Back in San Diego the sky always looked too wide for the smallness of my teenage world. The wind came down from the hills and tangled with music that no one planned but everyone shared. I was a girl learning who she was through noise and bruises, through the scrape of wheels and laughter that dared authority. Those afternoons were the shape of my freedom. We weren’t chasing fame, we were building language without words. The park was our proof that rebellion could be gentle when it was honest. It was never about being loud, it was about finding a space where silence had rhythm, where movement replaced explanations and friendship grew out of speed.
Crossing the same ground years later, I still hear the echo of those afternoons. The concrete holds its memories like a stubborn friend. Each mark, each stain, carries a story of someone who tried, fell, and stood again. I see the handrails still polished with candle wax and the same dusty corners where we argued about bands that changed our worlds. Nothing in that park is perfect, but everything has meaning. I think of the afternoons when the sun fell hard on our faces and we kept skating until the wind felt cold. We were too young to know we were living something unrepeatable. That imperfection made it real. It never needed to impress anyone, only to exist for those who understood its pulse, those who found beauty in chipped paint and cracked concrete because it mirrored us.
Days pass differently now. I have less time, more weight on my shoulders, yet the pull of that mountain remains. There is a kindness in its roughness, a reminder that beauty was never supposed to be smooth. I walk there and feel my own edges again. The air smells the same, raw and dry, and I know that somewhere in that smell lives the girl I was. She is quieter now, but she still listens. I think about how the world has changed, how Venezuela has grown distant from the version of itself that raised us. Back then, music and skating were a kind of protest, a way of saying we were still alive in the middle of everything breaking. Maybe that is why I cannot stop going back. The park feels like proof that we once had something pure, a shared language of movement and persistence.
Memory works like the wind. It brings back what you thought was gone and sets it down in front of you until you recognize yourself. When I take my daughter there, I see her watching the skaters move without fear, and I remember what it meant to trust my body over my doubts. I want her to see that same courage, the one that teaches you to fall and rise without shame. The park is a bridge between who I was and who I keep becoming. I watch her trace the same lines I once followed and realize that this place has outlived our generations. It is still alive because it was never just concrete. It was belonging, built with hands that refused to stop moving. I tell her that this is where I learned to keep going, even when the rest of the world told us to slow down.
San Diego’s skate park is more than a place. It is a pulse that keeps beating under layers of silence. It belongs to a generation that believed in movement as resistance. In a country that sometimes forgets its own rhythm, that small patch of concrete still breathes defiance. Every ramp carries the weight of stories that never made it to the news but stayed in our bones. I leave it every time with dust on my shoes and peace in my chest. The sound of the wheels never stopped. It just learned new names, new reasons to stay alive. For me, it remains a symbol of the best kind of rebellion, the one that builds rather than destroys. The one that reminds us that we were here, that we are still here, skating through whatever comes next.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
Congratulations @chris-chris92! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPlets go!
Hell yeah, brother!! 🫶🏽💜💜
super cool photos. where is this spot. cool writing too. you must enjoy writing
Thank you for your kind words. Is located at San Diego, Venezuela. My hometown. And yeap, it is an really special place