Family, Neighbors Skate Through Pandemic

Before taking off, toddler Gus Rosa glanced over his shoulder with a grin. He was standing on his brother’s skateboard at one end of a newly-constructed half pipe in his backyard. With his dad’s help, he tipped the board upwards and dropped in.

“He’s literally only 2, and he’s great at it,” beamed Lux, his 8‑year-old sister.

Sure enough, Gus (spotted by his father, Evan) rolled back and forth across the homemade ramp with expert 2‑year-old balance.

He isn’t the only budding skater in the family. Every member of the Rosa family skates — including parents Evan and Lani, 10-year-old Nan, 8‑year-old Lux, 5‑year-old Ben, and Gus.

Evan has spent the fall building the half pipe in their backyard on Alden Avenue in the Westville flats. It has since become a site of risk-taking, imagination, and community for both the Rosa children and neighbors and friends who also love to skate.

“I’ve been dreaming of making the half pipe my whole life,” Evan said. He finally went through with this goal after forging an Edgewood Park friendship this summer that centered around the pandemic-friendly sport.

The Rosas moved to New Haven a year and a half ago from California, where Evan grew up. In San Diego, he was raised amidst a culture of surfing and skating. He’s been skating since he was 10.

When he moved to New Haven to work in communications at the Yale Divinity School, he was thrilled to find a thriving skateboarding community based in Edgewood Park.

Months after the Rosas arrived in Connecticut, the pandemic hit, making it more difficult to forge new friendships in a new place. Skating took on a new significance as the family adjusted to a new norm of social distancing: It’s a sport and social activity that intrinsically entails staying several feet apart in an outdoor setting.

One day this past August, Evan took Nan and Lux to the skate park in Edgewood Park, where he met another local skater, Francisco Rivera, who had also brought his two daughters. The two families hit it off. ​“We struck up a skate friendship,” Evan said.

With their combined woodworking skills and skateboarding knowledge, the pair resolved to build the backyard ramp together.

Evan and Rivera went to Home Depot and gathered as much pressure-treated wood as they could. They spent the next three months cutting and fitting the pieces together, bending — and sometimes breaking — plywood, layering the Gator Skin material specifically designed for skateboards on top. On weekends and during lunch breaks, Evan would go outside to work on the project.

Often, he was joined by Rivera, or a few other neighbors interested in helping out.

They finished the ramp in mid-November. The half pipe is 12 feet wide, 24 feet long, and up to three feet tall. It sits in the back of the family’s backyard, right beside a swing set.

While the Rosas enjoy the skate parks in Edgewood Park and Scantlebury Park, ​“we just wanted to skate every day,” Evan said. The backyard half pipe makes that possible.

The kids are beginning to outgrow their designated skateboards, so they shared each other’s and their father’s. When Gus he fell down, Lux ran over to give him a hug. Ben and Lux did some rock fakies, which entail a 180-degree turn at the top of the ramp. After her siblings went, Nan geared up to perform some kick turns.

Lani is new to skating, but she’s learning, too. She and Evan are proud of their kids’ skating skills. They’re also excited that their kids are learning how to stumble and get up again.

Lux said she likes to ​“go with the flow” when she’s skating. ​“You go light when you’re going up and go heavy when you’re going down,” she explained. (Watch Evan and Lux demonstrate their moves below.)

Ben’s favorite trick is a ​“ninja-kick” — otherwise known as a tail stall. That move entails rolling up to the edge of the ramp and pausing to press one end of the skateboard onto the platform, so that the board kicks up.

“You have to imagine that the board is an extension of your body,” Nan explained.

“That’s good advice, Nan,” Evan said.

In Evan’s view, skating isn’t just about staying active and making friends. It’s about finding new possibilities for how to move and react to the built environment.

“It’s one of the more imaginative things to do in a public space,” he said. ​“Skaters see potential in a man-made space that even the builders didn’t see.”

It’s also about growing each skater’s sense of what’s possible from themselves, Evan added. ​“You have to envision yourself doing every trick.”