-by-rob-campbell-2010/
http://www.nyskateboarding.com/2010/03/after-midnight-am-springsummer-lookbook-2010/
http://airspeed.us/team/detail/35
http://www.openroadny.org/

Help get 12+A open to the public

join us Thur 4pm at the Rooftop, 350 Grand Street, NYC. RSVP to openroadpark@gmail.com

12+A/Open Road Park

Donations from Vans this past summer 2011, were spent to pay Sean, Billy, Tim, East Side students and skaters to keep the park open under Paula's volunteer supervision, up until August 18, 2011. This public access for skaters and everyone else was led by Paula, Open Road/12+A founder, until the school shut down public access.

As of September 2011 Vans donations have instead gone directly to East Side. East Side is now saying the park is closed to the public. Please contact us at openroadpark@gmail.com to advocate for public access.

Income: May to August 2011, 4 months x 1750 = $7,000

Payments: May to August 2011: $7,183.00

Funds paid from Open Road, May to August 2011 to
Sean Nguyen, Billy Rohan, Tim Rutgers, for work at Open Road Park/12+A from May 1, 2011 to Aug 18, 2011 and to summer jobs for East Side students/skateboarders: Maria Grant (East Side student/skater), Joshelly (East Side student/skater), Swing replacements for Park; parts and hardware: $400.00 (receipts)

Total: $7,183.00

Breakdown by person

Sean Nguyen, May 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011: $1,533.00

Billy Rohan, July 7, 2011 to August 18, 2011: $1,450.00

Tim Rutgers, July 7, 2011 to August 18, 2011: $1,400.00

Maria Grant and Joshelly: July 7 to August 18: $2,400

Paula Hewitt, May 1, 2011 to August 30, 2011: 10 hrs/wk for 10 weeks provided to supervise public access for skaters and everyone, volunteer

connect the beat

Join us on the Rooftop Sun Nov 6 1:30 to 4:30 for Connect the Beat

Advocate for Healthy Food in Your School Cafeteria. Come to this event at 350 Grand Street, NYC Monday Oct 24 at 12noon, in the school cafeteria. RSVP to openroadpark@gmail.com

New Design and East Side High Schools: food gardens + skateparks with teenagers

Prove It: Improving Parks with Youth

Right now, youth/adult teams are planning improvements to Faber Park in Staten Island, Forest Park in Queens, and Betsy Head Park in Brownsville, Brooklyn. You can add your own information about any park to the NYC skate/BMX park map so everyone can see it.

Click the pic of the Forest Park locals to see our NYC skate/BMX park map combined with Oasis. You can create a custom map showing your skatepark together with subways, flood zones, elected officials, schools, and other information you can use to advocate for park improvements, in Oasis.

Our Prove It programs are supported by the Levitt Foundation, and by individual volunteers.

AfroPunk OpenRoad 2011

AfroPunk Free School at Commodore Barry Park


View NYC skate/bike park map in a larger map

At AfroPunk in August 2011 we'll have a week long free school at Commodore Barry Park led by pros in BMX skate + photography/art. Free. Ages 13-18. email us at openroadpark@gmail.com for more info.Kids will produce professional level photographs and art work and compete in skate and BMX comps during the Afro-Punk festival. Click here to view the curriculum framework for the school. Click here for our photo/art curriculum. Click here for our skateboarding curriculum.

Check out Tracy Landon, 18yrs old when he made this as part of our AfroPunk arts program.

Open Road Park

Above photo, far left: Paula and Tim from Open Road with volunteers in 1993, placing the landfill liner to remediate the contaminated soil at Open Road Park. For more pictures of kids and Open Road turning this place from a contaminated vacant lot into a park, go to this link

Click the timeline below to see how we got rid of an infamous 90's era drug spot in the Lower East Side, and replaced it with a park open to skateboarding, gardening, basketball, volleyball and teen programs. Click here to support these free programs.

Click this link for a New York Times article about our skateboarding classes with East Side Community High School, where girls and boys learn in Open Road Park.

See the Sports Illustrated Teen cover story on Open Road Park here

Click this link for a New School Press article, and here for an ABC News story about our fun positive programs for girls and boys on the Lower East Side.

Click the pic for directions to Squibb Park

Thomas Greene Park

Thomas Greene Park review from Quartersnacks...

