The Skater, Surfer, Snowboarder shopping spree.

Where to buy a Longboard in New York City?  Where to take your kids shopping in Manhattan? Want to Check out some of the local New York City Skate Shops?  

Well this should help you out.  We made it easy to plan and it’s a win/win, because there’s tons of shopping in the area for the whole family and tons of great restaurants too.  Little Italy & Chinatown are also close by.   Check out some of the coolest stores for teenagers in New York City.

Start downtown and work your way up to Broadway.   Check out the itinerary below for the easiest way: 

SoHo Shopping Itinerary

Need an Itinerary so that you can take your kids to all of the coolest stores that they like and not have to waste time?

Here’s the best route for the Flagship and clothing stores:

• Volcom Flagship Store – (446 Broadway & Grand)
• Yellow Rat Bastartd – (480 Broadway- North from Volcom )
• Quicksilver Flagship Store – Corner of Broadway and Spring
• The DC Store – (Across the street) Broadway and Spring
• Burton Flagship Store – 106 Spring (A block away)

New York City Skate Shops and Clothing Retailers

Uptown Skate School’s map of clothing stores, skate shopes, longboard shops, and famous skate spots in Manhattan.

View New York City Skate Shops, Clothing and Skate Spots in a larger map

Learn how to Longboard

Whether you just want to try it out a longboard to see if you like or if you already have a longboard and want to breeze through the basics, Contact Us and we’ll get rolling in no time.  By the end of the first lesson you’ll be surprised how confident you’ll feel.

Try out a Bustin Board before you buy one.

Longboarding is a form of skateboarding that uses a longer, flexible board and bigger wheels to let the rider "surf" on concrete.  It is a smooth ride compared to a trick deck and much easier to learn how to ride.  Snowboarders and surfers would get a great deal of off season training and just plain cruisin in.

bustinboards.com is one the only local brand that specializes in affordable incredibly high quality customizable cruiser skateboards and longboards. 

Who can longboard?

Almost Anybody.  Learning how to longboard is generally a much easier then learning how to skateboard.If you’ve just bought a longboard or are even just considering buying one then consider taking a couple lessons too.  We know all the tricks to learning fast and before you know it you’ll have found the next love of your life.

Am I too old to start longboarding? 

No.  Absolutely not.  Never. 

Especially if you are parents who have kids that want to skateboard because the great thing about longboarding is that it is a smooth flowy ride.  Unlike your typical trick deck, longboards usually have bigger softer wheels that cruise over rough asphalt and sidewalk cracks, and carve easily into turns, making smooth Control and turning is an easy.   Contact Uptown Skate School for more information

5 Boro presents: "Clean up the Brooklyn Banks"

April 11th- 1pm at the Brooklyn Banks

Huge product toss for all those who participate

On the Manhattan side, accross from 1 Police Plaza under the Brooklyn Bridge is a small spot known to the entire skateboarding community as the Brooklyn Banks.  It is a far safer place now then it was when it first became the mecca that it is.

I encourage everybody who’s interested in skateboarding and even parents of skaters to participate in this event. The Banks are an important landmark to kids in the community. It signifies generations of skaters who never had really a place to call their own, except here. If you wander around your neighborhood sometime, ask yourself; "Where can kids go to skateboard?" There are not very many locations. Often where they do skate they get harassed.

In some neighborhoods the tiny parks are so packed with people that they push the skaters out. How is it that uptown we have two hockey rinks and an enormous soccer field within 10 blocks of each other and not one decent skate able flat space or skate park within miles? People argue that the few skate parks scattered throughout the city should be enough. Really? They are so far away from residential neighborhoods! Most parents would be reluctant to have their kids go alone and they are so far out of the way that parents are often too busy to trek all the way out there. The flat spaces in residential neighborhoods are crowded with ball throwing, etc.

At our favorite local flat land spot on 86th, Carl Shcurz Park, the local kids brought out obstacles to skate, a rail and a small box that they made.  They stored them behind the wall where the hockey nets are kept.  The cops who play hockey there, threw them out.  They also gave them a hard time about skating there.  These are kids!  This is a park!  Really?

15 Things You Didn’t Know About The Brooklyn Banks

1. Built in the mid-’60s under the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Banks has been a hub for the New York skate scene since the early-’80s. The spot has banks of varying sizes, wallride pillars, ledges and rails. O.G. Banks local and original Zoo York crew member, Eli Gesner remembers skating at the Banks when the bricks were still so new powerslides were impossible on the grippy surface.

2. According to Gesner, the earliest contest held at the Banks was an event in 1985 put on by Shut Skates founder, Bruno Musso. Fiveboro’s Steve Rodriguez remembers that at one of the early contests, a scuffle broke out and someone was shot, a contest first.

