words by Gary Smith
photos by David Stuck

Ocean City, Maryland is about three hours east of Baltimore, nestled on the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. It’s basically a 10-mile-long strip of sand. The quaint size of this little beach town doesn’t stop the eight million tourists it receives throughout the summer months. OC holds a good bit of skateboarding history as well. Kryptonic Wheels were started there through Atlantic Skates in the early 1980’s. They also have Ocean Bowl, which is the oldest operating municipal skate park in the USA, it opened in 1976. 

Ocean Bowl Skate Park is the reason why this article exists. I’ve been teaching summer skate camp there for 19 years now. I teach three times a summer for a week, so I’ve spent almost half my life going to OC in the summer. The things I’ve learned from going there so long is there is no street skating allowed, do not have an open container, and don’t jaywalk. These few things will get you locked up, amongst a crap load of other things. The municipals of OC do a great job maintaining the small beach town, which leads to smooth skate spots and a lot of perfectly painted concrete.  

I had this idea to set up a shop trip in the middle of the brick ass winter offseason. Not knowing if we’d still get arrested or kicked out of the city altogether, I booked three hotel rooms from Thursday to Sunday. I invited as many people as I could. All together it was about 15 people who showed up. David Stuck shooting photos, and Kyle and Otto as the filmers. The weather was cold with extreme fog coming off the Atlantic Ocean. Desolation and complete eeriness was the overall group’s feeling of this small beach town off season.

The trip went way better than I could have expected. Spots were plentiful and the comradery between all the Vu dudes spanning almost 2 decades was the best part for me. No one was arrested (cops did get called 3-4 times on us) & no one got hurt. 

Shoutouts to Home 2 Suites Hotel, Pozetti’s Pizza, Eric Attleson, & Jive Turkey.