"The people at Open Road, California Skateparks, Friends of Douglass Greene Park, and the Tony Hawk Foundation were smart enough to figure out that the best thing for New York, a place predominantly filled with ledge skaters, a place where twenty people would line up to skate a concrete island into traffic in the back of Union Square, would be to put three ledge-like obstacles in a basketball court, as opposed to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a wedge ramp to a ledge with a Euro gap three feet after it. Now at Douglass Greene Park on 3rd Avenue and Degraw Street ...they have a bench with one curved side and another straight side, a low manual pad, and an up-and-down sort of triangle ledge, all on familiar basketball court ground. Take the D, N or R to Union Street, skate north for two blocks, and make a left on Degraw"...

Sat May 7th Thomas Jefferson Park, Harlem

Billy Rohan presents Element Make it Count and King of Spring at Street Games in Harlem on Saturday May 7th 11am to 3pm. Open Road and New York City Parks invite you to join our hosts Billy, Alex Corporan, Rodney Torres, and Donny Barley. Contest runs 11am to 4pm with a course designed by Billy using Element Drop Spot obstacles. A dozen skaters will lead free skate clinics for the kids. Parks Dept is open to more skate spots cause we're telling them the numbers of skaters justify it, so come out May 7th and prove it.

Growing food in self watering containers

Skateboarding at East Side

Open Road x Red Bull x East Side Community High School from open road on Vimeo.

Curriculum Report: Mentorship camps and events, Open Road 2010

Click here to read a copy of our report

Open Road Teen Programs

We create programs together with teenagers in digital arts, video, skateboarding, BMX, music, dance, gardens, environmental design.

openroad afropunk: art, skate, music, video

NYC skate/bike parks

click here to go to the interactive map


View NYC skate/bike parks in a larger map

Free skate and art in Fort Greene Park, PS 20/Arts+Letters, and Commodore Barry. Click photo to donate.

Open Road Park

Thank you to the Maloofs and Vans, and the citywide skate community, for making the holiday event at Open Road Park December 18th such a success.

Schoolyard plaza game

1. Choose a schoolyard. Measure walls, steps, cracks, drains.
2. Make maps in SketchUp, Sims, Skate3, pencil. 
3. Learn how people use it now. Ask people, search youtube, oasis.
4. See what people want on scribd, online surveys + real people at the place. Make avatars of them.
5. Make 2D + 3D game pieces of what people want to to do there. Choose an avatar to represent each kind of user: skater, biker, student, parent, teacher, little kid, teenager.
6. Take pix and list the good + the bad about the place
7. Play design games with people at the real place. 
8. Play Android and Skate3 games of your place with people. 
9. Play games, skate, football, free play at the place with people.
10. Send game + place info to sponsors who might support it.
11. Get support by sending community groups, and sponsors info on kids nearby + need for parks.
12. Work with partners to build your new schoolyard plaza.

This Friday at PS 20 Arts+Letters, Fort Greene

Join us Friday at 12 noon on the school playground (Clermont) side of PS 20 Arts+Letters in Fort Greene, Brooklyn to draw and map on the ground and each other

mapping by bike

We needed a map of every piece of property in NYC so we could do some planning for parks. GoogleMaps didn't exist yet. So we made our own, with a huge citywide team. it became www.oasisnyc.org. The crew in the photo mapped the LES and Williamsburg in 1998. Peter Zayas, Leiani Garcia, Erica Colon, Jake Li, Jasiman Lopez, Nate Allejandro, Richard LeBlanca. Click pic for more info.

Come Play

Contest: create an accurate base map (replica) of an existing NYC public skatepark in Skate3, Sims, or SketchUp. Our mission is free, public parks, skater built + run. We use base maps to work with the community and agencies to design/build + update new areas within parks. You win a signed deck from a local NYC pro. And maybe a free public park built in reality.

Ben Soto skatepark, Staten Island

Thank you Tony

tony hawk foundation has generously donated skate art by california skateparks to gowanus, brooklyn. coming soon.

Open Road Rooftop: Tracy Landon

Halloween Hellraiser 2010 from Tracy Landon on Vimeo.

Open Road Rooftop: Transworld

Open Road Rooftop: Sean Nguyen

what we're working on: Safari and Squibb

Our non-profit, Open Road has provided volunteer assistance to local Staten Island advocates Ed Pollio, Juliane Forsythe, the Parks Department and local civic associations in their efforts to get new BMX and skate parks built. We have no contracts or agreements in place with Parks Department to design or develop any skate parks in Staten Island, despite news reports to the contrary. We are unpaid advocates. We are not leasing Safari from the city. We have been discussing pros and cons of Safari as a potential skate park site with Staten Island residents and Parks staff. We are a low budget, grass roots, non-profit that has been supporting bike and skate access to public parks for 20 years. We've supported skate/bmx parks in every other NYC borough, and hope to support Staten Island's efforts to develop skate and bmx parks.