3. The foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge that faces the Banks is historically known as the Anchorage. The structure has rooms inside but today all entrances are sealed. Homeless squatters lived in these rooms in the ’80s and early-’90s. The Anchorage dwellers, who stole electricity for their encampment by hotwiring the streetlamp atop the small banks, developed a friendly relationship with the skaters, allowing them to use the electricity to run their PA systems for contests.

4. According to Steve Rodriguez, some of the squatters used to run a chop shop inside the Anchorage. It took years for the police to uncover the operation happening right under their noses. The Police Plaza of the First Precinct is directly across the street from the Banks.

5. Fights used to be a regular occurrence at the Banks as hoodlums from the nearby projects would storm the spot to rob skaters. Gesner remembers an epic battle on Halloween in 1987. “At the time there were only like 30 skaters in New York and we were all skating the Banks when these kids from those projects ran out,” he explains. “They all had goalie masks on and bats and it turned into a huge brawl.” At least no one got shot.

6. The wall on the lower side of the Banks was once only a small barricade until a car careened down the off-ramp and crashed right through it. A thicker wall was built, and Christian Hosoi became the first to ollie over the soon to be famous obstacle.

7. After Hosoi’s groundbreaking ollie, a laundry list of tricks were thrown over the wall. But when someone ollied it without looking for traffic, a long, black limo slammed on its brakes, stopping inches short of crushing the skater. The limo was carrying none other than former New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. Within a week, a large spiked fence was erected atop the wall to stop the skaters. Within days Mike Vallely ollied over the new obstacle.

8. In the late-’80s, shops in New York were few and far between, but a small operation called Benji’s was run out of an apartment in the projects adjacent to the Banks. Keith Hufnagel remembers, “Benji used to have a skateshop on the 11th floor. You’d have to go into the building and knock on his door and some kid would lead you to a back room. We used to go there ’cause you could get boards for cheap. If my parents knew I was going to the projects into some random dude’s apartment, they’d have been like, ‘Hell no.’”

9. The Brooklyn Banks were first showcased in Powell Peralta’s Future Primative where Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi and Dave Hackett are featured hoisting bonelesses and slappying the brick curbs. Robert Russler also made the scene. He went on to portray Tommy Hook, leader of the infamous Daggers in the movie Thrashin’. One sequence in Future Primative shows Lance rolling over a dead rat with his board. “It offended tons of people,” Lance remembers. “For some reason, people were bummed that we ran over a dead rat.”

10. Mark Gonzales was the first person to boardslide the nine-stair rail adjacent to the smaller banks. Saro Tegrarian was the first to hit up the 13-stair rail with a frontside 50-50 and Jamie Thomas was the first to skate both rails in one line in his breakout part in Toy Machine’s Welcome to Hell.

11. In the mid-’90s, the handrail that went down the Banks’ nine-stair disappeared. Rumor has it the rail was stolen by a pro rollerblader who kept it at his house so that only he could ride it. A replacement railing was built by Vinnie Raffa and his crew for a contest and anchored into place in the middle of the night. That replacement railing lasted several years until a police car accidently backed into it.

12. After the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the NYPD became concerned that a terrorist could drive a bomb into the parking garage under Police Plaza. Deciding it would be safer if all vehicles were parked outdoors, the Banks became the unofficial parking lot of the NYPD. Skating at the banks became nearly impossible for several years. The weight of the vehicles and their oil leaks wore down the surface of the bricks and the Banks began to show their age.

13. When controversial photographer and film director Larry Clark set out to cast characters in his 1995 film Kids, he used skateboarders he’d met at the Brooklyn Banks in both starring and supporting roles. Clark, an avid skateboarder at the time, is by far one of the oldest Banks locals. He was still skating the Banks at 52.

14. Every so often someone builds homes for cats down at the Banks. These feline sanctuaries are 3 ft. by 3 ft. styrofoam boxes filled with hay, labeled, “Cat Shelter: Do Not Move.” Still, the only cat Steve Rodriguez has ever seen down at the Banks was one that had been set ablaze and left to burn inside of a flaming tire in the late-’80s.

15. After the smaller banks were remodeled and deemed unskateable, Rodriguez and other mindful skaters contacted Capital Projects Manager Robert Redmond, who was receptive to their plight to save the spot. The larger banks were preserved and even improved upon by taking existing granite planters and making skateable benches out of them. Unfortunately, a miscommunication among city employees led to the ledges being removed again the next day. Luckily for New York skaters, Spitfire and Fiveboro pooled money to hire City contractors to replace the benches. The Brooklyn Banks is a true success story. Unlike Pier 7 or EMB the Banks have become one of the only original influencial skatespots still standing.

