Matt Lilly has a mini ramp in Bed-Stuy. You may not have been to Matt’s ramp before, but if you’re in New York and run into him, he’ll invite you over to skate. If you’re lucky, it will be on a night when he’shaving a party. He won’t ask anything of you other than to skate and have fun, but when you leave you’ll be inspired to get to work building your own spot. And that’s what Matt really wants, to show people you can build your own spot in the middle of anywhere with a few bros and some hard work.

How old is this ramp anyway?
I put the coping on it July 4th 2009. It was the day of the inaugural ramp jam. I’ve been in the house just overthree years. The first year I was just partying and kinda putting it off. I was working at a hotel that was taking a lot of taxes out of my paycheck and somebody told me about this lady who could work wonders with taxes. I always owed on my taxes, but this one year in 2009 I got like $1700 back and it was like a gift out of nowhere. I had always looked at this backyard, and it’s just a concrete slab. It took me a year to do it, because I was always broke, but then I got that tax return I was like, “fuck, I’m building a ramp.” And then talked to a few bro’s that knew how to build ramps, ”˜cause I was a little but rusty. Jay Brundegetaught me how to build ramps when I was 19. So I needed a bro to help out just to refresh my memory. Plus it’s a two man job, at least.

Were you able to build the whole thing for the $1700?
No, I ended up going over. I think I was able to do the whole thing, without the top layer for about $1700. I had to buy tools and stuff, like all these screw guns and saws. It was about two grand. It came out of nowhere. I took that tax return and spent it on a mini-ramp. I just thought it would be a good investment.

What’s up with the extension?
Was the pool coping original, or did you put that on later? I poured it myself. I built a mold for it and just followed instructions from the Internet. I just looked online for ”˜how to pour your own pool coping’. It was the first time I ever poured concrete, so I was getting all kinds of pointers from everybody. “Dude you gotta get fortifier, it makes it harder!” And you gotta do this and you gotta
do that..

When you have parties, it’s just bands on the roof?
Yeah, I threw a party and I had five bands play. Almost all of them have a pretty huge following. One of the requests I had for the bands was, don’t bring your own beer, there’s gonna be plenty of beer. Don’t bring your own food, come hungry. And bring chicks. So, yeah, we had like five bands and the flyer ended up on the Lowcard site somehow. I had sent them the flyer on Facebook, but I thought that was gonna be the extent of publicity through Lowcard. Then I got a text from somebody in Ohio, “Dude, your flyer is on the Low card site! That’s so sick!” When I got that, my first reaction was – not stoked. You know? But then the word started getting around It was maybe July 3rd and I was at a party with some friends who were asking their friends, “So what are you doing for the 4th?” and they were like, “There’s some ramp jam in Bed-Stuy or something with a bunch of bands.” Everybody knew about it. It got shut down at about 9:30, but from 2pm to 9ish there was probably a total of 500 people here. I had another party on September 9th. Having a ramp, and having a ramp party is better than having a beer pong party. Totally dude and there were definitely people here at my party who have only ever been to parties like that – with beer pong and fist fights. It was a totally different type of demographic. They were like, “There are live metal bands on the roof, what is this music? These people are so friendly and they’re not charging at the door for these kegs and all this food.

When I came to shoot more after the party, John Gardner really came through with the roof roll-in to the ramp.
Yeah, he did it first at the September 9th party. I didn’t even see it go down, I was out front, and it was later on in the night. Ever since I built this ramp, I’ve been looking out my kitchen window onto the roof and this ramp has just been staring me down like, “What am I doing in here drinking coffee, I should be rolling in off the roof.” I would seriously be up at night with sweaty palms and sweaty feet falling asleep thinking about it. Getting nervous and having falling dreams waking me out of my sleep and stuff. I thought about rolling in off this roof everyday. Sure enough, this kid came outside and showed the footage on his iphone. It looked exactly how I imagined it. I kinda blacked out with excitement, I don’t even remember what I said to him. For the rest of the night, that kid was my favorite skateboarder in the world. Colin Sussingham took this dope fisheye photo of it.