Squibb Park, Brooklyn: We have been leading a team of volunteer skaters and bmx'ers who keep Squibb Park open after school hours and on the weekends. Squibb was unused for 10 years because of resident and agency concerns about safety. You can't see into areas of Squibb from the park entrance, which is 30 feet above the park. You enter the park through a long, steep, switchback ramp, and there is only one entrance/exit. This will change when a new pedestrian bridge is completed in 2012 linking Squibb to Brooklyn Bridge Park below. For now, we keep it open with volunteers so we can keep this park available for skaters, bikers, and free play. 

Halloween Hellraiser 2010

Squibb park open for skaters and bikers

Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Spiegel's last days on the job, opening Squibb with Open Road
click here for News12 article on Squibb

New walkway: Squibb to Bklyn Bridge Park

Squibb

above: Sean Nguyen

Watch open road park grow from a contaminated bus garage in 1986 to a beautiful green park and playground today.

open road at afro-punk 2010

Afropunk Festival 2010 from Tracy Landon on Vimeo.

Two clips of the kids programs at Afro-Punk 2010. Turn on the HD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7fMZQsCht0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEPOFOjrqzI

At Open Road, kids work side by side with architects, artists, writers, scientists, and professional athletes. Green areas are integrated with active sports, reading areas and skate ramps with slides and art. Ponds, sand and dirt are playable as well as respected living systems. Organic food grown in a skate park is served by the cafeteria staff. Instead of fences and signs, suggestive design  tells you where the fast ball playing and skateboarding spots are. This is the leafy green area good for growing food, reading, and birdwatching.

Since kids love to play in water our water systems are open and integrated into the playground. Ponds are connected with underground cement holding tanks. These lead to deep ponds that fill & run dry. Kids play in the ponds, which change daily as the water levels change. Through participatory design the ponds and streams change direction as kids design new channels, waterfalls, and retention basins. All of the stormwater at Open Road Park is channeled into an 8' deep 60' wide bowl, open to skateboards, BMX, tag, and peoplewatching.      Come play with us. openroadpark@gmail.com

Mentor pairs took digital pix of Commodore Barry Park during Urban Youth Camps in 2009 and 2010

commodore barry park

Coming up: AfroPunk

To volunteer for the free skate school at AfroPunk, please email us. In addition to our regular staff instructors, we welcome volunteers in order to have one on one attention. openroadpark@gmail.com

Kane Cameron, Eric Johnson, Dave Willis, Jitu + Taji Ameen teach skate at AfroPunk 09, left. Join us for AfroPunk 2010 the last weekend in June. Thank you!

King of Spring

Volunteers for King of Spring:
Meet Paula at 114th Street and Pleasant Avenue, Harlem
11am on April 17th, 2010
openroadpark@gmail.com

food gardens

Working with SchoolFood, Open Road has been creating food gardens and skate parks with public school students from the 420 E. 12th Street and 350 Grand Street campuses.

New Design High School, Essex Street Academy, East Side Community High School, and Ross Global students are growing food in their gardens. Strawberries, lettuce, collards, garlic, sweet potato greens, peas and herbs are growing in open road park, on the roof at 350 Grand, and in school gardens in the Lower East Side. This is served in the New Design cafeteria, at Open Road Park, and on the roof for skateboarding classes + events. This spring 2010 we will grow food at both campuses for the cafeterias at all the schools!



In 2010 new partners are joining us; Kin from Cornucopia, Liz Neves, AAAS Science Policy Fellow David Hewitt, Ross Global, and SlowFood.

Greenlane

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4755008

skate spots we're working on this winter

Keeping swales + permeable cobblestones clean so stormwater drains work at open road park

350 grand rooftop winter garden

OASIS Maps

Skateboarders, urban gardeners, artists; check this out. OASIS lets you click on any piece of property in NYC and see the owner, political representatives, how it's used, who takes care of it, toxic contaminants, natural areas, and much more. Open Road has been working on this collaborative effort with a huge team for many years. See the website here and see an article about the collaborative here.