San Francisco brought a beloved subculture to dizzying heights with a skateboarding contest set against one of the most iconic views of the city.
Dozens of sponsored contestants converged Saturday at Twin Peaks for the Red Bull Sky Line, where they flew off specially built wooden ramps surrounded by scrubby vegetation, dirt trails, and a roadway that has become a haven for skaters since the city closed part of it to cars eight years ago.
Cheering from behind metal barricades was an audience of skaters, curious onlookers, and confused tourists who trekked up the hill for the view to find the lookout spot transformed into a pop-up skate park.
It’s something of a last hurrah for the meandering hilltop roadway. Next year, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department will rip up the pavement to make way for a park.
Karl Watson — Bay Area skate legend, brand owner, and children’s book author who joined fellow pro Chico Brenes as a judge at the event — said that despite the region’s entrenched skate culture, it took a new generation of skaters to turn the popular vista into a skateboarding destination.
“The GX1000 guys: I’m pretty sure they were the first crew to start going up there and turning Twin Peaks into an actual spot,” he said. “They would go up there in the mornings, skate a little bit, and then bomb down the hill.”
Bombing, or skating down hills, wasn’t on the official agenda for Saturday’s energy drink-sponsored contest, but skaters aren’t known for following rules.
“They told us not to do it, but people are gonna do it,” Brenes predicted. “If you’re up here with a skateboard, how else are you gonna get down?”
Pro skater and Sky Line spokesperson TJ Rogers said Red Bull’s marketing team came up with the idea for the Twin Peaks contest in 2022 — but it took two years to get the permits for a sanctioned event.
“You gotta make sure everyone’s gonna be safe and no one’s gonna sue the city,” he explained.
Watson and Brenes both said they were impressed that the energy drink brand managed to pull off the event.
“Twin Peaks is not the first location when someone is considering throwing a contest,” Watson said. “The wind, the fog — there are so many things that could get in the way.”
Things like law enforcement.
When skaters descend on Dolores Park for one of San Francisco’s most popular annual hill bombs, the city usually responds with a heavy police presence.
Last year’s unsanctioned Dolores Park Hill Bomb ended with cops arresting more than 100 people — many of whom wound up suing the city.
This year, the San Francisco Police Department tried to prevent the event from happening by stationing hundreds of cops in riot gear and scores of metal barricades around the hill where the bombers normally careen past onlookers. But skaters just moved to the other side of the park, bombing Church Street instead.
No such confrontations played out at Twin Peaks this weekend.
“Manramp,” a minor skate celebrity who dresses as a construction worker and holds a sheet of plywood over himself for others to land on, showed up to the contest with proper safety gear.
“I’m here to assist others,” he said, the sun glinting off his hard hat. “I didn’t bring my board.”
Professional skater Roman Pabich, 22, drove up from Huntington Beach for the hilltop event. He said he likes the course, but he’s not taking the contest too seriously.
“I kinda just wanted to get out of the house for the weekend,” he said. “And I love the city.”
Briana King also made the trip from SoCal, but is just here to skate, film her friends, and enjoy the scenery — not compete for the cash prizes.
“It seems kind of like a dream,” she said, admiring the view of hillside neighborhoods, the blood-red artery of Market Street leading to a shimmering downtown, and the bay beyond.
Also on King’s agenda is Unity Fest, a weekend event hosted by the Oakland-based queer skate collective Unity. She skated a jam at Lake Merritt on Friday and said that after the Twin Peaks contest, she was going to head back to the East Bay for a video premiere.
For some attendees, community events like Unity Fest are the real heart of Bay Area skateboarding, a subculture that often views corporations like Red Bull as interlopers. The animosity toward big brands has softened over the last decade as pro skateboarders found it increasingly difficult to make a living without their backing. But the “by us, for us” mentality persists.
Tony Trujillo, skateboarding legend and Thrasher Magazine’s 2002 Skater of the Year, embodies the ethos. He said he’s happy to attend the Red Bull contest to see his friends, but he’s not totally sold on the event.
“This is pretty corporate,” he said. “It’s not core like it really is every day. The locals will have their own send-off. That’ll be the real one.”
Despite his qualms, the lure of Twin Peaks proved too strong to resist.
“Being skaters, it’s nice to get away from Market, Mission, people, filth,” he said. “It’s nice to have our own space.”
As for the $5,000 purse?
“I don’t fucking care about the contest,” Trujillo added. “I just wanna skate.”