Girls skateboarding

It’s been more than half a century since some California surfers who couldn’t find a wave slapped a wooden board onto a set of skate wheels and took off down the pavement.  Since then, skateboarding has become a hugely popular pastime and competitive sport for millions of young people across the United States and the world over. 

It’s a sport that has long been dominated by young men. But at East Side Community High School in New York City, young women, too, are learning to experience the thrills and spills of skateboarding and the empowering bond of skater culture throught a one-of-a-kind class.

"Well, since, we got skateboarding in school, before I didn’t really know how to skateboard or anything, so when I came here I learned a lot," says student Jade Fellows. "And I started thinking about it outside of school, so I got a skateboard."

Billy Rohan, a professional skateboarder by trade, teaches the class.

"This program came about through a group called Open Road of New York. It’s a nonprofit organization that I work for," Rohan explains. "We started an after-school program here at the park.  And the school saw the amount of kids that were here and wanted to expand the program to possibly doing a class in the high school."

Continue reading Skateboarding Class at New York School Empowers Teen Girls

Skateboarding goes to School

The following is an exerpt from Harvard Education Letter – "Getting a Jump on Good Health" , By Sara-Ellen Amster

The New PE

The NIH is not alone in its judgment that in order to improve children’s health we need to change the way PE classes are structured. Across the country, educators and researchers are experimenting with ways to make physical education more relevant to students’ lives, so that students learn that exercise can be an enjoyable and satisfying part of life.

Continue reading The New PE

Learn how to ollie faster and pop tricks higher!

Realllllllly good for beginner skateboarders and more reasonable then soft trucks.

The Wheelbone

Remembering how difficult it was for me to master the ever elusive ollie, I was a skeptic, I’ll admit it.  I owned a set of rubber trucks but they were so annoying to put on, that I had to dedicate a deck to it, then when I did, I never used it.  I actually found it harder to pop with the thick rubber trucks then with wheels and eventually abandoned the setup.

The Wheelbone is a simple skateboard accessory that straps over you’re the wheels of your board to prevent motion so that you can practice ollies and tricks without worrying about the board getting away from you. It’s design gives you a lot of extra pop.  So even if you know how to ollie, it’s the perfect way to work on your tricks.  I swear it works!

Hey Parents! Another great benefit: 

The thick urethane practically puts the mute button on clacking wheels!  So if your kids want to practice in the garage or basement, the racket won’t echo off the walls and make your head spin.

Our first experience:

It was snowing outside.  My brother and I were anxiously stir crazy and arguing in our apartment when the bell rang and the delivery guy gave us a surprisingly small flat package.  It was like a gift from the heavens!  Well the UK.   When we ripped it open, I threw my very strict “no skateboarding in the apartment – not even if you are just standing on it” rule right out the window.  

"It even looks bouncy." my brother says.

The Wheelbone was not easy to get on.  We did have to work together.  It would have my mother proud.  It didn’t take us long to figure it out either.  It came with really good illutrated directions.

Me first me first!

I’m older and I pay the bills, so I won the, who goes first, argument.  I always do.  That and "shot gun".

My brother called me a "baby"…

I was nervous about the floor rattling, so I ollied it pretty softly.  I didn’t even expect it to get off the ground honestly, but it did.  I was genuinely surprised by the pop it got!  I barely even tried. 

My brother was next and now I was really worried.  He’s not a little guy.  He ollied it higher by a long shot.  It was super quiet.

We spent about an hour between the two of us, then the neighbor downstairs finally had enough, trekked upstairs and kindly asked us to stop.  So I moved it to the stair well. 

So we just arrived here in Orlando. It’s approximately 11:15am and we just got to the rental car place. And you’ll never guess what happened…it started pouring the moment we got our rental car. Luckily the rental place had an overhang so none of us got wet. Now we’re on our way to meet up with our friend Adam, once we meet up with him our Skatetastic Voyage will be fully started

So we just arrived here in Orlando. It’s approximately 11:15am and we just got to the rental car place. And you’ll never guess what happened…it started pouring the moment we got our rental car. Luckily the rental place had an overhang so none of us got wet. Now we’re on our way to meet up with our friend Adam, once we meet up with him our Skatetastic Voyage will be fully started

Hey guys it’s just Joe checking his connection. Be on the lookout for more updates as the weeks pass on.

You can buy a gift certificate in $50 denominations using paypal. 

Each lesson is $50 for a one hour in one of several locations, depending on skill level