Older municipal properties adorned with heavy gauge steel railings and angle iron have always beckoned to skateboarders to use them as props for tricks. Their dramatic stairways the perfect staging to perform an ollie.
However, these properties are typically the last place skateboarders are welcomed.
Enter the authorities and what is now a decades-long game of cat-and-mouse. It is a feud long since cast, with skateboarders filling the role of “bad guys” forever being shooed away by the police.
The city of Kosciusko Pocket Park is an exception to this rule. The open-air peculiarity, charming in an urban-decay sort of way, is home to a small community of local skateboarders.
Some years back it was identified as suitable by skateboarders because of its extended, concrete floor. More recently, and because of a shooing-away from the local post office, props began to show up, thanks to Scott McKenna.
“We didn’t start building here until we asked G.G.,” McKenna said.
Enter G.G. Holmes, unlikely municipal ally, who works at Kosciusko Attala Partnership. She and can see Pocket Park from her office. Holmes’ son was a skateboarder.
“I brought one (ramp) out here and just left it out here,” McKenna said. “Then she came over here one day and I said ‘G.G. do you care if I bring a big one out here?’ and she was like ‘Yeah, but if we have an event out here, you’ve got to move it.’”
In the time that has passed, McKenna and other skateboarders such as Drew Nunley have assumed unofficial roles as park stewards, painting the fountain, securing beams beneath the southern exit roof and regularly picking up trash.
Interestingly, McKenna and Nunley both grew up in Brandon, but only met a couple of years ago after both had relocated to Kosciusko. Introduced by friends and then connected through skateboarding, both use the activity to stay on the right side of things.
Friday and Saturday nights, late and under the permanently-strung Christmas lights, are the most common times for a group to gather—and not be shooed.
