Interview by Andrew Wilson
Photos by Joel Meinholz

What up Lundy. How you doing?
Not much brother, I’m good. Just got home from working a production job. Now I’m just walking my dog.

Where are you from, and where do you live?
I’m from Boca Raton, Florida, and I live in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

How did you get into skating, and where did you skate growing up?
I got into skating from my older brother.

Who’s also named Andrew?
Andrew, like my dear friend. I grew up skating this indoor skatepark called Ramp 48, which was in Pompano Beach. That’s where I met you, Johnny, and Mitchell. I also skated Boca skatepark, which was an outdoor concrete park designed by some random Boca architect. It’s actually still around, but about to get demolished.

What do you do for work right now?
Right now I do real estate full-time, work as a production assistant, teach skate lessons, and then I run Plant-a-Park on the side. Oh, and I also film skateboarding.

How did Plant-a-park come about?
I used to work at a skateshop called Island Water Sports from 2014 to 2020 and during that time I tried to work with the city to get a skatepark, but it didn’t really work out. So fast forward to 2022, after Lot 11 got built in Miami, I wanted something similar to that. I just started cold calling the city and trying to get meetings with the parks and rec department. Then I reached out to Tito Porrata, who is a skatepark consultant that owns Platform Group, which is a sister company to The Boardr. He built and designed Lot 11. He said he was down to help us out by donating his design work to our advocacy group. He then gave me the idea that there’s a void for this kind of donation in the skate community and thought I’d be a good person to make it a reality. So, through that I got all my ducks in a row, like what a nonprofit was and how it would run. Platform Group then helped us out with the seed money to get everything going. What we do is work with designers in the industry to grant the design portion, and then work with the local advocate that reached out to us. We get them a 3-D rendering that will help get more hype behind the park, and cut a little bit of cost in the beginning. So long story short, just trying to get a skatepark in my hometown, working with municipalities, and trying to see if we could help other people do that. Guide them along the way with design grants that we see as the “seed” to a proper skatepark.

So all from wanting to get a park in your hometown. It’s just you running it right?
On the day to day, pretty much, then we have a few other board members who are helping out as well. Jeff Burke, who is an accountant by trade, he does skatepark advocacy up in Massachusetts. Tito lined me up with him, he said “Hey this guy is really passionate about skatepark advocacy, you should see if he wants to be a part of what you’re doing.” Then Jeff lined us up with Toebee Parkhurst, who ran the Maine Skateboard Association. I think he was in the Foundation video Nervous Breakdown back in the day and he’s low-key still a ripper. He’s had experience with skatepark advocacy and running nonprofits so it was a good fit. I live with (Jamie) Foy so he’s a board member for, you know, the name, and the dude loves anything skateboarding. Pedro Delfino is also one of my good friends, so we wanted him to be a part of it. Then one of Toebee’s best friends is Brandon Westgate so we added Brandon to the board last year. Toebee’s been helping out a good amount with an art show that we have coming up at Tampa Pro. But yeah, when people reach out to info@plantapark or DM the instagram, that goes directly to me.

What’s the process nowadays for getting a park made? It’s a lot huh?
Advocate. Talk to your local parks and rec department, see if they have a budget to build a skatepark, if you don’t already have one, or repurpose the one that you already have. And have a community behind you that supports it. Then it’s all about getting approval from the city’s commission board if they have a budget, which is usually the hardest part. Get the city to fund it like any other recreational park in your town and then you can suggest a designer/builder to them, or it goes out to an RFP bid where skatepark companies bid on it. Every municipality and state is different. Then it usually takes about a year or two before construction starts. In that time they will hold a few community input meetings. Once construction starts, it’s usually pretty quick, about six months to a year.

Has it changed the way you see parks?
Oh yeah. You don’t need a lot of obstacles in a skatepark for people to have fun. A lot of cities, when they do a prefab park, spend way too much money and have a lot of obstacles that are obsolete. It definitely has changed my outlook on what a proper skatepark looks like.

Do you see money used efficiently or inefficiently? Obviously it’s different per park, but do new parks use money well or nah?
Nowadays, I think it’s getting better. It all depends on when the city or the skatepark builder wins the bid and they have to have community input meetings. If those are pushed aside then the money is wasted, but if you get the actual skate community behind it, not just a couple older heads that grew up skating bowls, or surfer homies that just want a pump track, you get more of what you want to skate.

Is Plant-a-Park just a Florida thing?
It started out in Deerfield, but two or three months into it we got a call from someone in North Charleston, South Carolina, which is very random. That was through Foy posting about us and they just reached out and asked if we could help them. I would say we’re primarily East Coast, but we’ve also granted designs in Ohio, so it’s starting to spread a little bit more. We haven’t done too much marketing besides a couple merch items that we gave out to some homies.

