Paterson DIY

March 18, 2019

The DIY “Caps University” all started one day in 2015 when we didn’t have anything to skate. I said to the skaters “I know this spot we could skate not too far from here.” Only three or four guys were down to check it out. So we went to this old abandoned gun mill at the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ. The spot was pretty hard to find, it was on the second floor of the building…When we got there the place was filled with trash past our ankles and we didn’t have anything to sweep up what we could with our feet to skate a little.

We all started to put in a little money here and there and bring a couple bags of cement to the spot every couple of days and work on whatever we could…Alan Sikiric, a friend of ours that helped the dudes over at Shortys DIY, has helped us build most of the obstacles there. He would build the layout of what we wanted or what obstacle he thought was cool and we filled it until it was done. So far we have a ledge, two hubbas next to each other (frontside and backside), a rollercoaster hubba, and we started a bank to slappy ledge but we haven’t finished it yet.

Once we walked in and found a rabbit’s head attached to this metal stick and the body was on the floor next to it. And we always see weird homeless people around the place, but they’re cool, you don’t bother them and they won’t bother you. It was a rumor that on the news they found a bin of bodies there, that some dude was killing random people and putting their bodies into. The city was supposed to tear down the building and make a state park, but they did that next to the Falls far from where the DIY is, so we are always going to be building something new to skate.

The gnarliest thing that I’ve seen there was done by our homie Russel Floyd. He found a metal stick and had someone hold it over the gap and he crooked it and boardslid it. DJ, one of the skaters in our crew, did kickflip back 5-0 on one of the hubbas and he did back blunt to fakie and Dylan Nieves did switch and nollie tre down the gap…Quim Cardona came and skated it with us one day and I loved watching him flow around and skate everything, he has such good style…I really can’t wait to see who will come there and skate in the future. All of the obstacles at the place aren’t the easiest obstacles to skate so not much has been done. Yet.