East coast. Have any other brands or similar nonprofits/outlets for skateparks supported you guys?
I would say The Boardr/Platform Group did with the initial seed money, which was cool. There’s also a local ice cream shop that I visit. The guy grew up skating and he reached out to Foy, and asked if there were any nonprofits he’s associated with, and now once a year they donate $1,000 bucks to us which is awesome. But that’s not really in skating, that’s just an old skater. We haven’t had too many big companies reach out that have wanted to get on board just yet. We are the beneficiary for a golf tournament once a year that one of my friends runs and we do a fundraiser raffle there as well, so some of the profits from that go towards Plant-a-park, which is cool.

Who do you skate with nowadays?
I skate with you a lot because you come down, which is awesome. A lot of the crew in Miami; Joel Meinholz, Elijah Odom, Sean O’Connor, when Foy and Pedro are in town I’ll skate with them. Johnny and his crew when they come to town. I skate with the Duplex crew a lot as well.

What is it like to skate with Joel Meinholz? Do you draw inspiration from Joel?
Yes, one abbreviation, GE. Joel has Good Energy. He is hyped all the time. He’s also 50 years old and pushes himself harder than half of the 20 to 30-year-olds out there. He is one of my favorite people to skate with cause he’s just so hyped to skate all the time and the way he looks at stuff is awesome.

What’s it like to see Miami from 20 years ago, 10 years ago, to today?
Everyone thinks the Miami skate scene was dead for so long, but I’ve lived here and been skating throughout this whole time, and there has always been crews. I mean, we live 45 minutes north of Miami and we’re still down there all the time. I grew up 20 years ago taking the tri-rail down there with all my friends when our parents would first let us. Lot 11 has definitely opened it up to more to the world, and drawn more of the skate industry to Miami, which is cool to see. It’s shedding light on why you don’t have to leave the East Coast and move to California to have a skate career and be productive. That’s the best way to put it.

For most of the places in America that get a winter, we do our best to escape them. As a Floridian, do you escape the summer or do you just kinda tough it out?
We don’t escape the summer. We tough it out. You just put five shirts in the bag and know you’re gonna try to find spots that are shaded and skate those during the hottest points of the day. But if you’re gonna try a trick at 2 PM in the blazing sun, you better have a bunch of water and a change of clothes.

Who are some skaters from South Florida lately that have kept you psyched on skating and wanting to go out and find new spots?
I would say Elijah Odom is definitely one. He’s always down to get a clip, which is so sick to see. Even if he’s eaten so much shit the day before, he might mack for half of the day, but he always has something that he wants to skate and it’s definitely inspiring.

Outside of the skate scene in South Florida, what is some skating that you’re into? Either people you’ve always looked up to or just skating that you enjoy watching nowadays.
I enjoy all Johnny’s videos. I do love the New York skate scene just being an East Coast head and my parents are from New York so I would go up there when I was younger. I think I was maybe 12 or 13 and my older brother Andrew showed me the movie Kids and it opened my eyes to the New York scene, and how much freedom you could have with skateboarding. That same trip we went to the Brooklyn Banks and skated and it just made me fall in love with New York, and Johnny’s videos definitely highlight that feeling.

Is there anyone in particular you would like to thank, and anything you think the readers should look into if they want to get skateparks in their community?
I would see what recreational parks are within a five to ten mile radius. If there is no skatepark at all then try to reach out to your municipality and see if there’s a way to do it. Once you are able to do that, you could reach out to us and we can guide you along the whole process, and we’re more than happy to do grants for those. That’s why we started it, so we can get a custom built park for a community rather than just seeing the same parks everywhere, or just having an obsolete prefab park thrown into a town. Thank you to Tito Porrata for giving me the idea for Plant-a-Park. Also growing up there was one skateshop that’s still around and that’s Island Water Sports and they always supported the skate community. There was a guy there, Scott Gravatt that I’d like to give a shout out to. Scott is the man.

Oh yeah, Scott made a fucking huge impact on my life. The first punk I ever saw. Such a good dude. And you looked at him with like spiky hair and he fucked with skating and surfing and music and ramp 48 and warped tour and he really showed us a lot. Honestly he did.
Yeah, and shout out to my brother for getting me into skating.

Andrew had such a good group of friends too.
Yeah, I think it definitely helps you when you hang out with people that are better than you at skating. It pushes you to want to be as good as them and want to do other tricks and get out of your comfort zone a little bit. So he definitely did that for me by letting me tag along as a little brother hopping on tri-rail. Hold up, shout out to you and Johnny. Every time you guys came down here it kind of got me more motivated to go to Miami. But you guys coming down in winter time definitely helped it out and you brought a new light to Miami.